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Summary: DARING AND SPELLBINDING
Review: A truly wonderful book! John Gilmore is a master at recreating the old Hollywood, the places, the scenes, the people. For those who have lived it, this is true nostaliga as well as an engaging examination behind the "myths", the super people and super stars our culture has been conditioned to worship. Here, Gilmore removes the "shine" and we see and experience these stars as complicated individuals, lost in the maze of the Hollywood machine. A highly recommended read. Brilliant, entertaining; a true textbook on the desperation that drives some individuals to the top of the success ladder, only to destroy themselves in a sad, sad scenario of loss and despair.
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Summary: It's one of the best books i read this year
Review: A very nice personal view of the downsides of the hollywood stars written by one of them.
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Summary: Dark,intense, painful but 'sooo' interesting
Review: I found this book on the net and didn't expect much. Boy was i wrong.! Gilmore explores the deep underbelly of Hollywood in the 50's and 60's exposing the self-destuctive tendicies of some famous people he ran around with. The honesty is brutal at times sad at others.A very good read...
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Summary: A TREASURE CHEST OF AMERICAN POP CULTURE
Review: I have read interviews with this author, and articles about him, as well as seeing him on a number of television interviews from Charles Manson and Sharon Tate to Barbara Payton and the Black Dahlia murder case. I have just finished this book, LAID BARE, and feel like I have a treasure chest of American Pop Culture. This is a complex and rich book, exposing life behind the surface scenes the media presents as fact. This is a terrific read, full of strong, vibrant prose. Great style, great writing. Manson, the Black Dahlia, Steve McQueen, Jane Fonda, Dennis Hopper, on and on. I especially like how Gilmore shows Sal Mineo and James Dean, and his personal involvement with these stars. Plus JIM MORRISON! Wild! I get the feeling everything this author has written is of the same powerful slant at revelation and digging beneath the usual stuffing that oozes out of Hollywood. This is different and ORIGINAL! A powerful literary trip by a remarkable artist who has lived every inch of it! Have to stop writing this review so I've got time for my second read of this wonderful book.
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Summary: My Kind Of Book...The Juiciest of Truths
Review: I would like to have walked in John Gilmore's booties or been his shadow in the fifties and sixties. This book is just too cool and tells all you ever would want to know about James Dean, including his romp in the hay with him while living in New York City before Jimmy was famous. I am an avid reader of non-fiction and this book is one of the best I have ever read. He has had more experiences with live and dead celebrities that any one person would ever hope to have. To mention a few headliners; Steve McQueen, Hank Williams Jr., Jean Seberg, Jane Fonda, James Dean, Janis Joplin, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Tom Neal, Barbara Payton, Ida Lupino, Errol Flynn and a cast of thousands. Listen to this. John Gilmore wrote the original storyline for Easy Rider only he had another title. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda hired Terry Southern to write the same story which ended up being Easy Rider using 90% of John's original story. Did he get any money for his idea? NO! And that really upsets me. However, John has survived and is successful in the way he must want to be. I enjoy his style of writing and will read more of his books.
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Summary: A GREAT BOOK
Review: I've read this book twice and each time I feel like I'm entering a time warp. I'm being transported back into the 1950's, the 1960's. I lived in Los Angeles during those years and this has captured every naunce that is LA in all its dubious glory. John Gilmore has seen the shadows and the spotlights as well. The book takes you all over, from Hollywood to New York, Paris, even Cairo, Egypt. I especially was drawn into Gilmore's relationship with the late actress Jean Seberg, who I always admired. He shows her as she has never been shown. At times this book is very strange, and very engrossing (see Janis Joplin, Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot... Gilmore has 'kissed' them all and gives us the dish). A tale of remarkable originality. Super highly recommened, and I can hardly wait for his next tome.
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Summary: A facinating glimpse at fame and its consequences.
Review: In relating the facts and circumstances of his own extraordinary life, Gilmore rips the lid off America's cult of celebrity. What lies beneath is the sometimes sick, almost always pathetic and certainly poignant true lives of some of Hollywood's biggest names. The result is a form of anti-gossip--both attractive and repulsive. Janis Joplin, James Dean, Dennis Hopper, Jean Seberg--Gilmore knew them all and many others. His acid-etched observations and uncanny memory paint an unforgettable picture of the shabbiness of fame and those who pursue it. (Steve McQueen and Dennis Hopper take particular beatings.)
