Flashbacks From the Wings

Pat McGilligan, ed. Backstoty: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 382 pp. Alan Schneider. Entrances: An American Director's Journey. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. 416 pp. Illus. Show-biz biographies and memoirs have a special fascination. As Alan Schneider recalls from a (circa 1948) memo, "the audience loves to criticize actors and acting. It loves to come backstage, because the audience likes to catch person- alities off-base." This interest has fed writings that range from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to the National Enquirer. Although both books under review provide the memoirs of real people, because these people are all "authors," purveyors of fiction, the books are closer to Tom Stoppard's elabora- tions upon a myth than to the grittier fictions of journalism

Art · Art history · Hollywood · Journalism · Literature · Media studies · Memoir · Mythology · Sociology · History · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism