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You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again Paperback – February 14, 2017
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Every memoir claims to bare it all, but Julia Phillips’s actually does. This is an addictive, gloves-off exposé from the producer of the classic films The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and the first woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Picture—who made her name in Hollywood during the halcyon seventies and the yuppie-infested eighties and lived to tell the tale. Wickedly funny and surprisingly moving, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again takes you on a trip through the dream-manufacturing capital of the world and into the vortex of drug addiction and rehab on the arm of one who saw it all, did it all, and took her leave.
Praise for You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
“One of the most honest books ever written about one of the most dishonest towns ever created.”—The Boston Globe
“Gossip too hot for even the National Enquirer . . . Julia Phillips is not so much Hollywood’s Boswell as its Dante.”—Los Angeles Magazine
“A blistering look at La La Land.”—USA Today
“One of the nastiest, tastiest tell-alls in showbiz history.”—People
- Print length688 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House Trade Paperbacks
- Publication dateFebruary 14, 2017
- Dimensions5.24 x 1.5 x 7.95 inches
- ISBN-100399590900
- ISBN-13978-0399590900
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Gossip too hot for even the National Enquirer . . . Julia Phillips is not so much Hollywood’s Boswell as its Dante.”—Los Angeles Magazine
“A blistering look at La La Land.”—USA Today
“One of the nastiest, tastiest tell-alls in showbiz history.”—People
“The Hollywood memoir that tells all . . . Sex. Drugs. Greed. Why, it sounds just like a movie.”—The New York Times
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
House Lights Dim Before Titles
The Sting had been nominated, two months before, in ten categories, including Cinematography, Editing, Actor, Screenplay, Director, and Best Picture. The Exorcist, which had garnered an equal number of nominations, had been released the same day, two days before Christmas. It had received an enormous amount of initial publicity; even The New York Times carried pictures of people lined up in the cold to get in.
Warners had been far too cautious in its release of The Exorcist. It had opened in only twenty-four theaters. At 90/10 deals, Leo Greenfield kept reminding us. But then, he was the guy who told us, based on the first week’s figures, that our picture would gross maybe fifteen mil. We had opened in 220 theaters, with 70/30 deals, and kept widening the release. Warners waited a good six weeks until they went wide. But The Exorcist was only a three-week picture; the audience lost interest before it was available.
The Sting, on the other hand, had staying power. It had hung in, week after week, and it had opened in ten times the number of theaters. Not only was The Sting racking up some very impressive figures, but people had started to notice that it was an excellent movie. It certainly didn’t send you out in the street unsure whether to hit a church or a bar, as The Exorcist did. And Warners had a crack at The Sting and turned us down.
We’d made damn sure John Calley and Dick Shepherd came to the one screening Universal permitted us before the release of the picture. As they were walking out, I collared Calley, because I knew how much it annoyed him, and asked him how he liked the picture.
“I’m going home to slash my wrists,” he said. Good. Supercilious motherfucker.
It would be them or us tonight at the Awards.
Michael and Tony had spent weeks aggravating over whether The Sting would win for Best Picture or not. They had practiced speeches, how they would stand up, their walks to the stage. I hadn’t dared to contemplate the possibility of winning. I was not a big believer in the power of positive thinking, although I had gone to college with Norman Vincent Peale’s daughter. Didn’t wanna put a mojo on it; didn’t wanna tempt the evil eye.
I translated all my anxiety into finding a dress. Joel Schumacher was my fashion consultant. We agreed I was a New York girl, most comfortable in black, and since so many Californians dressed in colors, that I would probably stand out. Where I got the chutzpah to think I might stand out at such a gathering I don’t know. We traipsed from store to store and I would try something on and I would say, “Now if I win . . .” and then see if the dress was comfortable to walk in, and he would pull at a strap and say, “Now, when you win . . .” We finally settled on a black spaghetti-strap number by Halston at Giorgio’s, a long strand of pearls, and a double feather boa made up of guinea hen and black ostrich feathers.
I was still, six months after Kate’s birth, a little wide in the hip. Joel was adamant that I should wear beautiful black sandal-heels but I couldn’t find any tall enough. I needed height. I ended up buying a pair of giant platform shoes from Fred Slatten. Black satin with rhinestones. They stayed hidden under the dress and they definitely gave me height. They also filled me with the quiescent fear that I might actually fall off them on global TV. A toss-up, looks or safety. The hips won out.
Trancas, California
April 2, 1974
I wake with a shudder at six thirty. The sun creates hot bounce on the sky/sea horizon. It is quite a sight, but I take this view for granted. Without pausing a moment in sincere appreciation, I automatically pop a diet pill. Bad move. Within twenty minutes, I’m dancing around the sandy living room, neatening up. I run along the beach, take a perfunctory dip in the freezing-cold Pacific, race indoors for a brief hot shower.
