Book Review: Leslie F*cking Jones-A Memoir by Leslie Jones

With her star-making turn as a cast member of the iconic late night television comedy sketch show “Saturday Night Live,” and her recent hilarious stint as a guest host of “The Daily Show,” Leslie Jones a comedic force of nature. It seems like she came out of nowhere, and was an overnight success. But this overnight success of Ms. Jones was decades in the making. And Jones discusses everything from her childhood, to getting into comedy as a college student, to her success today in her honest and funny memoir, Leslie “F*cking Jones.

After a brief foreward by Jones’ fellow stand up comic and friend, Chris Rock. Jones gets down to business by first going down memory lane, and talking about her childhood. Leslies Jones was born Annette Leslie Jones in 1967. It wasn’t long before she abandoned her given first name and decided to go by her middle name, Leslie. She was a military brat, who along with her parents, and her younger brother, moved around the country.

Growing up wasn’t exactly a day in the park for the young Jones. She was picked on for being black, tall, and often, the new kid in town. She often dealt with abuse at home. She recalls kicking a puppy outside of a trailer when she was a little girl, and in hindsight, Jones believes this vicious act (which now horrifies her) was in reaction to feeling powerless. She had to dominate something, so she dominated this puppy in a brutal way.

But Jones did have something going for her. She excelled at basketball (it helps she’s six feet tall). This got her a college scholarship, but basketball and getting involved with a much older man was more important than going to class and acing her exams. However, it was in college, where Jones discovered comedy. She always had the ability to make people laugh, and being on stage was electrifying. It was from that moment, Jones knew she wanted to make comedy her career.

Of course, this comedy career didn’t exactly take off right away, and Jones dealt with a lot of struggles. She had to hold a regular job (not exactly easy or fun) while trying to get comedy gigs. Audiences could be welcoming or they could be brutal. She dealt with a lot of crooked managers, and didn’t always get paid properly for her performances. There is also a lot of animosity from some comics, but Jones also came close to some of them who showed her a lot of support and encouraged her to keep developing her comedy style and performance.

Jones also had to deal with family strife. Her parents had a less than happy marriage, and both suffered from severe health issues. Her mother was in a hospital from the time, Jones was a teenager. And both of them died when Jones was a barely an adult. It must have shaken Jones to lose parents when she was still so young. And her younger brother got seriously messed up and was dealing drugs. This lifestyle caught up to him and he died in 2009. Jones also dealt with shitty jobs, money woes, bad roommates, and even worse boyfriends. She also had a run in with the law.

It seemed to take forever, but Jones finally grabbed the gold ring of comedic success when she was hired by Saturday Night Live. She first started out as a writer, but was later made a cast member. She was funny and loud, and brought a new voice to the show. She also was cast in the all-female remake of Ghostbusters, and she is brutally honest about the horrific sexism the cast faced, and all the racism that was thrown at her.

Leslie F*cking Jones is raw and deeply candid. Jones never shies away from the rough stuff of growing up, being a black woman in comedy, and the ups and downs of her career. She’s made a name for herself in a business that is extremely tough. And love how much she appreciates all the people who have helped her along the way, and the friendships she still holds dear (her and Kate McKinnon are total besties.

Whether you’re a fan of Leslie Jones, or just want to know what it’s like to be a woman of color in comedy and show business, you can’t go wrong with reading Leslie F*cking Jones.

Book Review: Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

It is the summer of 1975 and Mary Jane is 14 years old. She lives with her lawyer father and homemaker mother in an upscale Baltimore neighborhood. Shy, naïve, and lacking a huge group of friends, Mary Jane’s life consists of going to her parents upper crust country Waspy country club, attending church services and singing in the choir, listening to Broadway show tunes (rock and roll is verboten), and helping her mother make the nightly dinner. But Mary Jane’s life is about to go through a huge transformation in some major ways in Jessica Anya Blau’s superb novel Mary Jane.

Mary Jane procures a job acting as a nanny for the Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s daughter, Izzy. Because Dr. Cone is a psychiatrist and he and his family live in the neighborhood, Mary Jane’s mother assumes they are the “right people” so she initially has no problems with Mary Jane’s new job.

But the Cones couldn’t be any different the Mary Jane’s family. Whereas Mary Jane has grown up in a household with with rigid ideas and rules, the Cone family is free-spirited, raucous, and quite sloppy. Dr. Cone works from home, and though Mrs. Cone is a homemaker she doesn’t do a whole lot of homemaking. She doesn’t cook, the house is cluttered, and the refrigerator is filled with food that has seen better days. However, Mrs. Cone is kind, friendly, open-minded, and like her husband, clearly loves her daughter, Izzy. The Cone family makes Mary Jane feel completely welcome from the moment she enters their house.

