Julia Phillips (1) (1944–2002)

While it's sometimes confusing trying to keep straight the rambling timeline and cast of characters, it was Julia's compelling personality that made me like this. Smart, mean, vulgar and self-destructive, she isn't 'likeable' (she was a successful Hollywood producer - what did you expect?) but is extremely entertaining. I wasn't familiar with most of the 80s powerbroking assholes she describes, but gosh it was still fun to watch them get torn to shreds. No-one who read this book should have show more any illusions about Phillips being a perfectly reliable narrator, but if it's only 50% true it'd still be 100% deserved. show less

Fascinating 150-page book about how Hollywood makes movies, embedded in tedious 500-page junkie memoir. Needed a dramatis personae or index by first name to keep all the various showbiz assholes straight. Most of them seem like dopes. The best lines come from her family, whom she dislikes.

Movie producer Philips, now deceased, had her ups and downs with the Hollywood community before and after her stint as producer of Close Encounters. I don't think Julia and I would have ever been friends, but she's certainly a compelling character. Quick-paced, lots of profanity but very readable.

When finished, I found the story dumb and the author incredibly self-involved and an unsympathetic whiner.