If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem, and Malice [Paperback]

Joe Queenan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1999

Now in paperback--the hilarious and scandalous book that skewered Hollywood. Infamous Tinsel Town journalist-"hatchetman" Joe Queenan presents the interviews and essays that made him persona non grata among Hollywood's stars and movie moguls.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of essays and interviews, reprinted from Movieline , Rolling Stone and the Washington Post , includes illuminating pieces on the work of Woody Allen (Queenan prefers the satire and silliness of his earlier work), Martin Scorsese (the director is "getting back at the nuns") and Oliver Stone (Queenan comes down on him for his "macho posturing"). The author discusses why he thinks rock stars fail as straight movie performers, analyzes the "incredibly idiotic stuff that passes for realism" in movies and reviews the surprising number of films that deal with aged men involved with nubile young women. All this is relatively tame compared with the unfettered ridicule Queenan unleashes in the pieces about actors and actresses--he loves movies but tends to find the performers loathsome. Except for certain sex-objects (he writes eloquently about noteworthy bosoms and "edifying glutes"), Queenan refuses to take performers seriously, even the likes of Brando or Olivier. Fans of Barbra Streisand will definitely be offended.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A welcome antidote to the gushing puff found in People Weekly magazine and elsewhere, Queenan's collection of celebrity essays and interviews, previously printed in Spy, Rolling Stone , and other journals, goes for the jugular: Queenan consistently insists that most celebrities are overhyped, undertalented, or just downright strange. Melanie Griffith, Sean Young, Mickey Rourke, and others get their jabs. Still, Queenan overdoses a bit on the acid approach: while his debunking of sacred cows like Barbra Streisand and Woody Allen is on the money, his passing scorn at such minor actors as James Brolin and Daphne Zuniga seems merely mean-spirited. Unmitigated gall gets a bit tiresome, as it did in Queenan's previous book, Imperial Caddy ( LJ 10/1/92), which lambasted hapless Dan Quayle. The unintended result is pity and compassion for Queenan's victims, which in the case of Quayle, could prove to have dangerous consequences. Still, this is a fun and illuminating read for People monsters. For larger film and humor collections.
- Judy Quinn, formerly with "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion Books (Adult Trd Pap) (April 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786884606
• ISBN-13: 978-0786884605
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,857,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sharp biting fun, February 25, 2000

By 

KalleR - See all my reviews

This review is from: If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem, and Malice (Paperback)

Queenan has an incredible knack to cut straight to the chase and give you wonderful fodder for thought and laughter. His scathing attack on Barbra Streisand ranks as one of the best and most merited public diatribes ever written. His Mickey Rourke piece also manages to blend pop culture, anger and the surreal in a brilliant manner. This book is truly a gem and I recommend it heartily to anyone with an interest in Hollywood and the idolisation of celebrities in general.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quintessential Queenan, January 13, 2000

By 

Gary Popovich "Retired Banjo Picker" (Chesterfield, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem, and Malice (Paperback)

The skewering of Barbra Streisand in "Sacred Cow" would be worth the price of the book alone; however, Joe Queenan's other Hollywood targets (his observation of Melanie Griffith having "the most inexplicable career in the history of motion pictures"is one of his kinder moments) hardly fare much better. I never laughed so hard at other's people's expense in my life - amazing when once considers that Queenan never goes into depth regarding the alleged acting abilities of Sly Stallone. But his musings on John Goodman ("the American Gerard Depardieu"), Keanu Reeves ("His name 'Keanu' comes from his grandfather, and supposedly it's Hawaiian for 'cool breeze over the mountains', although since Keanu's the one supplying the information, it might actually be the Hawaiian word for 'Keanu'"), and Laurence Olivier ("Who can forget Olivier's odd squawking in 'The Betsey', in which his attempts to capture the inflection of an American auto tycoon end up sounding like a cross between Jed Clampett and Scrooge McDuck?") all draw blood. And I haven't even gotten to gems like "Mickey Rourke for a Day" and "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World", a look at Oliver Stone's work where Queenan confesses not to believe the conspiracy theory presented in 'JFK' because of Joe Pesci's wig.

Read and laugh.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hatchet-man with a purpose, March 22, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem, and Malice (Hardcover)

If you've sought out this book, I assume I don't have to tell you how agonizingly funny these Hollywood satires are. For those who stumbled upon this by accident, let me assure you: you will laugh out loud. Often. If you're shy, don't read it on the subway. Any afficinado of cheap sarcasm will find plenty to enjoy here. What is also evident, and perhaps less widely noted, is the critical acuity that is also evident throughout. For today's Hollywood (or any day's), perhaps contempt has a clarifying function. His dissection of Oliver ("James Cameron who's read one more book") Stone's misogyny, La Streisand's pompousness and inexplicable popularity, Melanie Griffith's meal- ticket posterior and Mickey Rourke's one-note grunginess are classics. I love Woody Allen, but laughed throughout Queenan's attack on him as well: "In the great films by Renoir, Fellini, Kurosawa, Bergman...[the characters] are not obsessed with getting to the Bleecker Street Cinema's 2:35 showing of the Grand Illusion so they'll still have enough time to screw their neurotic sister-in-law before schlepping uptown to see the 6:45 showing of the Rules of the Game at the Thalia." Ditto the Scorsese section: his paraody of Scorsese/Schrader that opens the piece is a small classic. Queenan, in short, is not a mere hatchet man; his precise, insightful hatchet jobs move this book into the realm of geniune satire