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| Billy Crystal |
Movie Entertainment
December 2008
Gordon McCall
For the avid reader and dog lover, this month is a time to celebrate with a lively group of best friends in the shape and heft of books guaranteed to satiate every theatre lover’s appetite for anecdote, gossip, juicy biographical detail and truly insightful revelations about the mystery and magic of making theatre.
First up is the long-awaited memoir of Canadian star of stage and screen Christopher Plummer, titled In Spite Of Myself: a Memoir. Inside its covers, we hare anecdotes and revelations about Plummer’s critical formative years in Montreal and, later, of his meteoric rise to Hollywood, Broadway and Shakespearean fame. For those with a big appetite for biography, you’ll enjoy this book’s delicious 600-page meal for the mind.
As for your inner child, and most particularly, for the children in your family, you’ll love the spirit and story of the delightful book Broadway Barks, by musical theatre star Bernadette Peters. It’s a story about a little dog, loss, reunion and a happy ending. Published last summer, this touching tale has imaginative illustrations by Liz Murphy and is inspired by Peters’s annual theatre-district benefit to promote adoption of shelter animals.
Finally, a couple of favourite older theatre chestnuts: And Then, You Act, by renowned American director and theatrical innovator Anne Bogart, is a thought-provoking rumination on art, theatre and the collaborative creative process. Or try the audio book version of Billy Crystal’s 2005 book, 700 Sundays, inspired by his Broadway play of the same name. You know you’ll laugh a lot and share the joy that family can bring with these reminiscences of Crystal’s eccentric family upbringing and the inspiring gifts that a parent can give a child. Remember, as George Holbrook Jackson once said,
“The newest books are those that never grow old.”