When I hit the bedroom, Michael is standing on his head, yoga-style, in the corner of the room. “I gotta pick up my tuxedo,” Michael says, still upside down. The veins in his temples explode and contract on each syllable. Upstairs, I hear Kate’s first baby-musings for the day. Sonya heats formula in the kitchen. I can smell it. I don’t know how Kate can stand that shit.
“Good, that’ll give me time to be nervous all by myself. Maybe Sonya could take Kate out for a while.” As in: I. NEED. MY. SPACE . . .
Within the hour, they’re toast. I lay out some coke on a small mirror. Secret stash. Mine. Michael doesn’t even know I have it . . . that’s how it’s gotten. I chop it lightly with a razor. It falls apart like butter. This is good coke. Smooth. I do a hit, then another. I roll a joint and smoke it out on the deck. Less than a hundred yards from me, the ocean beats down in heavy waves against the sand. I pace, my heart beating in triple time to the waves.
I watch the postal van ease its way toward our mailbox, and I vault over the deck and scramble down the hill to meet it. The mailman has a stack, bills mostly, junk mail addressed to Occupant. Sandwiched between the telephone bill and the latest issue of Time is a small blue envelope. The handwriting addressing Michael and Julia Phillips is familiar. I tear open the envelope as I return to the house, yelling “Thanks” over my shoulder to the mailman’s wishes for our good luck that night. The letter is short and pithy, my favorites:
Dear Michael & Julia:
In a few days, you will be getting cards and letters and telegrams from everyone, so I wanted to get in what I had to say now. The important thing to remember is that you are nice sweet people. You are about to have a lot of temptation thrown your way, so try not to forget that.
Love, John
Maybe too pithy. The letter upsets me; just now, Michael and I are nice sweet people to everybody but each other. Marriage . . . Here today, gone today. I pop half a Valium and look at my shaking hands. Shut up, I tell them.
When they do, I set about the arduous process of blow-drying my hair, then spicing it up with a curling iron. I swallow another three Valium halves and recurl my hair as a chaser each time until it is time to get dressed. After I’m dressed, I have a little coke as a chaser for all that Val out of my secret stash. I don’t offer Michael any. It would provoke a fight. I’m not into fighting with Michael tonight.
Universal has been kind enough to provide a limousine for us and Tony and Antoinette Bill, and David Ward and his wife, Chris. When I first met Antoinette Bill, everybody called her Mrs. Tony. Her given name was Antoinette, but she had gone under the name Toni all her life. Tony, who was in actual fact né Gerard Anthony Bill, was also called Tony. Somehow, Tony stayed and Toni became Mrs. Tony. I, of course, was outraged.
“You sound like his chattel,” I told her at lunch at Ma Maison one day. I had just had my lip and legs painfully waxed by Charlotte at Elizabeth Arden’s, which was making me bristle. The fact that Patrick had the restaurant wrapped in polyethylene, something my father participated in inventing, and that it was a hot day with too little air conditioning, might also have added to my dyspeptic world-view. “Isn’t there something else I can call you?”
She smiled. “Well, my real name is Antoinette, but I always thought it was pretentious.”
“Maybe when you were ten, but you’re a grown-up married lady now with two kids and a husband named Gerard who likes to be called Tony, not that I blame him. I’m gonna call you Antoinette from now on. Okay?” I still asked permission in certain matters . . .
She grinned and flushed. “Why not? What the hell!” She laughed and toasted me with a glass of dry white wine.
I started calling her Antoinette; pretty soon some other people started calling her Antoinette; after a while everyone but Tony called her Antoinette. One day she went out and had her checks, credit cards, license, passport—everything identifying her—changed to Antoinette Bill. I felt as good that day as I did the day Michael’s mother, Sherry, started getting paid for finding the dresses that Michael’s father, Larry, knocked off in his lower-priced dress line. I was a fucking one-woman consciousness-raising session . . .
Michael and I have to be the first to leave because we’re in Trancas, which is as far away from the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as you can be and still live in the county of L.A. David and Chris live in Topanga Canyon, so we pick them up on the way into town. There is something very silly about being all duded up at three o’clock in the afternoon, sitting in the back of a stretch limo, but the door will be closed, the Academy has reminded us in numerous missives preceding the event, at six thirty promptly.
We have already split up Bill/Phillips Productions and there’s bad blood between Tony and us. This isn’t to become known until we are. Tony decides to drive himself and meet us there. He doesn’t want to be Hollywood and arrive in a limo. If you really feel that way, I think, why go at all? Because we’re going to win. This concept makes me as nervous as the thought of losing.
A limo provided by the studio for the producers and the writer is a truly grandiose gesture, given all previous behavior by Universal. Basically we have been treated as a nasty inconvenience to be just barely tolerated. By Zanuck and Brown. By George Roy Hill. Mostly by those who live in the Black Tower, sometimes referred to locally as the Black Mariah, the reflector-sunglass mausoleum that houses all the Universal Executives, both living and dead. To them, our youth, so chic at some of the other studios, is an impudence.
