Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Businessby Curtis Harrington (Drag City, paper, 272 pp.).
Review by James Marshall
Fans of esoteric film trash will be delighted to know that before passing director Curtis Harrington (1926-2007) left us with this dirt-filled and conversationally written volume about his five decades in Hollywood and beyond.
Not a supporter of the royal family: "My father worked very hard and had a lot of tax taken off to support what I'd seen as a bunch of lazy good-for-nothing inbreds. And I think time has proved me right. The British now completely agree with me on that. So my attitude would be about them now to sell them off to Disneyland. I think that they would be wonderful next to the Epcot Centre! And that would solve a lot of Britain's economic problems."
LEGS MCNEIL: LET'S GO TO THE ACTION
Interview by Chris Ziegler
There's no single definitive history of punk, just like there's no single definitive punk record. (Although trying to find one is lots of fun!) But Leg's McNeil's book Please Kill Me has probably pulled in at lease as many people toward the Ramones and Iggy Pop as the music itself. Published with co-author Gillian McCain in 1997 Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk has become McNeil's best-known work, a touchstone of music history that's even taught in certain universities, where good students get to learn in detail just how depraved rock 'n' roll could be.