On Beauty and Gigolos

I finished Zadie Smith's On Beauty a couple of weeks ago and it's still swirling around in my head. She writes such great characters that even though they have their limitations and go their separate ways, you want them to remain together in the same household. And for a long book, you want it to be even longer. I avoided her White Teeth follow-up, The Autograph Man because it received some harsh reviews and seemed like a perfect example of the sophomore slump. Forget that, I'm getting it this weekend.

In the meantime, I'm reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind's take on the new Hollywood generation of the '70s. It's a great book and I get to hop around -- this chapter here, that section there. I've heard a lot of these stories before but not in one volume and the portraits really stick out. Steven Spielberg seems like the ultimate loser schlub, which didn't jibe with the boy wonder coverage he received after Close Encounters. And Francis Coppola practically deserved his exile and stangnant career for his behavior before, during and after Apocalypse Now.

But my favorite character has to be Paul Schrader. I'm on a Schrader kick these days. I borrowed the Auto Focus DVD from the Briarcliff Library for the third time and played the flick with his voice over commentary. He's a so-so filmmaker but his stories are great. I read somewhere that a person would rather discuss his films than actually see them and he had a point. Schrader is intellectual, articulate and has a world weary view of the world around him. And he sounds like a mixture of Truman Capote and a high school gym teacher/teen minister. I am trying to find a DVD of American Gigolo with his commentary but no luck. Isn't that film 25 years-old now?