The Cones are about to have some special guests at their house, Jimmy and Sheba. Jimmy is a mega rock star and Sheba is an actress who once had a top-rated TV show. Jimmy is a drug addict, and he and Sheba are hoping Dr. Cone can help Jimmy with his addiction and get back on the right path even though the 1970s was a time of debauchery. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll were truly a thing.

Though Mary Jane is sheltered, she is aware of Jimmy and Sheba and how famous they are. And she’s about to get a glimpse behind the curtain of glitter and glamour that is celebrity. She learns about what it’s like to deal with addiction, the intricacies of marriage (both Jimmy and Sheba’s and the Cones), and how to take care of a rambunctious, precocious, and clingy five-year-old like Izzy.

Mary Jane is also gets more acquainted with rock and roll, and she is even asked to sing along with Jimmy and Sheba, and they are impressed with her vocal talents. Despite being a bit nerdy, everyone is taken by Mary Jane. She brings some semblance of normalcy to the the lives of the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba. Mary Jane is devoted to Izzy. She also is a whiz in the kitchen, using her mom’s recipes to feed everyone.

Mary Jane continues to get an education while working for the Cones. Her world is changing from a strict black and white to a kaleidoscope of color. She begins to realize how rigid her home life is and is appalled over her parents thinly veiled anti-Semitism (Dr. Cone is Jewish) and racism (Mary Jane’s mom flips when her daughter is photographed with the gang at a record store in predominantly black neighborhood and it ends up in the local newspaper).

But Mary Jane also sees that just because Jimmy, Sheba, and the Cones aren’t totally square like her mom and dad doesn’t mean they are perfect as Jimmy falls off the wagon, adulterous acts are committed, and marriages aren’t always “until death do us part.” And maybe Mary Jane’s mother will prove to be not such a stick in the mud after all.

I absolutely loved this book. I found the characters richly drawn and as someone who is of Izzy’s generation, Generation X, I completely recognized the time and place of the mid 1970s, which Blau captures with utter perfection. Mary Jane was a character I rooted for, smart and sensible, but so willing to learn about different worlds. I also appreciated how Blau didn’t turn Mary Jane’s story into a cliché, getting hooked on drugs or getting seduced by either Jimmy or Dr. Cone. Mary Jane is a wonderfully original and entertaining coming-of-age story.

Reading to Reels: To Die For

Based on a novel by Joyce Maynard, with a script by Buck Henry, and directed by Gus Van Zant, To Die For combines dark comedy, traditional drama and “mockumentary” interviews to very entertaining results.

Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, a local cable weather girl with huge dreams of finding fame and fortune as the next Barbara Walters. What Suzanne lacks in talent and intelligence, she makes up for in manipulation and ruthlessness, and nothing, including her marriage, will get in her way.

The movie commences with Suzanne marrying Larry Moretto (Matt Dillon), the biggest catch in Little Hope, New Hampshire. It’s not certain why Suzanne falls for Larry other than she thinks his close Italian-American family has mob connections, which can help her achieve her goals. Larry is lovable, albeit a bit dim, and completely clueless to Suzanne’s calculating ways. All Larry wants to do is settle down in Little Hope, run the family restaurant and makes lots of babies with Suzanne.

Of course, Suzanne has different plans. Despite her lack of journalistic and television experience she’s able to charm a local cable TV manager in giving her a gofer job. She parlays this lowly position into a regular stint as a weather girl. It’s not long before she recruits some local teens in producing a subpar TV special called “Teens Speak Out.” Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), Russell (Casey Affleck) and Lydia (Alison Folland) are the hardly the type-A achievers you’d expect on a teen-oriented TV show. They’re inarticulate and not good students, but apparently being in awe of Suzanne is the only job requirement necessary.

Larry gets a bit fed up with Suzanne’s ambitions and tells her it’s time to get busy with making babies. But Suzanne will have none of this. She tells her mother-in-law that being pregnant on TV is a career killer. Oh, if only Suzanne had waited a decade or so. Today, baby bumps and stupidly named off-spring are the “must have” for any celebrity. You can even become famous for simply having kids.

Suzanne realizes Larry, and his meddling family, is getting in her way of achieving TV success. There is only one thing she can do, recruit Jimmy, Russell and Lydia in bumping off her husband. Now having an affair with the devious, yet seductive Suzanne, Jimmy does the deadly deed. This local murder becomes national news making Suzanne the “star” she always desired and she revels in her tabloid notoriety. Not surprisingly, the hapless Jimmy is not so lucky.

However, Larry’s family is very wise to Suzanne’s scheming ways and they make sure Suzanne gets her comeuppance. The mousy Lydia, who Suzanne disdained as “white trash,” tells her story in a television interview and becomes famous in her own right.

