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Miss May Does Not Exist
- The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood's Hidden Genius
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's summary
As part of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, May revolutionized sketch comedy before striking out on her own to make history as the third woman to be admitted into the Directors Guild of America when she wrote, directed, and starred in 1971’s A New Leaf.
Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, May was one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters and script doctors and one of the only women directing within the studio system. After a box-office bomb, May never directed a feature again, though she continued to write films.
In 2018, she returned to Broadway, where she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play for The Waverly Gallery. Besides her considerable talent, May is well known for her reclusiveness, often working behind the scenes without credit. In the liner notes for her first comedy LP with Mike Nichols in 1958, her bio is a single terse sentence: “Miss May does not exist.” Until now.
Carrie Courogen has uncovered the Elaine May who does exist. Conducting countless interviews, she has filled in the blanks May has forcibly kept blank for years, creating a fascinating portrait of a creative powerhouse, a lost era of Hollywood, and the way women were mistreated and held back within it.
Miss May Does Not Exist is a remarkable love story about a prickly genius who was never easy to work with, not always easy to love, and frequently punished for those things, despite revolutionizing the way we think about comedy, acting, and what a film or play can be.
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- Unabridged
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Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.
By: Morgan Parker
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Everything Nothing Someone
- A Memoir
- By: Alice Carrière
- Narrated by: Alice Carrière
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Alice Carrière tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett, and a charismatic father, European actor Mathieu Carrière. From an early age, Alice is forced to navigate her mother’s recovered memories of ritualized sexual abuse, which she turns into art, and her father’s confusing attentions—her childhood is spent in an adult’s world, with little-to-no boundaries or supervision.
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This book is awful.
- By af_90 on 12-17-23
By: Alice Carrière
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Mike Nichols
- A Life
- By: Mark Harris
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 20 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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By the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back comes a magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges - some of the worst largely unknown until now. Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion.
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Loved the book, but driven nuts my mispronounced names.
- By Amazon Customer on 02-14-21
By: Mark Harris
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No Judgment
- Essays
- By: Lauren Oyler
- Narrated by: Lauren Oyler
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In her writing for Harper’s, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature—whether celebratory or scarily harsh—have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment?
By: Lauren Oyler
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A Complicated Passion
- The Life and Work of Agnes Varda
- By: Carrie Rickey
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnes Varda (1928-2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work.
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A wonderful look at an elusive talent
- By Mark G. Wheaton on 09-14-24
By: Carrie Rickey
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Desperately Seeking Something
- A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls
- By: Susan Seidelman
- Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan Seidelman was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about the unrepresented characters she wanted to see on screen: unconventional women in unusual circumstances, needing to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-blending films reflect a passion for classic Hollywood storytelling, mixed with a playful New Wave spirit, informed by her years living in downtown NYC.
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An Inspiring Listen
- By Tiffany Bartok on 06-26-24
By: Susan Seidelman
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You Get What You Pay For
- Essays
- By: Morgan Parker
- Narrated by: Morgan Parker
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.
By: Morgan Parker
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Everything Nothing Someone
- A Memoir
- By: Alice Carrière
- Narrated by: Alice Carrière
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alice Carrière tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett, and a charismatic father, European actor Mathieu Carrière. From an early age, Alice is forced to navigate her mother’s recovered memories of ritualized sexual abuse, which she turns into art, and her father’s confusing attentions—her childhood is spent in an adult’s world, with little-to-no boundaries or supervision.
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This book is awful.
- By af_90 on 12-17-23
By: Alice Carrière
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Mike Nichols
- A Life
- By: Mark Harris
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 20 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
By the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back comes a magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges - some of the worst largely unknown until now. Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion.
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Loved the book, but driven nuts my mispronounced names.
- By Amazon Customer on 02-14-21
By: Mark Harris
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No Judgment
- Essays
- By: Lauren Oyler
- Narrated by: Lauren Oyler
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her writing for Harper’s, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature—whether celebratory or scarily harsh—have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment?
By: Lauren Oyler
-
A Complicated Passion
- The Life and Work of Agnes Varda
- By: Carrie Rickey
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnes Varda (1928-2019) wrote and directed some of the most acclaimed films of her era. She helped to define the French New Wave, inspired an entire generation of filmmakers, and was recognized with major awards at the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice Film Festivals, as well as an honorary Oscar at the Academy Awards. In this lively biography, Carrie Rickey explores the "complicated passions" that informed Varda's charmed life and indelible work.
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A wonderful look at an elusive talent
- By Mark G. Wheaton on 09-14-24
By: Carrie Rickey
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The Editor
- How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America
- By: Sara B. Franklin
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones began working as a secretary at Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, she spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects—until one day, a book caught her eye. She read it in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing it. A year later, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller. It was the start of a culture-defining career in publishing. Legendary editor Judith Jones finally gets her due in this intimate biography.
