Word: biz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...quite a little hoofer," says her mother, who still has Erma's signed song sheets for On the Good Ship Lollipop and I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter. Bombeck says it is obvious that the wrong Erma broke into show biz. When her mother, now a lively 73, began to appear with her on talk shows, Bombeck would tell the producers, "Don't worry about Mamma not talking. Worry about her taking over the show...
...Bombeck's typical housewives, to ABC. Living in a Los Angeles apartment during the week, Bombeck got up at 5 each morning to write her column and by 9 was at a desk at Universal City Studios writing TV scripts. Bombeck never quite learned to love speaking show biz-"That line doesn't work for me, sweetie" and "Trust me"-and Maggie sank without a trace after eight episodes. The lines were funny but somehow the show wasn't. One critic suggested that what was needed was Bombeck herself in front of the camera...
...Fast Times of John Belushi (Simon and Schuster, $17.95). The book, kicked off with a front-page serialization launch and favorable review in the Washington Post, where Au thor Woodward heads up the investigative reporting staff, is drawing the kind of hoopla usually kindled by more conventional show-biz behemoths; an excerpt has also appeared in Playboy. Like some Hollywood superproduction, the book boasts a long list of cameo appearances by stars (Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, Carrie Fisher and miscellaneous The Rolling Stones) whose presence has nothing of importance to contribute save what agents and producers like...
...Friday, Woodward goes for just the facts, and they do not take him very far or deep. Since many of the facts are known from the headlines anyway, Woodward must resort to details. In large part, this means recounting endless rounds of drug blowouts, frazzled work sessions and show-biz parties. There are occasional testimonials to Belushi's sweetness (he and his wife make love on a Martha's Vineyard cliff; he buys his father a ranch in California and settles some family debts), but the book is swamped by examples of his "monomania." There is frequent mention...
...Author-Director James Lapine follows Seurat's lead and dehydrates his actors into cardboard stereotypes. Nor is there a surfeit of "humma-mamumma-mamum-mable melodies," Stephen Sondheim's derisively witty phrase from his last show, Merrily We Roll Along. Sondheim long ago renounced such simple show-biz pleasures; neither Dot nor the audience gets to go to the Follies. This score is often doggedly mimetic, achieving its pointillist effects note by Johnny-one-note. Nearly every number begins with a staccato verse and chorus; it soars toward traditional musical passion only at midpoint, then withdraws into tart...