Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. “This book is merely a fan’s notes,” Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you’re […]
HANGING IN WITH GEORGE
By Jan Herman When 1984 came around smack in the middle of the rose-tinted Reagan era, many in the commentariat had a field day noting that George Orwell, for all his genius, had overstated his case. The future he’d warned of in “1984” simply hadn’t come to pass. Yeah, right. Thinking of Bill Moyers this morning, it occurred […]
STONE GETS TOUGH ON FIDEL
by JAN HERMAN Oliver Stone’s “Looking for Fidel,” to premiere Wednesday on HBO, is called the follow-up in tough mode to “Commandante,” his previous softball portrait of the Cuban leader. This time, instead of tossing bouqets at Castro in a loving (some said fawning) approach to El Commandante, Stone reportedly confronts him about his vicious […]
KITTY KELLEY, SINATRA & ME
Reprinted from the German edition of LUI, Nr. 11, November 1986, where it appeared in German translation as “Des Sängers Fluch.” It was never published in English — until now. By Jan Herman For a professional snoop, Kitty Kelley harbors a remarkably decorous feeling about her work. The least suggestion that she enjoys exposing the […]
My Checkered Career
I’ve been a staff writer covering arts and culture at the Los Angeles Times, a reporter and movie reviewer at The Daily News in New York, a reporter and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, a senior editor/producer and the theater critic for MSNBC.com, and a fellow in the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. […]