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Gorgeous writing, perfect reader
- By Erin on 06-11-24
By: Sara B. Franklin
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The De Palma Decade
- Redefining Cinema with Doubles, Voyeurs, and Psychic Teens
- By: Laurent Bouzereau
- Narrated by: Dani Martineck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Among a crop of fresh filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola revolutionizing Hollywood in the ’70s, Brian De Palma—a director from Philadelphia with a few social satires under his belt—charted a cinematic path unlike any of his peers. At times he was unfairly dismissed as a Hitchcock copycat; other times he was misunderstood for his peculiar mix of sexuality, humor, music, and violence. But, over the course of ten years, he created a new cinematic language.
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A must for De Palma fans and cinephiles. Outstanding reader!
- By David FL on 09-19-24
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Cocktails with George and Martha
- Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- By: Philip Gefter
- Narrated by: Alexa Morden
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn’t be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s.
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Another Bad Narration
- By TPH on 02-25-24
By: Philip Gefter
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When Women Ran Fifth Avenue
- Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
- By: Julie Satow
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
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Read like a text book for fashion students.
- By JACKI on 06-24-24
By: Julie Satow
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With Love, Mommie Dearest
- The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic
- By: A. Ashley Hoff, Bruce Vilanch - foreword
- Narrated by: Kim Niemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Christina Crawford's book was an immediate bestseller, addressing the infrequently discussed topic of child abuse. When Paramount Pictures released the film, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford, it was critically panned, and remains one of the most legendary critical bombs in film history. The lavish, big-screen adaptation drew unexpected laughter in the scenes depicting life in the Crawford household. Rarely have such good intentions been met with such ridicule.
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AMAZING narrator for a wonderful book!
- By A. Diozzi on 06-16-24
By: A. Ashley Hoff, and others
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Radiant
- The Life and Line of Keith Haring
- By: Brad Gooch
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1980s, the subways of New York City were covered with art. In the stations, black matte sheets were pasted over outdated ads, and unsigned chalk drawings often popped up on these blank spaces. These temporary chalk drawings numbered in the thousands and became synonymous with a city as diverse as it was at war with itself, beset with poverty and crime but alive with art and creative energy. And every single one of these drawings was done by Keith Haring.
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excellent!
- By Kristina Hammond on 05-22-24
By: Brad Gooch
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Shy
- The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers
- By: Mary Rodgers, Jesse Green
- Narrated by: Christine Baranski, Jesse Green
- Length: 15 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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“What am I, bologna?” Mary Rodgers (1931-2014) often said. She was referring to being stuck in the middle of a talent sandwich: the daughter of one composer and the mother of another. And not just any composers. Her father was Richard Rodgers, perhaps the greatest American melodist; her son, Adam Guettel, a worthy successor. What that leaves out is Mary herself, also a composer, whose musical Once Upon a Mattress remains one of the rare revivable Broadway hits written by a woman. Shy is the story of how it all happened.
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What a fun book!
- By Erik B. Rinderle on 09-17-23
By: Mary Rodgers, and others
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Stash
- My Life in Hiding
- By: Laura Cathcart Robbins
- Narrated by: Laura Cathcart Robbins
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take.
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Best Mom/wife alcoholism memoir I’ve read
- By Allison M. Billet on 04-06-23
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Hollywood's Eve
- Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles in the 1960s and '70s was the pop cultural capital of the world - a movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz was the ultimate factory girl, a pure product of LA. The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High, Babitz posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was naked; he was not. The photograph, cheesecake with a Dadaist twist, made her an instant icon of art and sex. Babitz spent the rest of the decade rocking and rolling on the Sunset Strip, honing her notoriety.
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Tedious
- By Kim on 01-11-20
By: Lili Anolik
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The Friday Afternoon Club
- A Family Memoir
- By: Griffin Dunne
- Narrated by: Griffin Dunne
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good.
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Griffiths phrasing made it easy to listen and absorb.
- By Nancie Keay on 06-17-24
By: Griffin Dunne
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Everybody Thought We Were Crazy
- Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
- By: Mark Rozzo
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Los Angeles in the 1960s: riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, wild weekends in Malibu, late nights at The Daisy discotheque, openings at the Ferus Gallery, and the convergence of pop art, rock and roll, and the New Hollywood. At the center of it all, one inspired, improbable, and highly combustible couple—Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward—lived out the emblematic love story of ’60s L.A.
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Wonderful!
- By Rob on 06-07-22
By: Mark Rozzo
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Problems
- By: Jade Sharma
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Maya's been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her husband leaves her and her favorite professor ends their affair, her barely-calibrated life descends into chaos, and she has to make some choices. Maya's struggle to be alone, to be a woman, and to be thoughtful and imperfect and alive in a world that doesn't really care what happens to her is rendered with dead-eyed clarity and unnerving charm. This book takes every tired trope about addiction and recovery, "likeable" characters, and redemption narratives and blows them to pieces.
