A darkly witty, deeply affecting, and finely crafted memoir by the Big Bang Theory andSpeechless star and comedian, John Ross Bowie. From his earliest memories of watching Rhoda with his parents in their tiny Hell’s Kitchen apartment, John knew that he wanted to be an actor. The strange, alternate world of television—where people always cracked the perfect joke, lived in glamorous Upper East Side buildings, and made up immediately after fighting—seemed far better than his own home life, with a mother and father on the brink of divorce and a neighborhood full of crumbling pre-war architecture and not-so-occasional muggings. And yet that other world also seems unattainable. Besides crippling stage fright (which would take him years to overcome) John's father, ever aloof and cynical, has instilled within him the notion that acting is “no job for a man.” His father would impart that while theater, film, and television should be consumed and even debated, to create was no way to make a living or support a family. Putting aside his acting dreams, John stumbles through his twenties. He tries his hand at teaching and other traditional occupations, but nothing feels nearly as fulfilling as playing with his fleetingly on-the-map punk band, Egghead. When he and his bandmates break up, John lands a joyless job copywriting for a consulting agency and slips into a dark depression. He loses weight, begins drinking heavily, and his relationships flounder. But everything changes when John discovers improv (and anti-depressants). As a part of New York’s now-famous Upright Citizens Brigade, John not only explores his passion for acting and comedy—and begins to envision himself doing so professionally—he also meets his future wife and fellow actor, Jamie Denbo. No Job for a Man follows the couple as they relocate to Los Angeles and try to make it in the arts, meeting success and failure, wins and losses, despair and hope along the way. Though his father chronically refuses to acknowledge pride in his adult son’s accomplishments, John comes to realize what being a man truly means.
What’s your damage? In 1989, Michael Lehmann’s black comedy Heathers drew a line in the sand, rebuffing the sweetness and optimism of John Hughes’ more popular fare with darkness and death. Launching the careers of Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers became a cult classic, ranking #5 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 50 Best High School Movies and inspiring hoards of teen films that vastly overshadow its fame but lack its acid wit, moral complexity, and undeniable emotional punch. For the latest installment of Deep Focus, John Ross Bowie blends captivating memoir with astute analysis, tracing the rebel-teen mythology that links Columbine, heavy metal, and The Catcher in the Rye. With help from Lehmann, screenwriter Daniel Waters, and members of the cast, Bowie thoroughly unpacks the film’s peculiar resonance. Brilliant riffs on the etymology of its teen slang, the implications of its title, and its visual debt to Stanley Kubrick show how Heathers—for all its audacious absurdity—speaks volumes about the realities of high school and of life itself.
An analysis of the themes in Michael Lehman's 1989 black comedy traces the rebel-teen mythology as reflected in such examples as the Columbine shootings, heavy-metal music and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, offering insight into why Heathers resonates with audiences and captures the experiences of high-school life. Original.
When David Bowie first visited the USA in February 1971, he was an obscure English folkie in a man's dress. By the time John Mendelssohn was finished with him, he was an obscure English folkie with an upcoming Rolling Stone profile, and a newfound appreciation for The Stooges and their anarchic frontman Iggy Pop.
In Bowie, Cambo & All the Hype we get a backstage pass to key people and events during those crucial early years. This is a heartfelt story of a unique friendship. Drummer, musician and friend John 'Cambo' Cambridge lived with Bowie at Haddon Hall when he had his first hit record 'Space Oddity' and toured with him in Junior's Eyes. He was there for him at many key moments – when Bowie lost his father, passed his driving test, played his first Glam Rock gig with Hype, even acting as best man when Bowie married Angela Barnett in 1970. And if John had not persuaded his former Rats colleague Mick Ronson to join Bowie in February 1970, there might never have been a Ziggy Stardust or the stellar career which followed.
A rising hotshot in the cinema business loses and then rediscovers his spirituality along the way to making history with David Bowie. In the autumn of 2003 author Marc John organised a live satellite broadcast of a specially produced David Bowie concert which was shown exclusively in cinemas around the world. This marked the first time ever that a live event had been beamed to cinemas world-wide, and reflects the coming of 'digital cinema', which is seeing the cinema industry steadily adopt satellite dishes, hard drives and digital projectors to diversify cinema programming to include live music, sport, interactivity and video games, for the first time in cinemas 100 year old history. This book goes revealingly behind the scenes as this major, digital transition takes place, culminating with the fast paced, high flying experience of beaming David Bowie to tens of thousand of fans across four continents in sold out, rocking cinemas. But at what price to the authors spiritual direction did this historic landmark and career height cost? As an aspiring actor/playwright in New York in his teenage years, a former political candidate back home in England in his 20s and a guerrilla moviemaker whose low budget digital video experiments brought him into the executive ranks of Odeon, the UKs biggest cinema chain, the author discovered, through many improbable adventures leading up to the Bowie gig, the journey in life that we are all on. And this book is as much about the change within as it is about the change around us as the digital age gathers pace in transforming every area of our work and lives.
A darkly witty, deeply affecting, and finely crafted memoir by the Big Bang Theory andSpeechless star and comedian, John Ross Bowie. From his earliest memories of watching Rhoda with his parents in their tiny Hell’s Kitchen apartment, John knew that he wanted to be an actor. The strange, alternate world of television—where people always cracked the perfect joke, lived in glamorous Upper East Side buildings, and made up immediately after fighting—seemed far better than his own home life, with a mother and father on the brink of divorce and a neighborhood full of crumbling pre-war architecture and not-so-occasional muggings. And yet that other world also seems unattainable. Besides crippling stage fright (which would take him years to overcome) John's father, ever aloof and cynical, has instilled within him the notion that acting is “no job for a man.” His father would impart that while theater, film, and television should be consumed and even debated, to create was no way to make a living or support a family. Putting aside his acting dreams, John stumbles through his twenties. He tries his hand at teaching and other traditional occupations, but nothing feels nearly as fulfilling as playing with his fleetingly on-the-map punk band, Egghead. When he and his bandmates break up, John lands a joyless job copywriting for a consulting agency and slips into a dark depression. He loses weight, begins drinking heavily, and his relationships flounder. But everything changes when John discovers improv (and anti-depressants). As a part of New York’s now-famous Upright Citizens Brigade, John not only explores his passion for acting and comedy—and begins to envision himself doing so professionally—he also meets his future wife and fellow actor, Jamie Denbo. No Job for a Man follows the couple as they relocate to Los Angeles and try to make it in the arts, meeting success and failure, wins and losses, despair and hope along the way. Though his father chronically refuses to acknowledge pride in his adult son’s accomplishments, John comes to realize what being a man truly means.
What’s your damage? In 1989, Michael Lehmann’s black comedy Heathers drew a line in the sand, rebuffing the sweetness and optimism of John Hughes’ more popular fare with darkness and death. Launching the careers of Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, Heathers became a cult classic, ranking #5 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 50 Best High School Movies and inspiring hoards of teen films that vastly overshadow its fame but lack its acid wit, moral complexity, and undeniable emotional punch. For the latest installment of Deep Focus, John Ross Bowie blends captivating memoir with astute analysis, tracing the rebel-teen mythology that links Columbine, heavy metal, and The Catcher in the Rye. With help from Lehmann, screenwriter Daniel Waters, and members of the cast, Bowie thoroughly unpacks the film’s peculiar resonance. Brilliant riffs on the etymology of its teen slang, the implications of its title, and its visual debt to Stanley Kubrick show how Heathers—for all its audacious absurdity—speaks volumes about the realities of high school and of life itself.
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