Word: svengalied
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...feminist. But I knew that if I said yes, I'd lose the job. So I said no." Other first-time directors, like Actress-Director Lee Grant (Tell Me a Riddle), were cowed with tough-guy analogies: a director must be a field marshal, a quarterback, a boardroom Svengali. "This producer asked me, 'But can you be the captain of a ship?' I was taken aback at the Captain Ahab image of dealing with sailors in a muscular world. Everyone can be a different kind of captain on a different kind of ship and bring in different kinds of results...
...Donnas are not a joke band, though they started out as one. After debuting in 1993 at their eighth-grade talent show and briefly hooking up with a producer-Svengali, each member assumed the pretend first name Donna (flipping the Ramones' gimmick of assuming the same last name) and played superfast punk riffs stolen from the Dead Boys and Voidoids. On Gold Medal they're going by their real names, and they have expanded their thievery to include licks from Loverboy, Kiss and other high priests of shallow catchiness. The music is nothing you haven't heard before. Songs like...
...ready to sink into retirement. Jack Nicholson called with a co-starring role in the dark gangster film Blood and Wine, and Caine's golden years kicked in. He galloped from the sleazissimo agent in Little Voice to the kindly abortionist in Cider House, from the beauty-pageant Svengali in Miss Congeniality to a dead Cockney remembered by his friends in Last Orders--winners all. (He also survived Mike Myers' idolatry of Caine's swinging-spy phase in Austin Powers in Goldmember.) Then came Fowler...
Whatever the confines of her marriage, Twain doesn't seem to be chafing within them. She and Lange speak by cell phone constantly and communicate like husband and wife, not Svengali and subject. They talk about the baby, their reservations at vegetarian haute cuisine joints across Europe and sometimes about canceling those reservations. "Hey, lovey," Twain says to Lange, who is a maniacal English-soccer fan. "Did you know there's a game between England and Macedonia tonight? Did you want to watch that?" They end up staying...
...under the stern tutelage of the illegal immigrant from the Netherlands who called himself Col. Tom Parker, was processed and pasteurized into a nice young man who went Hollywood (and Vegas) almost as soon as he became a star. Jerry Lee, who had and would tolerate no image-makeover Svengali, wore the musk of venereal danger, styled himself as a reckless teen girl's wet dream and her mom's nightmare. As Memphis native Michael Bane said of Lewis in another terrific Tosches book - "Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll" - "He made Elvis acceptable. Elvis tried...