…the typical hypnotized, self-loathing, self sabotaging female offspring of the 60’s and 70’s possessed of The Woman in Green. Whose life is it anyway?
A long trawl through shallow waters - well, shallow people.
At 600 pages, this rant remains in dire need of an editor, but would benefit even more from a plot. Basically, our not-so-humble narrator gets lucky with The Sting in 1973, then it all turns to drugs, then it all turns to shit. Her primary concern – beyond any pretence of allegiance to drug-dealers, family, colleagues and friends – appears to be keeping her table at a dining-hole in Hollywood where she can see and be seen, hence the tit...more A long trawl through shallow waters - well, shallow people.
At 600 pages, this rant remains in dire need of an editor, but would benefit even more from a plot. Basically, our not-so-humble narrator gets lucky with The Sting in 1973, then it all turns to drugs, then it all turns to shit. Her primary concern – beyond any pretence of allegiance to drug-dealers, family, colleagues and friends – appears to be keeping her table at a dining-hole in Hollywood where she can see and be seen, hence the title.
The fact that Hollywood power-brokers are non-creative, cliquey, scandalously overpaid, vain, ambitious, addictive, obsessive, compulsive and above all treacherous parasites should come as no surprise to anyone who's bothered to pick up this book. What is surprising is that an operator with all of those traits and more could vomit up a story from it and not pause long enough to find any redemption whatsoever in herself or her surroundings.
Perhaps the saddest testament to this tragedy comes in reading it today, 15-years after publication. Names that once clattered when she dropped them now ring hollow as even the internet can't dredge up any trace of them. And as for those who remain 'names,' take a look at the bonus features disc of The Sting DVD – Redford, Newman et al looking back on their film in 2005 (a film that Phillips spends half the book telling us was her creative genius) and the name 'Phillips' does not come up once in hours of recorded material. Who she?
(less)You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again by Julia Phillips — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists
