Customer Reviews:
Great Read.......2007-10-15
I have to admit I just got this book a couple of days ago and have not finished. What I have read though is great. His book in not just a how to book. Its entertaining and very inspiring. I really enjoyed reading about Rodriguiz spend 30 days as a medical experiement to make $3000 to help pay for his movie.
Rebel Withou A Crew.......2007-09-28
This book is very good. It is encouraging and helpful to any young film maker like myself. I highly recommend it. It's worth the money.
Great read, inspiring.......2007-09-23
Tells the story of how Rodriguez got to where he is. Everyone's road is very different but this is definitely an inspiring book. Hone your skills!
Excellent!.......2007-08-14
I bought this thinking it would be more of a guide then the journal it ended up being, and I couldnt have been happier. It was an interesting and easy read that I couldnt put down! I would definitely recommend this book to any young filmmakers or anyone interested in the independent process. Rodriguez really does a great job of showing how a lot of hard work, dedication and some luck can jump start a career. I felt inspired to go out and start working on films again, but I'm still reluctant to join any medical experiments to finance it.
Interesting insight into a very talented man.......2007-08-06
A great tale, but not so well written that I could recommend on its literary quality alone. I admire Rodriguez - even more, knowing what he went through to make this film (and I'm a fan El Mariachi more than the overly-produced Once Upon a Time in Mexico). The story-telling reflects his jagged style. At the very least, it should inspire you to make a few sacrifices in favor of pursuing one of your own dreams.
Book Description
What's it like to work in the biggest hit Broadway has seen in years? In this delightful book based on his almost daily notes, Jeffry Denman tells the story of a year in one performer's life, from his job in the final days of i Cats /i (now and forever, but finally closed) to a small but promising part in the Mel Brooks smash. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, Susan Stroman, Gary Beach, and Roger Bart are all here in Jeffry Denman's story. We follow i The Producers /i from its first casting call to the Chicago tryouts; we watch numbers cut and roles reassigned; we are there at the record-breaking New York opening, and then at the Tony awards (where the show won more categories than any show in Tony history). br What makes this book special is that we watch through Jeffry Denman's eyes--not the star's perspective but the view from the chorus. Denman takes on several small roles in the show--the Blind Musician; the Little Wooden Boy; FDR; a little old lady dancing with a walker; and Scott, resident choreographer to famed bad director Roger DeBris. We get to see director Susan Stroman coaching and Mel Brooks laughing (or not) at Denman's comic turns. What works? What doesn't? How does all that energy and talent translate into the show you still can't get tickets for? br i A Year with The Producers /i takes us up to Jeffry Denman's big break, when he goes on for Matthew Broderick in the role of Leo Bloom, the nerdy accountant who dreams of being a producer. It's a moment every young actor will read with terror and delight. br A behind-the-scenes story with more than a touch of theatrical magic about it, i A Year with The Producers /i is a book for actors and theater fans everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
Well written, backstage look at musical theater.......2007-05-23
This book is an interesting little backstage look at Broadway musical theater by one of the faceless, hard working, (struggling to be) up and coming, supporting performers. Twice in the beginning of this book, written in 2001, he notes how impressed he was with the show 'Crazy for You', and in 2007, when I first saw him perform, it was as the lead in (you guessed it) 'Crazy for You'.
Denman is a versatile guy, onstage as singer, dancer, actor, and offstage as choreographer, playwright, tap dance teacher, and (based on this book) quite a good writer. From the credits shown on his web site and based on what I saw at North Shore Music Theater (near Boston) Denman has made good progress in the years since writing this book toward his stated goal of moving up to principal performer.
Video of Denman (paired with Amanda Watkins) in the North Shore Music Theater production of Crazy for You is available on YouTube (search phrase "Jeffry Denman".
[...]
