Henry E. Scott

NPR is tricky. They have a way of making anything they talk about sound extremely interesting. I was absolutely tickled to get my hands on this book after hearing the author interviewed on Fresh Air. I have a minor degree in Film Studies, am a collector of vintage movie magazines, and wrote a term paper on Confidential and its ilk in college. Still, I'm no expert on the magazine, so I was excited to read this book and learn all the dirty details. What a disappointment. This is Scott's first book (he's an ad executive); he admits to not being a "movie fan" before writing it; and his inspiration came from reading L.A. Confidential on a plane. The result? A disjointed, unorganized, uninteresting mess of a book. In fact, it reads a lot like a term paper. The chapters are short and don't flow chronologically; he cites LONG passages from other works (my jaw dropped when he quoted FIVE PARAGRAPHS from Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, crediting it only as "a 2005 memoir"); and the way he references people and films (he describes the Rat Pack as "a group of actors") makes it look like he has NO IDEA what he's talking about. Maybe if you also don't know anything about the era he's describing, you might enjoy it too; and since it's so short and amateurish it's probably a good plane read (I got through it in a day). But if you know anything about this era or expect this work to be on par with other Old Hollywood nonfiction tomes, don't bother. You won't learn anything new and you'll be mad you wasted your time.… (mehr)