Bøger af Lawrence Grobel

Six months after Truman Capote died in 1984, Conversations with Capote was published and reached the top of best-seller lists in both New York and San Francisco. The Philadelphia Inquirer called it "A gossip's delight...full of scandalous comments about the rich and the famous." Parade called it "An engrossing read. Bitchy, high-camp opinions...from a tiny terror who wore brass knuckles on his tongue." People found it "Juicy stuff... provocative and entertaining...vintage Capote." The Denver Post called it "A wonderfully outrageous read...fearless candor about practically everything-and everyone-on Earth." Said the San Francisco Chronicle, "All the rumors you ever heard about Capote are here... Refreshing ...thoughtful and reflective." Grobel talked to Capote over a period of two years and it remains an essential part of the Capote canon.

"Elliott Gould said to Elvis Presley/'I may be crazy, but/What's that gun doing/ Sitting on your hip?'" "Mae West always made an entrance/Even when exiting." In this anthology of more than 150 poems, this jaunty dish on the rich and famous targets all these topics with attitude: Relationships, Mysticism, Paranoia, Bad Behavior, Race, Sex, Religion, and Gambling. These titles give a clue as to content: Madonna Paints a Mustache; James Franco was Pretty Crank-O; Dolly Parton at 3 A.M.; Drew Barrymore Keeps Her First Gray Hair; Saul Bellow Quite a Fellow; I'd Like to Say I Had a Ball Jake Gyllenhaal; Penelope Cruz Nothing to Lose; Ashley Judd Spits Tobacco; Nicole Kidman Brought Sushi; Bud Cort's His Harold Past; Zsa Zsa Ain't So Ga-Ga; Bruce Springsteen Gets Rejected; When Christian Slater Got Out of Jail; 14 Carat Goldie; I Kissed Farrah Fawcett; I'd Rather Be Alone, Sharon Stone.

Google "Yoga" and 103,000,000 items come up. One hundred and three million! Yet for everyone who practices yoga, there are dozens of others who just sit and watch. Yoga? No! Shmoga! is for those who sit and watch, as well as for those who actually do yoga and have a sense of humor. Best-selling author Lawrence Grobel has ventured into satire with this look at the lighter side of yoga. Shmoga is the Lazy Man's Way to Inner Peace. It's like a non-diet book for ice cream lovers. In 43 short chapters it pokes fun at sports, religion, exercise, Wall Street, art, entertainment, and people looking for an excuse to not do anything more than lift a finger. Yoga wives can give it to their couch-potato husbands. Or those husbands can give it to their wives to show them why fiddling with the remote is safer (and thus healthier!) than strenuous stretching into unnatural shapes. Often absurd, sometimes profound, and always whimsical, in this world full of books that focus on discipline and self-improvement, this is a breath of fresh air. Though a satire, there is a lot of wisdom in Yoga? No! Shmoga! And some very good advice. It teaches you to take charge of your life, but in a very clever way. Doing Shmoga actually makes sense!

CATCH A FALLEN STAR is the story of Layton Cross, a man who fails upward. As his career sinks as his battles with two ex-wives go public, his fame and popularity continue to rise. Can he get out from the tangle of family troubles, deceitful friends, devious journalists, and cunning studio heads? Grobel, whose in-depth interviews have appeared in Playboy, Movieline, Premiere, and Rolling Stone, is on familiar territory with this screenplay. BEGIN AGAIN FINNEGAN: How far would you go to help your best friend? That's the question journalist Devin Hunter faces when movie star Adrian Kiel asks him to be his alibi to cover a possible murder. Hunter's decision leads him into a labyrinth of secret lives, psychiatric wards, celebrity "justice," blackmail, and betrayal. Dealing with relationships and their consequences, it explores the loyalty of a friendship and how one misguided decision sets off a chain of events that spiral out of control.