"Springtime for Disappointment".......2006-07-04
I have several friends who were in the original cast of "The Producers". When visiting them back in 2002, one of my friends told me about Jeffry's book he was writing. Being one of the biggest Mel Brooks fans on the planet, I was really quite anxious to read it. About 25 pages into it, I realized that it should have been titled "A Year With 'The Producers' featuring MYSELF". I thought the book would have been much more interesting if it had been less about an unknown actor/writer, and how many names he could drop ,and more about people we've actually heard of.
The thing I found most disappointing was that more than a couple of times, Denman starts to tell us something interesting that someone said but then uses phrases like "but I'll keep that to myself", or "but I won't print that here". Then WHY write a book like this if you're not going to tell us the good stuff. That's the stuff we want to hear!
My other let down was that the final entry of the book was on September 10, 2001. I think the book could have benifited if Dehnman had written about how the show was effected by the events of 9/11. Seemed like a no brainer to me. I wonder why he chose to stop there?
In short, don't waste your time with this one. Buy the coffee table book that actually does have funny stories about Mel and the other interesting characters that somehow Jeffry didn't notice were around for that year.
All about him, not the show.......2004-10-03
This book is a great example of why editors are so important. It seems this author didn't have one. The journal should have been the starting point of a book, not the end product. Instead of giving us the excruciating details interesting to no one but Mom and Dad(he started singing "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs" when his girlfriend was running late, whoopee), I expected some real insights into how Broadway-level theatre is created. OK, we get that it runs at a breakneck pace and that all the chorus kids think they could get the dance steps faster and better than the real stars. We get that this author hates it when stars get star treatment and the chorus is left out in the cold. (He did seem to enjoy the star dressing room when he got it for a couple of days, though, didn't he?) I can't believe we got so few stories about Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Mel Brooks... I mean, come on, Jeffrey, your long-winded description of your last performance of Cats is not what someone buying "a year with the Producers" wants to know about. Bottom line: this book is like your co-worker's vacation pictures from Niagara Falls. A complete bore.
a fun look at life backstage.......2003-06-16
this is a great book for anyone interested in any aspect of the theatre. It is an intimate look at the process, how actors live and work.
A Fantastic Read.......2003-05-25
If Jeffrey Denmans Broadway career goes into a tailspin (which I highly doubt) he could definetely get a job as an author. This book to say the least is impossible to put down. I read it in one sitting. Not only is it a brilliant look into the minds of Denman, Mel Brooks, Susan Stroman, and others, but it is a indispensable look at professional theatre and the toils and work that go into 3 hours of an amazing theatrical experience.
Book Description
Creating Television brings television and its creators to life, presenting fascinating in-depth interviews with the creators of American TV. Having interviewed more than 100 television professionals over the course of his 15 years of research, Professor Robert Kubey presents here the 40 conversations that provide the most illuminating insights about the industry and the people working in it. These interviews bring television's creators to life, revealing their backgrounds, work, and thoughts about the audience and the television programs they create. Each interview tells a compelling tale of an individual's struggles and successes within a complex collaborative and highly commercial medium, offering readers rare insights on the human component in television's development.
Featured in this volume are actors, agents, writers, directors, producers, and executives, representing television's earliest days through to the present day. Spanning shows from I Love Lucy and The Tonight Show through to Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos, these creators share the stories of how they gained entry to the industry and built their careers, offering readers a rare opportunity to meet, up close, the people involved in creating many of the most famous and successful programs in the medium's history, and linking the creators' personal histories to the television programs they create.
With its unique insights on the people responsible for making television, this volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers in television history, sociology of culture, human creativity, television production, media studies, and mass media ethics. It will also be a popular reader for undergraduate and graduate students in courses addressing television, mass culture, media and society, American Studies, creativity, television history, and media ethics.
Customer Reviews:
This is an outstanding text!.......2004-03-31
This is an utterly fascinating book, written by someone who has been watching television for more than 40 years. In that time, he has interviewed just about EVERYBODY in the business. So, if you're in the business, or want to GET in the business, or just have a fascination with the producers, directors, writers AND stars, get this book. You won't be disappointed.