Every performance in To Die For is near perfection. Matt Dillon is very good as a man who’s happy to have the prettiest girl in town but really wants the homebound hausfrau. Illeana Douglas as Larry’s sister Janice is dryly sarcastic and figures out Suzanne’s BS early on in the game. Both Phoenix and Affleck show a great deal of promise early in their careers in their respective roles.

But To Die For is truly Nicole Kidman’s film. With Kidman’s acting chops, Suzanne Stone is hugely self-absorbed but not very self-aware. Her calculation and cunning is as transparent as a plate of glass, but her telegenic beauty and media-savvy charm succeeds in drawing you closer. Despite ourselves, we want Suzanne Stone to be in front of the camera. Kidman won a very deserved Golden Globe for her portrayal of Suzanne Stone. She is simply a bewitching mix of evil and charisma, and Suzanne Stone is a person we recognize in everything from reality TV to national politics (ahem, or both).

Both the film and the novel were inspired by Pamela Smart, a teacher and wannabe TV personality who convinced a young man to kill her husband. But instead of telling this story straight, the film takes a very satirical look at our obsession with celebrity, fame and notoriety. Merely entertaining when it was released over ten years ago, in our celebrity-entrenched culture, To Die For is a pointed take on a very interesting phenomenon, the desperate need for fame at any cost.

Retro Review: Fabulous Nobodies by Lee Tulloch

Imagine a time before reality television and social media influencers. Imagine a time when the likes of Carrie Bradshaw and her coterie of sex and fashion obsessed pals were merely a gleam in Candace Bushnell’s eyes. It’s the late 1980s. New York City is teaming with the hippest and hottest clubs-Danceteria, Palladium, Limelight, and Club 57. The clubs are teeming with the young, hip, and fashionable, many of them yearning to be famous.

One of these people is Reality Nirvana Tuttle (yes, her mother is a hippie). In Lee Tulloch’s 1989 novel, Fabulous Nobodies, Reality is currently working as a “door whore” at lower Manhattan’s latest, hippest club, Less is More. Reality’s job is to only allow people in the club who meet her exacting standards. They must have the best style and a unique flair.

Reality is only 20 years old. She escaped her upper New York small town and her mother’s hippie lifestyle to live among the coolest people she can find in New York City. Her friend, Phoebe Johnson emulates Audrey Hepburn and is the junior shoe editor at “Perfect Woman” magazine. Freddie Barnstable is a transvestite (transgender by today’s vernacular). Freddie is always on the hunt for the perfect fashion find and has a dog named Balenciaga. And then there is Hugo Falk, a gossip columnist with the magazine “Frenzee.”

Reality lives for fashion, and has a collection of designer frocks that she has named after famous people and characters-Petula Clark, Gina Lollabrigida, and so on. Not only does she have a collection of designer frocks, Reality also talks to these frocks as if they are cherished friends. However, there is something missing from her clothes closet, and that’s a Chanel suit. How Reality can afford her designer duds is never fully explained. She can’t make much money as a door whore at Less is More. But there is talk of her shopping at some vintage stores that dot her Manhattan neighborhood.

Reality has another desire. She wants to be famous? But how do you got about this before a time of reality show stars like the Kardashians or taking up precious internet space as a fashion influencer? Reality figures she can cozy up to Hugo Falk and he’ll write about her for his column in “Frenzee.”

But of course, things don’t go quite smoothly. Reality loses her job at Less is More when she doesn’t recognize Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and denies her entry into the club. Completely forlorn and at a loss, Reality is convinced by Freddie that they should turn their apartments into a club. Despite this probably being illegal, they turn their apartments into a club, which attracts the fabulous and fabulous adjacent.

Other things happen, too. Reality’s friendship with Phoebe is tested. Reality finds the elusive Chanel suit of her dreams, but is a Chanel suit really her? Reality acquires an admirer/stalker named Brooke. A bit of a mishap occurs while people are partying at her and Freddie’s club, which really puts a damper on things.

And then Hugo interviews and writes a piece about Reality for “Frenzee” magazine. Unfortunately, this feature on Reality isn’t exactly flattering, and a very weird encounter with Hugo jostles Reality a wee bit.

In the end, Fabulous Nobodies is a satirical look at a very specific time. Reality never shows much growth as a character, but then again she’s only 20. I was left wondering where Reality would be in the 2020s. She’d now be in her fifties. Would she have gotten married, left Manhattan for the suburbs, had a bunch of kids, and was just an average middle aged woman with a crazy past? Would she have become a fashion influencer, showing off her frocks and interviewing them on her Instagram page? Would she have ended up on Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New York City?” Who knows? But Fabulous Nobodies certainly showcases the huge desire people have for being famous no matter what…and the perfect Chanel suit, of course.