CONVERSATIONS WITH BRANDO: How does a journalist prepare for the assignment of a lifetime? When Larry Grobel gets the call that Marlon Brando has agreed to an in-depth interview on his private Tahitian island, all his insecurities and doubts emerge. But so does his grit and determination. This is what happens before, during, and after the journalist tries to unravel the mystery that was Brando. THE BLACK EYES OF AKBAH: When their volunteer service ends, Eric and Anika travel from West Africa to Kenya, where they board The Black Eyes of Akbah, a cargo ship going to the Seychelles and to India. The crew is a melting pot of all the indigenous peoples of the region. The chilling terror that happens along the way will change the way they see each other and the world they thought they knew.

How far would you go to help your best friend? That's the question journalist Devin Hunter faces when movie star Adrian Kiel asks him to be his alibi to cover a possible murder. Devin's decision starts a chain of events that spiral out of control as he tries to hold the pieces of his life together. This is a story about secret lives, psychiatric wards, celebrity "justice," blackmail, betrayal and a modern day take on James Joyce in exile; but mostly it's about relationships and their consequences. It explores the loyalty of a friendship that increasingly appears one-sided and slowly implodes. The action is fast paced, with twists to the plot at every corner. The cast of characters runs the gamut of fawning fans to million-dollar lawyers and crooked accountants. It's set in Hollywood, and peels back the culture of celebrity to reveal the snake pit underneath.

These conversations with the femme fatale of The Killers, Mogambo, The Barefoot Contessa, Show Boat, and Night of the Iguana, and one of the world's great beauties, are startlingly candid. Two years before she died, Ava Gardner asked Lawrence Grobel to work with her on her memoir. The reclusive actress opened up about her three volatile marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra ("I loved them all; I just couldn't live with them. I'm not going to try and whitewash them anymore"). She tells about Howard Hughes' 15-year pursuit of her ("As soon as I got divorced from Mickey, Howard entered my life and I couldn't get rid of him, no matter who I was with or who I married"). She reveals how George C. Scott was so crazily in love with her that he beat her up on three occasions and once stuck a broken bottle in her face ("I was frightened for my life"). She talks about her tomboy childhood as a tobacco farmer's daughter in North Carolina. She goes into detail about how she was "discovered" and became a contract player at MGM ("white slavery"); her friendships with Hemingway, Dominguin, and Brando; and of working with her favorite director, John Huston. She admits to her struggles with alcohol ("I don't give a damn what time of the day it is, I just drink too much"). And she speaks intimately about the debilitating stroke she suffered toward the end of her life ("I felt this dark cloud that wouldn't go away. I just wanted to lie in bed and drink brandy").

After successfully publishing his book-length interviews with Truman Capote and Marlon Brando, Grobel approached author James A. Michener as his next subject, and wound up taping their discussions over a 17 year period, right up until the last week of Michener's life. The result is the most comprehensive of all Grobel's "Conversation" books. Michener, who didn't start writing novels until he was 40, was a true citizen of the world. He foresaw the future of countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Poland, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Mexico, Israel, and the U.S. His books-like Hawaii, The Source, Iberia, Sayonara, and Tales of the South Pacific--sold millions of copies and many were made into films or TV miniseries. Conversations with Michener is as relevant today as it was prescient when it first appeared in 1999.

35 wide-ranging stories written during the Covid-19 pandemic, from speculative pieces about turning back the clock, making your final dream last an eternity, exchanging your child for a new one, to stories about an octopus, a dog, a pig, a worm, a group of hyenas, and a murder of crows. The cheaters cheat at word games, steal Amazon boxes, and run shoe scams from China. Donald Trump is among the schemers, as he pushes for his face to be sculpted on Mt. Rushmore, cheats Bill Clinton at golf, and negotiates with Satan for his proper place in hell. The believers work at finding a cure for the virus, fight cancer, re-interpret The Wizard of Oz, take a chance on a mail-order bride, and create art that may never be seen. There's even a verbal cartoon at a psychiatrist's office featuring Popeye, Bart Simpson, Eric Cartman, Cinderella, and various Looney Tunes characters. These are R-rated stories for the whole family! Written by the writer Diane Keaton called "profoundly entertaining," J.P. Donleavy said is "quite marvelous," Joyce Carol Oates believes is "fundamentally moral," and Montel Williams "recommends to just about anybody." Writer's Digest has called Grobel "a legend." NPR's Elvis Mitchell has said "His work is so profound." His previous book of stories, The Narcissist, was critically acclaimed as a "Discovery," "Remarkable," and "Highly original."