I'm intrigued by the variety of people Bob Kubey has chosen for this book.
This can be nothing but a valuable resource to all who study media and television.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Westchester County Business Journal, published by Westfair Communications, Inc. on September 20, 2004. The length of the article is 934 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: 25 years of putting on a show; theater group changes with the audience.(Westco Productions Inc.)(Company Profile)
Publication:
Westchester County Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 20, 2004
Publisher: Westfair Communications, Inc.
Volume: 43
Issue: 38
Page: 47(1)
Article Type: Company Profile
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Top Producer, published by Farm Journal Media on December 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1603 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Corporations, go home: states grapple with fallout from corporate farming law: midwest states have tried to bar corporate farms for 30 years. Now some farm leaders think laws need more flexibility..(Law)
Author: Elizabeth Curry Williams
Publication:
Top Producer (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2002
Publisher: Farm Journal Media
Page: 3
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
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Hindsight vision is 20/20.(farmer lives with the agony of past year and hopes for a better crop ahead) : An article from: Top Producer
Linda H. Smith
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
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ASIN: B000B3O3NQ
Release Date: 2005-08-18 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Top Producer, published by Thomson Gale on November 13, 2004. The length of the article is 704 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Hindsight vision is 20/20.(farmer lives with the agony of past year and hopes for a better crop ahead)
Author: Linda H. Smith
Publication:
Top Producer (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 13, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: NA
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
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Importers, distributors and producers greet New Year with guarded optimism; plummeting dollar made 2004 a buyer's market and kept check on prices of imported ... from: Quick Frozen Foods International
John M. Saulnier
Manufacturer: E.W. Williams Publications, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
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ASIN: B000972Z5M
Release Date: 2006-07-14 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Quick Frozen Foods International, published by E.W. Williams Publications, Inc. on January 1, 2005. The length of the article is 3613 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Importers, distributors and producers greet New Year with guarded optimism; plummeting dollar made 2004 a buyer's market and kept check on prices of imported products sold in Europe. Domestic flatfish producers, however, are still being pinched by quotas.(Benelux Seafood Scene)
Author: John M. Saulnier
Publication:
Quick Frozen Foods International (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2005
Publisher: E.W. Williams Publications, Inc.
Volume: 46
Issue: 3
Page: 42(7)
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This digital document is an article from Cineaste, published by Cineaste Publishers, Inc. on December 22, 1999. The length of the article is 4965 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Memories of Underdevelopment, Thirty Years Later: An Interview with Sergio Corrieri.(Interview)
Author: Paul B. Miller
Publication:
Cineaste (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 1999
Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.
Volume: 25
Issue: 1
Page: 20
Article Type: Interview
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Top Producer, published by Farm Journal Media on January 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1833 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Ten years after: as more tariffs come off, Mexico fears the effects: faced with NAFTA's schedule to remove ag import tariffs, Mexicans complain the 2002 farm bill tilts the playing field in favor of U.S. farmers.(International)(North American Free Trade Agreement )
Author: Linda H. Smith
Publication:
Top Producer (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2003
Publisher: Farm Journal Media
Page: 28
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
- Informative
- So far from garbage...so beautiful
- ick............
- Evoking Passion
- Read it straight through
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Beauty Before Comfort
Allison Glock
Manufacturer: Knopf
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Binding: Hardcover
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The Meaning of Wife: A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-first Century
ASIN: 0375401210
Release Date: 2003-04-29 |
Book Description
“The first lesson [my grandmother] ever taught me was that dancing matters. . . . When she did come across men she fancied who didn’t dance, she sent them away until they did. They always learned, because my grandmother was bitingly beautiful, and that is the second lesson she taught me—that beauty inspires, all of God’s beauty, but especially hers.”