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An unvarnished journey through addiction
- By james m. on 04-13-23
By: Jade Sharma
What listeners say about Miss May Does Not Exist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- SoFlaGal
- 07-28-24
Miss May indeed exists
Fascinating biography of a woman who beat the system but didn’t want anything to do with it - Hollywood and Broadway. Excellent listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Yenrab Namrehs
- 06-30-24
A Rose-Colored Apologia for Elaine May
There is no question Elaine May is a gifted, briliiant writer born with a sense of story denied to other mere mortals. Equally, she is a talented performer and actress. Her contribution to improvisation is seminal. She was, at times, a great theater director. She can't direct movies worth a lick.
And therein lies the problem with this book. It takes no critical eye. Worse, the author cannot get the stars out of her eyes. Everything Elaine May does is great. If it isn't great--Ishtar, for example--the author raises a rousing defense that the cost of a movie and/or its commercial success should not be barometer of a film's value or success. That precious few of the movies--if any--that Elaine May directed enjoyed either needs to be looked at objectively, not pollyanna-ish as the author does here. By failing any semblence of objectivity (apparently May can do no wrong), she undercuts the creative force May was in so many other areas.
Even May's well-known and maybe well deserved reputation as a script doctor needs more scrutiny. Many of her script-doctored scripts were movies directed by Mike Nichols. It does May no disservice that she worked better as a team with Nichols than she did independently (which is blatently obvious to even the most casual observer), but the author doesn't touch that. If she had, it would mean conceding that May wasn't flawlessly brilliant constantly.
In retrospect, the influence Elaine May had on entertainment, television, the theater, and Hollywood is unquestionable. Maybe another book will be written with a more cooler assessment--which will give Elaine May the true credit she richly deserves.
It would sure make this book better.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Barb
- 07-26-24
Interesting
Slow in the beginning but became very interesting as it went on. I remember her and the repartee.
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- The Book Fairy
- 06-15-24
THE DEFINITIVE!
I just finished reading an incredible bio on the brilliant #ElaineMay. I was so excited when I discovered this book was being published because there really hasn’t been any biography written on her - if any! @carriecourogen holds nothing back here. She dives deeper than deep in bringing out the creative and comedic psychosis of Elaine May in all her idiosyncrasies which ultimately culminates into her “hidden genius”. Miss May is one of the true greats of comedy and film. She’s intensely private so I’m not surprised she didn’t/wouldn’t meet with Carrie and since we probably will never ever get a personal memoir from Elaine May, I am throwing this book into the ring to be classified as the DEFINITIVE Elaine May biography!
Since I like to listen to the audiobook as I read along, I was even more excited when @erinbennettnarrates’s voice came across my laptop/phone again. She’s my favorite narrator and her voice feels like a dear old friend. It felt good to sip some tea and catch up!!🥰 THANK YOU, Carrie & Erin for this marvelous work… and Thank you to Elaine May, Hollywood’s hidden genius and one of my Sheroes! ✨🎬✍🏼
P.S: This book NEEDS to be adapted into a documentary film! HBO better be calling you soon, Carrie!!! (I’m serious) let’s get this made! 🫶🏼
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1 person found this helpful
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- Barry Cutler
- 06-22-24
Great Talent With Author's Agenda Interfering Some
I highly recommend this biography to learn about the life of one of the greatest talents, Elaine May. Unfortunately, the author's feminist agenda interferes when she attempts to make that May's story. No doubt, May suffered many of the prejudices many or all women suffer. But that's the author's spin. While the book is well-worth reading, the author should have stuck with May's life rather than muddying matters with her agenda.
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- M. Skinner
- 08-17-24
The sadness of genius
Learning about her past and remembering the work I had seen and loved on tv, at age snd film was interesting but an overall sense of gloom was not what I needed in 2024.
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- john burke
- 06-25-24
Genius missing in action.
I hate to ask the question because by all accounts Elaine May was truly fascinating, intelligent and supremely complicated. I do think genius is thrown around way too often. Even with the most difficult of geniuses we can still point to a work that is their own, not only their own but some consistent output. The screenplay that she appears to have written almost entirely herself would be The Birdcage and that was an adaptation already. I love the film but I would definitely never call it a work of genius. There's of course the many projects she kept her name off of but those were her coming in and changing what was already there. In the instances where she created her own plays those relied heavily on improv and the plays seem to have gone nowhere or referred to as sketches. With this book i get a sense that Elaine May is a genius missing in action....more of a spectre of it than the embodiment. Either way great listen.
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- Cathy
- 09-25-24
My inspiration since I was 8 years old
Beautifully written, beautifully read, beautifully lived. Well worth the time you’ll invest. Truly an inspiration.
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