"Why am I doing this?" Al Pacino wondered a year into his personal movie about his obsession with Salome, Oscar Wilde's lyrical play, written in 1891. "No one saw Looking for Richard, who's going to want to see something about Oscar Wilde?" In "I Want You in My Movie!" Grobel found the answer to that question and more when he joined the crew and followed the creative process of filmmaking from inception to completion. His meticulous journal is as close to being there as a reader can ever hope to get. This intimate peek behind the curtain, documenting the hopes, dreams, frustrations and complexities of Pacino and all the people who come in and out of his life, is a fitting sequel to Grobel's internationally acclaimed AL PACINO in Conversation with Lawrence Grobel, which was named the Best International Book of the Year by the Society of French Film Critics. "I Want You in My Movie!" takes you deeper into the mind and process of Al Pacino. Including exclusive photos Grobel took on the set and behind the scenes, it's a movie buff's delight, warts and all.

You, Talking to Me is an informative and entertaining look into the mind of a journalist whom Writer's Digest called "legendary." In concise lessons of only a few pages each, Grobel details what he's learned from talking to 120 of the most fascinating people of our time, among them Gov. Jesse Ventura, Coach Bob Knight, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, Nobel Prize winners Saul Bellow, Richard Feynman, and Linus Pauling, and he reveals stories about Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Dolly Parton, Kiefer Sutherland, James Spader, Robert De Niro, Henry Fonda, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Elmore Leonard, Goldie Hawn, Barbra Streisand and so many more. No other journalist has spent the time or has had the insight to such a wide variety of celebrated artists. Grobel's lessons range from the serious ("Don't Be Bullied," "Anger Fuels Conversation," "A Lie Can Be as Telling as a Truth"), to the humorous ("Shlock Can Be Art If You Believe It," "If They Offer You a Drink, Don't Make it Soft," "If They Mistake You for Someone Else, Let it Ride," "If They Offer to Lasso You, Go With It"), to the absurd ("When You Save Someone from Getting His Head Smashed, He'll Respond with Kindness," "Know How to Defuse a Potentially Threatening Situation, and Keep Enough Cash in Case You're Thrown Out of the Car Onto a Deserted Highway in Ohio," "Treat Your Plants to Baroque Music, and Stay Clear of Fluffers"). Over the years people have asked Grobel what he's learned doing in-depth interviews for Playboy, Rolling Stone, Newsday, the N.Y. Times, and his books of conversations. This is his answer.

From 2005-2010 Lawrence Grobel wrote over 50 magazine articles about his in-depth encounters with some of the most famous people in the world. Each piece had only one caveat: to include at least a paragraph about something the celebrity had signed. So Grobel built each portrait around a signed photo, poster, drawing, personal letter, or book inscription, many of which are shown in this engaging book. Among the entertainers and writers included are Barbra Streisand, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Farrah Fawcett, Henry Fonda, Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Luciano Pavarotti, Anthony Kiedis, Truman Capote, Monica Lewinsky, Norman Mailer, Elmore Leonard, and Saul Bellow.

Catch a Fallen Star is the story of Layton Cross, a man who fails upward. It's a private look at the fast-paced life of an actor who achieved stardom after marrying a superstar, but his career unraveled as she outshone him. His downward spiral touches all bases: drugs, divorce, violence, megalomania. Cross's career sinks from bad films to worse TV and an embarrassing stint in the theater--yet his fame and popularity continue to rise. We're privy to all the sordid events: his public battles with both ex-wives; his clash with the head of a major studio; his best friend's deceit; his daughter's troubling secret. Grobel, whose in-depth interviews have appeared in Playboy, Movieline, Premiere, and Rolling Stone, is on familiar territory with this novel

Al Pacino's credits (films, plays): p. (237)-(240).

The closest we will ever get to Al Pacino's autobiography - the authorised collection of interviews with Pacino over 25 years by his close friend Larry Grobel