Praise for Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times
"Dennis McDougal is a rare Hollywood reporter: honest, fearless, nobody's fool. This is unvarnished Jack for Jack-lovers and Jack-skeptics but, also, for anyone interested in the state of American culture and celebrity. I always read Mr. McDougal for pointers but worry that he will end up in a tin drum off the coast of New Jersey." -- Patrick McGilligan, author of Jack's Life and Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
Praise for Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty
"A great freeway pileup--part biography, part dysfunctional family chronicle, and part institutional and urban history, with generous dollops of scandal and gossip." -- Hendrick Hertzberg, The New Yorker
"McDougal has managed to scale the high walls that have long protected the Chandler clan and returned with wicked tales told by angry ex-wives and jealous siblings." --The Washington Post
Praise for The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood
"Real glamour needs a dark side. That is part of the fascination of Dennis McDougal's wonderful book." --The Economist
"Thoroughly reported and engrossing . . . the most noteworthy trait of MCA was how it hid its power." --The New York Times Book Review
"Over the years, I've read hundreds of books on Hollywood and the movie business, and this one is right at the top." -- Michael Blowen, The Boston Globe
"Dennis McDougal has captured the spirit of the infamously unconventional Hollywood legend" (Daily Express, January 16th 2009) "McDougal does a great job" (Independent, January 23rd 2009)
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
With the recent publication of "Five Easy Decades" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Dennis McDougal has authored a total of nine books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in a career that has spanned over 40 years. Currently, he is working on "The Acid Chronicles," a documentary film about the history and renaissance of LSD as a powerful tool in the treatment of mental illness.
Before he began covering movies and media for the Los Angeles Times in 1983 and, more recently, the New York Times, McDougal was a staff writer at the Riverside Press-Enterprise (1973-1977) and the Long Beach Press-Telegram (1977-1981). A UCLA graduate, McDougal holds a Bachelor's in English and a Master's in Journalism.
In 1981, he was awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and spent a year teaching and studying in Japan and Canada, as well as at the Palo Alto campus. Over the years, his journalism has won over 50 honors, including the National Headliners Award and several Associated Press awards.
Before turning his attention full-time to writing books in 1993, McDougal reported on the glamorous and occasionally corrupt aspects of Hollywood as a staff writer for ten years at the Los Angeles Times. As a Times investigative reporter concentrating on movies, television and pop music, McDougal took readers behind the scenes of pop star Michael Jackson's troubled career, beginning with his "Victory" tour in the early 1980s; exposed the waste and mismanagement of Band Aid, USA for Africa, Farm Aid, and other "pop charities" of the 1980s; and followed celebrity courtroom dramas, such as the so-called "Cotton Club" murder trial, which featured former Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans in a major supporting role. He was a producer for CNN during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
McDougal's reporting has taken him to the top of San Francisco's Mt. Tamalpais at sunrise with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, Rodney King's rap music debut, Ethiopia with Harry Belafonte, Tokyo with former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer's Washington Heights bedroom for a discussion of the elements of good sex. He has interviewed dozens of celebrated men and women who have influenced our lives: pop stars, politicians, moguls and cultural icons.
A contributing writer with TV Guide through the 1990s, his last story for the magazine was the murderous saga of actor Robert Blake and his late porn queen wife Bonny Lee Bakley. McDougal and co-author Mary Murphy turned that story into the book "Blood Cold" (Putnam, 2002), which Mark Sennet Productions optioned for a motion picture. McDougal is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has also written for Los Angeles Magazine, Brill's Content, Premiere, and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine.
McDougal has been a lecturer in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, the University of Memphis, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. He and his wife, Sharon, live near Memphis, Tennessee, have five children, and ten grandchildren.
This review is from: Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times (Hardcover)
If you have read previous Nicholson biographies I would recommend you do not spend your money on this one. What's new?: Jack's injuries/illness and movies that go up to The Bucket List. If you haven't read any biographies on Jack, this is not a bad read. The book's major themes are Jack's screen and personal personas (as they can be divined), his involvement with money- particularly how much he gets paid a movie, his off screen relationships and the issue of his paternity. As with most of Nicholson's biographys this is not authorized and thus relies on press and ex- associates/"friends" accounts of who Nicholson is..The author does attempt to present a balanced picture and has noted Nicholson's generosity as well as his "mean spirited" dealings with money. This reads on the side of a "pop" biography as opposed to a serious biography. I suppose we are not going to get a decent biography until Jack agrees to authorize one. The language in this book is at times crass: "codfish Jack", Warhol is a "pop art twit", Jack's collection of record albums makes him a "pop music nerd", "born a bastard", "horn dog hedonist", "obeying his gonads" etc. The themes that get overstated are Jack's paternity and his demands for getting paid for his movies....There are minor inaccuracies which makes you wonder about perhaps other substantive ones?..: Bob Dylan was not on the Easy Rider soundtrack (two of his songs were-but not him); Hunter S. Thompson did not kill himself with a shotgun, it was a hand gun; Allen Ginsberg does not spell his name ALAN; Jack could not have danced cheek to cheek to "Blue Velvet" in 1954, it wasn't a teen hit until the early sixties; The Two Jakes did not "predict" the growth of LA suburbs, because the script was written after the growth of suburbs; Jack is referred to as being both 5'10" and 5'9", because at one point he decided to cease his public display or discussion of drugs but kept on doing them, did not make him a "hypocrite"...There are some relatively minor editorial problems but its not worth going into...Maybe some day we will get a serious study of Jack's movie making, his artistry and his history...I would like to see a book that judges Nicholson on his art as an actor and the quality/impact of his movies...and not so focused on him as a person in and above the Hollywood psychodrama...
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This review is from: Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times (Hardcover)
The author of this bio meticulously researched his subject (notes and bibliographies attest to this) but you'd never know it by reading the text. There are a lot of mistakes in this overly written book i.e. KEITH Carradine not DAVID Carradine starred in Pretty Baby, Al Jolson made the line "you ain't seen nothin' yet" famous NOT Jackie Gleason . . there are a lot more examples but that's not the real problem with the book. For an author who's jacket blurb claims he is such an experienced investigative journalist he wastes an awful lot of time detailing Jack Nicholson's sex life (Does anybody really need to know the shape of Nicholson's penis???) and how much money he has (Exacting figures on how much he was paid for EVERY film). This makes much of the book read like a tawdry tabloid and less like an insightful life story.
It starts great and is quite incisive in some parts but the title is misleading: The author never explains or says how Nicholson became the biggest movie star in modern times. The audiences' ability to live vicariously through Nicholson's on and off screen escapades is the key to the man's appeal and yet it's never explored or even stated! Go figure.
The book does have my favorite typo I've seen in some time (There are many, leading the reader to wonder if anybody proofed the manuscript). On page 251 the author recounts and anecdote from screenwriter Ned Wynn concerning the way Nicholson used to ski without turning: "Jack remembered slipping over the edge and zipping straight down Aspen Mountain right beside Jack, who tucked and picked up speed." I guess being beside himself is Nicholson's favorite position.
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This review is from: Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times (Hardcover)
Five Easy Decades goes through all of Jack Nicholson's films. The blockbusters as well as the ones that tanked. You also learn a bit about Jack's Mother, sisters, 1/2 siblings, his many girlfriends + many kids.
This book was an interesting read. I learned some facts about Jack I didn't know. Also the book lets you know how each movie came to be. Behind the scenes stuff.
Some of the chapters are bit dragged out and too much trivial information is given, but overall a good read for any Jack fan.
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