I admit I don't know that much about Bruce Willis. He was married to Demi, sure, had a couple of kids, sings some pretty bad songs and he was in a show my mom used to like to watch in the 80s. He doesn't really factor into my existence, but he managed to sum up my feelings on the whole James Frey debacle. With all the soccer moms in an uproar and the books laying stagnant on the shelves of the local Target, I was beginning to think that maybe I was the only one willing to settle for a decent (if not wincing) story. Looks like I was wrong.
From IMDB News:
Bruce Willis has jumped to the defense of controversial author James Frey, declaring he was unfairly attacked on Oprah Winfrey's TV show last month. Frey has been criticized for embellishing parts of his best-selling book, A Million Little Pieces, which was originally billed as a memoir. The Die Hard star says on TV show Access Hollywood, "Look at what happened to James Frey in the last two weeks. That's a great book and so is the follow-up book. And just because his publisher chose to say that these were memoirs, it took it out of being a great work of fiction... to this guy having to go be sucker punched on Oprah by one of the most powerful women in television, just to grind her own axe about it. Hey, Oprah. You had President (Bill Clinton) on your show and if this prick didn't lie about a couple of things, I'm going to set myself on fire right now. James Frey is a writer, OK? He can write about whatever he wants. It's fiction. It's just shameful how he was treated in some of these things.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
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4 comments:
That's similar to what I've been saying during this Frey scandal, too. To anyone who feels outraged or indignant, I'd ask this: Why should you enjoy the writing any less now?
If you think you were deceived, then you should be mad at yourself for buying into the hype.
Having read my share of bios,
I am mildly amazed
At the purple splash of hubbuboo
That this small tale has raised.
Will someone page Joe Biden
Or any public bore?
Aggrandizement and kerfuffle
And the writers? Oft the whores.
History's a common fable
All careful readers know.
Narcissus' in the bookshop,
In a referential glow.
Bah! Fie upon the famous
And the image that they farm!
And if the rubes are all bemused
God bless 'em. What's the harm?
Of course I'm sure Frey never had the chance to say "gee, this really should not be called a memior..."
And besides, what kind of a dope (so to speak) lies about resisting arrest? Sleeping with someone maybe, but resisting arrest?
Just a small vote in favor of truth in NON-fiction...
Apparently he shopped it around as a novel, but nobody wanted it. Then when he cast it as a memoir, he finally sold it. I think it's pretty interesting to think about why people value so-called "true stories" or things that are "based on a true story" over fiction. If it was crap, it was crap, regardless of whether it was a novel or a memoir. (Fyi, I haven't read it.)
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