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Summary: THE BEST BOOK ON HOLLYWOOD'S DARK SIDE
Review: Or should I say Slide Side! I have never read a book about the "bad" "slide" "dark" side of Hollywood that comes anywhere near close to the REAL flip-side picture of behind-the-camera Hollywood as this one. John Gilmore is a teriffic writer who takes us through this myriad of real-life characters whose names we all know as well as our box of corn flakes. He opens up the lives and heads he writes about and allows us to see what makes them tick, drink, shoot up, bed-hop, turn upside down and inside out and fall from Heaven or kill themselves. All this through Gilmore's personal experiences, living alongside these individuals, sharing some of their good times as well as the tragic and pitiful times; James Dean, Brigitte Bardot, William S. Burroughs, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Lenny Bruce, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Jean Seberg, Sal Mineo--the list goes on; people Gilmore has worked with, known, slept with, done drugs with (Gilmore's good ex-friend Dennis Hopper appears in one of the most detailed, tragic portraits of a life on the Hollywood down side); Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, etc., etc. This is the Hollywood/New York Bright White Way 1950's 1960's Broadway scene told with relentless vision and insight. Not one of those books that promises dish but doesnt deliver. Gilmore DELIVERS and you get seconds on dessert! Anyone WAY out there who especially digs Janis Joplin is in for a treat! Read the book if only for getting into Janis. The author was on A&E and I have read interviews and he mentions an autobiography/memoir in the works; in other words, a bigger, fatter tale to beat the rose-colored glasses of our illusions. I can hardly wait and I'm no masochist! LAID BARE must surely rub a lot of people the wrong way or make them mad as hell. That is where the relentlessness is most apparent in Gilmore's literature. He is one of the best writers alive today, if not one of the most controversial. This is a one of a kind book: you won't find this close-to-the-bone first-person kiss-and-tell realism anywhere else. Go for it!
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Summary: THE BEST BOOK ON HOLLYWOOD'S DARK SIDE
Review: Or should I say Slide Side! I have never read a book about the "bad" "slide" "dark" side of Hollywood that comes anywhere near close to the REAL flip-side picture of behind-the-camera Hollywood as this one. John Gilmore is a teriffic writer who takes us through this myriad of real-life characters whose names we all know as well as our box of corn flakes. He opens up the lives and heads he writes about and allows us to see what makes them tick, drink, shoot up, bed-hop, turn upside down and inside out and fall from Heaven or kill themselves. All this through Gilmore's personal experiences, living alongside these individuals, sharing some of their good times as well as the tragic and pitiful times; James Dean, Brigitte Bardot, William S. Burroughs, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Lenny Bruce, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Jean Seberg, Sal Mineo--the list goes on; people Gilmore has worked with, known, slept with, done drugs with (Gilmore's good ex-friend Dennis Hopper appears in one of the most detailed, tragic portraits of a life on the Hollywood down side); Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, etc., etc. This is the Hollywood/New York Bright White Way 1950's 1960's Broadway scene told with relentless vision and insight. Not one of those books that promises dish but doesnt deliver. Gilmore DELIVERS and you get seconds on dessert! Anyone WAY out there who especially digs Janis Joplin is in for a treat! Read the book if only for getting into Janis. The author was on A&E and I have read interviews and he mentions an autobiography/memoir in the works; in other words, a bigger, fatter tale to beat the rose-colored glasses of our illusions. I can hardly wait and I'm no masochist! LAID BARE must surely rub a lot of people the wrong way or make them mad as hell. That is where the relentlessness is most apparent in Gilmore's literature. He is one of the best writers alive today, if not one of the most controversial. This is a one of a kind book: you won't find this close-to-the-bone first-person kiss-and-tell realism anywhere else. Go for it!
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Summary: from SIGHT & SOUND February 1998
Review: Reading LAID BARE is like finding a series of lost diaries by such icons as James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Janis Joplin, all of whom John Gilmore--an L.A.born chld actor, almost movie star, director and writer--hung out (if not slept) with before they became iconic. Beautifully written in a style somewhere between Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski and several light years away from the cobbled-together sleaze the title and dustjacket suggest, this is an astonishing book, even if Gilmore's total recall of conversations 40 years ago is a little suspect. Read it above all for its insights into the failed lives and seamy side of Hollywood, indicating--as Gary Indiana notes in the foreword--that celebrities "don't change einto wonderful human beings just because ten million people know who they are.
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