So writes Allison Glock at the start of her irresistible memoir of her maternal grandmother, Aneita Jean Blair, a woman who came of age during the Depression in a West Virginia factory town yet refused to succumb to the desperation that surrounded her. Instead, Aneita Jean rouged her cheeks and kicked up her heels and did
her best to forget the realities of life in an in-sular community where your neighbors could be
as unforgiving as the Appalachian landscape. Before it was all over, Aneita Jean would have seven marriage proposals and her share of the tragedies that befall small-town girls with bushels of suitors and bodies like Miss America, girls “who dare to see past the dusty perimeters of their lives.”
In lyrical and often breathtaking language, Glock travels back through time, assisted by a fistful of old photos and the piercing childhood memories of her grandmother, “a skinny, eager child with disobedient hair and bottomless
longing.” Together they guide us through the cramped dankness of the pottery plants, the dense sweetness of the holler, and into the surging promise of the Ohio River, capturing not only the irrepressible vitality of Aneita Jean Blair, but also the rich ambiance of working-class West Virginia during the twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II. Expertly written, lovingly told,
Beauty Before Comfort is stirring testimony to the vanished dreams, and powerful spirit, of an extraordinary person and place.
Customer Reviews:
Informative.......2005-09-22
I live across the river from Chester, WV; however, I did not grow up in this pottery area. This book helped me to understand what life was like in an area that was once part of the pottery center of the world. I do not feel that the author denigrates the citizens. The story is a memoir. It is her view of her grandmother's life circumstances. Poverty and joblessness are still part of this area's history; to deny this is also to deny the kind-heartedness and character of its people.
So far from garbage...so beautiful.......2005-01-26
Well, I don't know what the negative reviewers were reading, but they clearly took some offense to components I did not see in this beautiful book. Having grown up in the mountains of North Carolina, I am always on the lookout for books about life in Appalachia, and "Beauty Before Comfort" has to be one of the best in recent years. The honesty, reality, humor--they recall Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina" and the poetry of Kathryn Stripling Byer. Glock deserves a place at the table of strong, stunning Southern women writers.
ick...................2005-01-19
I found the the story excruciatingly boring, virtually pointless. After Jean marries Don, the next sixty years of their lives are dealt with in ten pages. Ms. Glock may be a gifted writer, but she is a poor storyteller.
Evoking Passion.......2004-04-22
Allison,
You're a great little writer. That you evoked this much emotion from people reading your book says that you have the gift of telling a story passionately. You have stirred up some powerful emotions that goes to the heart of your ability to write. When people who can't spell or put a sentence together are moved to write a review of your book, you're doing something right. Either they love you or they hate you, but they are reading you.
I went to school with your mother, until I was one of the ones who got out of Hancock County when I moved to California. Your mother must be very proud. I sure would be.
Your book brings back many precious memories, even memories of some of the hardships grabbed something in my heart. You have written a very accurate description of the people and the area, and you have been able to tell it like it was while also conveying a loving image of your grandmother and the times.
This is your first book. Incredible!!! I gave you four stars because I'm saving that fifth one for your next book.
Sharin (Fletcher) Bowers
Read it straight through.......2004-03-19
I came from an industrial town in Tennessee, and Allison Glock's wonderful story of her grandmother, who lived in that kind of environment, really resonated with me. Aneita Jean Blair's life is not the kind that usually gets the full biographical treatment, especially from a granddaughter.
The second outstanding part about this book is the writing. Lines such as "Just walking through the house required lurching effort," written about the death of a family member, make the story more real.
Having read some of the reviews here on Amazon, I cannot understand the hostility that some people convey about this book. My favorite line from an angry reader was this one: "I think if you right (sic) a book you should actually know what you are talking about."
That line--complete with spelling that shouts ignorance--says it all. Allison Glock does know what she is talking about, and tells it very, very well.
Average customer rating:
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Beauty Before Comfort
Allison Glock
Manufacturer: Flamingo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0007172419 |
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- Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf: With a Fully-Orchestrated and Narrated CD
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