The day the nominations came out, and both those who had made American Graffiti and The Sting, a ubiquitously young group, had snagged an incredible number of honors for Universal, we received telegrams from the top two execs at Universal: Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg.
SINCEREST CONGRATULATIONS AND BEST WISHES FROM ALL OF US AT UNIVERSAL FOR TEN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS, INCLUDING BEST PICTURE, FOR THE STING. LEW R. WASSERMAN
Not warm, but essentially correct.
CONGRATULATIONS FOR THE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION FOR AMERICAN GRAFFITI. THE FILM IN OUR JUDGEMENT IS AN AMERICAN CLASSIC AND DESERVING OF ALL OF ITS ACCOLADES. LET’S HOPE THERE ARE OTHER VENTURES THAT WE CAN SHARE WITH YOU IN THE FUTURE. SID SHEINBERG
Not warm, and incorrect in all its essentials.
I have this image of Sid’s secretary: Well, all young people look alike, don’t they? I’ve always wondered if the message Western Unioned to George Lucas congratulated him on the receipt of so many nominations for The Sting. I wonder if he kept his, too . . .
And now, here we are: Chris and David and Michael and Julia, flying along the Pacific Coast Highway, compliments of Universal Airlines, to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I have nibbled another half a Valium at the Wards’. I’ve decided it’s okay to carry Valium to the Academy Awards. Most of the people in the Academy are from the Valium-and-Alcohol Generation. I’m becoming a tad too relaxed behind it, though. Sleepy might be a better word.
Need a little hit, I think, as my head lolls around on my neck. Need a big hit, I amend. You have a big hit. The Sting . . . Not that kind of a hit . . . maybe coffee. If nothing else was around. I’m pissed at myself for leaving my secret stash behind. I focus on getting downtown, like that’s going to make the drive quicker.
By the time we reach the exit to the Music Center, limousines are backed up onto the ramp. Behind us they stack up quickly. Limos to the left of me, limos to the right. A limo! A limo! My kingdom for a limo! It is a boiling-hot day and all the air conditioners are blasting. The hot and the cold mingles with the poisonous air; the exhaust makes a greenish brown cloud that hangs over us. I feel I am in line for the funeral of the most popular guy in Hollywood. Who could that be, I wonder . . .
The limousines, the cloud, the heat, make me think: We are all going to die. A thought I have two, maybe three hundred times a day anyway. I concentrate on Life and it makes me realize I have to pee semi-badly. At the rate we’re moving, I won’t get to check my makeup. I know the only part of my face that is glowing with health right now is my shiny forehead.
It’s ridiculous to worry about how I look. There’s a long red carpet; it is the only route to the door. The door that closes promptly at six thirty! There are barricades and cops and fans and photographers. Everywhere. We do not rate a flicker. There is nothing quite like being the only unknown in a bevy of luminaries. Unless it is to be the only name at a gathering of nobodies. If I had to vote for the lesser of two evils, as I do for my president, I’d go with anonymity. But I didn’t know that then.
We walk along that red carpet, graced by Sally Kellerman in front of us and Paul and Linda McCartney behind us. Nobody reaches out to us. No Army Archerd interview. No hail-fellow-well-met interchange with milling celebs. An all-time Humbler. A year or two before, I’d have been amazed to be here. Now that I am, I can see that the only way to attend one of these events is as a star. We traverse the gauntlet in that casual way that says: I don’t care to be noticed. I feel like a walk-on in a high-school play.
Of course, Tony and Antoinette are here already. We see Tony chatting up Steve Shagan, who’s in competition with David Ward for Best Screenplay, and drinking, from the look around his mouth, his third glass of wine. He looks pretty cool in his tux. He looks like he belongs. Shagan insincerely wishes us luck. That’s okay, I forgive him. He’s insisted we hire Norman Garey, who acts as our lawyer and is truly our friend. I shift back and forth, no small feat on platforms four inches from the ground in the toe and probably six in the heel. It gives me the illusion that I am taking steps, presumably away, from a situation that makes me uncomfortable.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 14, 2017)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 688 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0399590900
- ISBN-13 : 978-0399590900
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.24 x 1.5 x 7.95 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #118,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #114 in Movie Direction & Production
- #1,053 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies
- #3,707 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Customers find the book's stories engaging and compelling. They describe it as a great read for anyone interested in an insider's look at the era. Readers praise the honesty and value for money. However, some feel the pacing is depressing and the author's writing style is engaging, while others find it hard to follow.
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Customers find the story compelling and honest. They describe it as a fascinating, funny, tragic tale with cliffhangers. The book is described as an amazing adventure with flashbacks, ideas, strategies, and a sad ending.
"...This book was like a kaleidoscope of thoughts, flashbacks, ideas, strategies, and cliffhangers...." Read more
"...Phillips spares herself nothing in telling her amazing and painful story, leaving nothing out and letting the chips fall where they may...." Read more
"Look, this is a hilarious, honest, ultimately sad tale of ambition and frantic energy rewarded creatively and commercially...." