Specktor is trying to do something subtler and more slippery than cataloging boldfaced names and bellyaching about how commerce has strangled art ... A determinedly artful and novelistic memoir, recalling the ebb and flow of millions in Hollywood in the past half-century, not to account for winners and losers but to better understand his parents’ psyches, and his own ... An attempt to preserve ambiguity and strangeness in the face of a culture that’s strangled subtlety ... Rather than rehash war stories or assign blame and responsibility, Specktor writes novelistically, attempting to get into the head of a host of characters ... Specktor overreaches a bit in the latter stages of the book, as he tries to show just how much 21st century filmmaking has drifted from its inclusive ’60s ethos.
Rich, atmospheric ... It assumes that life and the movies are in a state of permanent overlap. In this it may already be outdated, and yet, like a long rattling drive down Sunset Boulevard, it both lulls and arouses.
May be nonfiction, but in its emotional depth and poetic insight, the book belongs on the same shelf as the novels What Make Sammy Run? and The Day of the Locust.
A child of the movies who happens to be a really terrific writer ... This isn't a tell-all, pity party or diatribe. Mixing things up with the brio of an expert bartender, Specktor serves an invigorating cocktail of family saga, cultural criticism, fictionalized biography, Hollywood history and lament for a vanishing world ... My favorite parts of the book have to do with Fred and Katherine. He finds in them a mythic dimension we often feel in thinking about our own parents ... By comparison Specktor's chapters about himself, though well written, feel a tad prosaic—like a low-budget indie.
A sterling account ... Literate and liberal with huge scoops of dish, Specktor’s memoir is a sometimes shocking pleasure from start to finish ... A memoir that joins Peter Biskind, Joan Didion, William Goldman, and other top-shelf chroniclers of the L.A. film scene.
Affecting ... A tender elegy for mid-century Hollywood ... Specktor enriches his family portrait with a meticulous history of Hollywood and sharp musings on the film industry’s uneasy mix of art and commerce ... Film buffs will relish this potent blend of personal history and cultural critique.
