Ian Halperin

What a con! I bought this book to learn all the sordid secrets of Tinsel town and ended up none the wiser: Tom Cruise and John Travolta are Scientologists, Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic and Heidi Fleiss ran a brothel. Wow! Like those are all big revelations. Not.

Despite hints at drool-making scandals and serious perversions on the part of some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, he mentions no names and leaves the reader to make wild guesses at the identities of the personalities referred show more to.

Halperin portrays himself as royal a gay wanna-be-actor in his attempt to infiltrate Hollywood: he investigates homophobia, and finds it in the Scientology Church which attempts to ‘cure’ him of his sexual orientation. He also investigates anti-Semitism and finds it everywhere but this is not surprising since I have never come across a writer as obsessed with his own Judaism as Halperin.

He has an anti-Christian subtext, although when to comes to Catholics there’s not much ‘sub’ about it, and claims to have had sex with Anna Nicole smith the very first night they met – on the grave of Marilyn Monroe no less.

He gets a basic and well-known fact wrong when he claims Eddie Fisher left Elizabeth Taylor for Debbie Reynolds when the opposite was true so it’s best to take nothing he says on faith – are Cruise and Travolta really Scientologists in fact and is Mel Gibson’s dad really a Holocaust denier?

This book really irritated me and I formed a positive loathing for its smug big-headed bombastic bigoted author: having said that though, read it right to the end so he must have been doing something right… show less

Halperin, Ian
Brangelina

Nonfiction
The title is deceptive if it makes you think it's about Brad and Angelina’s great love affair. The majority of Brangelina deals with Angelina and the making of the brand "Brangelina." In an attempt to validate, normalize, or garner sympathy, every one of Angelina’s attention seeking behaviors is analyzed. The litany is long and exhausting. Just when you think about tossing this book aside, there is a chapter on Jennifer Anniston, and sanity is juxtaposed show more with shenanigans. What a relief! I don’t want to give it all away -- just let me say there are answers to the questions that some of us may have percolating in our brains, but those are found mostly between the lines. I think the key to understanding this relationship isn’t to go deeper but to go shallower.
Recommended February 2010 show less

I probably put this book on my TBR list based on its title, but I don't think it actually shares any secrets that aren't the cannon fodder of any everyday tabloid or gossip magazine. The other half of the book is self-indulgent documentary film-making in Hollywood, which becomes tiresome very quickly.

There are some juicy stories in this book, but there are no credible sources listed to back them up. Sometimes I got the feeling the author was just making sh*t up! Still, for entertainment value and the smidgen of possibility that some of this might be true, serious MJ fans may want to take a look. I especially enjoyed the bit about his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley being cooked up by the Church of Scientology to convert Michael from his homosexual ways and make him their poster boy. show more There's also very detailed accounts of the child molestation trials and testimony, if that floats your boat. show less