We're attempting to again increase book coverage in the community. Marcia's "An aging queen writes a bitter book about The Way We Were " went up Sunday. THE WAY WE WERE was a weepy from the 70s, a melodrama that like LOVE STORY, scored at the box office. Marcia, to start, talk about why you read the book and Stan.
Marcia: Stan was reading it. My cousin Stan. And he couldn't believe how, from the start of the book, Robert Hofler was dismissive and insulting of women and gay men. If a straight male was mentioned, we got their credits -- big and small. A woman who wrote or co-wrote eight films -- five starring Greta Garbo, for example -- is 'credited' as Greta's lover and only that. When you get near the end of the book, it'll change a bit. But he slights women throughout and he is anti-gay. I don't know if he's gay but he seems like a very bitter queen.
Among the women slighted is Barbra Streisand.
Marcia: Correct. And without Barbra you don't have a hit film. Robert Redford is the co-star and you pair him with bland women like Mia Farrow and you've got a box office disaster. When he was making lovey eyes at Paul Newman or a woman with real talent, he had a hit. Those days are long over. His career ends in the eighties in terms of being a leading man. He fooled himself that he was a leading man in INDECENT PROPOSAL but he was just an old man paying for sex in that film. He rips apart Barbra repeatedly including insisting that she has no sexual appeal. He's a snide little bitch and, if he's not gay, he's a homophobe. But please remember, elderly gays can be homophobes.
It was a bad book?
Marcia: It was a very bad book. Question, why did Barbra Streisand not win the Oscar for THE WAY WE WERE? C.I., I'm asking why the script writer Arthur Laurents said she didn't.
Oh. Well he always said the scene where her character begs Hubble to come over, where she's on the phone, that her face wasn't emphasized enough. That it was blocked by various things including camera work. Why?
Marcia: Rebecca told me to ask you that. I was telling her about the book and how the writer attacks Arthur Laurents throughout and says at one point that he got it all wrong and that Sydney Pollack insisted that deleting the scenes on campus when Katie, as a grown up, sees a young woman who reminds her of herself and the one where Katie catches him in bed with another woman prevented Barbra from winning.
Those were part of his complaint but his chief complaint, to me, over the years was the phone scene and the failure to have Barbra's face fully visible.
Marcia: The book is just one error after another and there are parts from WIKIPEDIA and Randall Riese's HER NAME IS BARBRA. It's a really bad book. It's dull, it's riddled with errors and it's sexist and homophobic. It came out early this year. Pretty much no one bought it which is why you can read it for free on KINDLE.
But you don't recommend that people do?
Marcia: I don't. In November, Barbra's autobiography is supposed to be released. Wait for that instead. It also tries to talk about the blacklist and that era and gets it wrong over and over. That's only a surprise if you don't read his end notes and discover that right-winger Paul G. Kengor is the 'source' for his (mis)understanding of that period. If you don't know the name, get used to it. Later this year, his book of lies about Ronald Regan comes out as a film and shame on Dennis Quaid and the others participating in those lies.
