Word: boyhoods
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...Naked and the Dead and Catch-22. Yet that's the contrary view here. McMurtry is a good, busy, workmanlike novelist, but except for that single volume, not a great one. An earlier novel, The Last Picture Show, caught scraps of magic with its misty recollection of long-gone boyhood. Terms of Endearment worked well and deserved its success. Some of the author's other modern-day fiction (Texasville; Evening Star) has been merely expert and forgettable...
Arnold cloned his good-buddy shtik for one of this summer's emerging hits, Nine Months, starring Hugh Grant. Next up on screen this fall is Big Bully, a dark comedy co-starring Rick Moranis. Down the line is his dream job: Arnold playing Ralph Kramden, created by his boyhood hero Jackie Gleason, in an updated big-screen version of The Honeymooners...
Mizrahi and Keeve were lovers during the filming, and the director has made wise use of their intimacy. Interspersed with the narrative are clips from home movies made during Mizrahi's boyhood, anecdotes from his mom and shots from favorite movies and TV shows. Mizrahi adores Mary Tyler Moore, and when the new collection is a hit, he throws his hat in the air just the way Mary Richards does in the MTM credits. This is the first time out for Keeve as director, and he does a poised job of presenting a warts-and-all portrait--Mizrahi the show...
Sheed too knows how to deflect fear with badinage. His denial of denial is especially inventive, and the account of his English boyhood is high spirited, considering that he was permanently hobbled by polio and had to trade in his cricket gear for braces and crutches. Yet catching an early bad break had an unexpected upside. "The period when I might have been learning to adjust to the word [handicapped]," Sheed writes, "was so packed with small accomplishments that it was impossible not to feel like one of the world's winners ever afterwards...
...first chapter. After that, we never hear anything about Scalopino or Sophie again; the novel switches back to Bennett's Memphis boyhood. We meet Florida, the Black housekeeper who shows Bennett more love than does his father, distant and scarred by memories of war, or his mother, prone to fainting spells, insomnia and compulsive eating. We also meet John, Bennett's best friend, with whom Bennett builds clever contraptions...