Intimate Strangers
Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Schwarzenegger intimidates.
Sharon Stone strips.
Leno and Letterman duel.
In twenty years of raw and raucous celebrity profiles
Irreverently bold journalist Bill Zehme has long been celebrated for his ability to get under the skins of our most elusive icons, from the evasive Warren Beatty to the ever-unpredictable Madonna to the much misunderstood Barry Manilow. Now his most provocative work is collected for the first time, with over twenty-five landmark profiles, including Frank Sinatra, Tom Hanks, Jerry Seinfeld, Liberace, Howard Stern, Eddie Murphy, and Woody Allen.
Zehme witnesses Hugh Hefner withstanding the single blow that never entered into an adolescent boy’s dreams--losing his fantasy woman. He gets a nude massage with Sharon Stone, and an earful about men, sex, and the shotgun she keeps under her bed. Included, too, is Zehme’s exclusive firsthand coverage of David Letterman and Jay Leno, before and throughout their late-night feud. Here is entertainment history through the eyes of a man the Chicago Tribune called “one of the most successful and prolific magazine writers in the country.”
Hilarious, endearing, and wickedly insightful, Intimate Strangers captures the business of celebrity for what it is: a big, lusty, star-crossed love affair between our icons and ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"I do not believe in celebrity," declares Zehme at the beginning of this rousing collection from the last two decades. It's an odd statement coming from the man who more or less perfected the Art of the Celebrity Profile, but it's also the key to Zehme's success. As these pieces show, Zehme has a knack for humanizing demigods like Madonna and Frank Sinatra, luring them down from Olympus (i.e., Beverly Hills) to eat lunch and go shopping just like real people. Thus readers learn that Sharon Stone enjoys bacon and guns; Woody Allen likes wearing hats even though they don't suit him; and Jerry Seinfeld consumes monstrous portions of Cheerios. The stars apparently like Zehme's warts-and-all approach; after all, he notes wryly, publicists keep returning his calls, even after he decimates a celebrity in print (as he did with his mocking Rolling Stone profile of Arnold Schwarzenegger, filled with choppy, intentionally banal sentences like "Arnold drives a Humvee" and "Arnold shames all men."). Zehme here proves himself a master of his craft; his 1990 article on Warren Beatty, the "ultimate Impossible Interview," should be taught in journalism schools as a textbook way to overcome a difficult subject. Similarly, aspiring infotainment writers should read Zehme's Heather Graham interview, in which he self-loathingly deconstructs celebrity journalism. Obviously, trading scatological jokes with Howard Stern isn't rocket science; Zehme freely admits that his profession is "both essential and ridiculous." Nevertheless, the American public has a seemingly insatiable appetite for this kind of work, and as this collection demonstrates, Zehme does it better than anybody.
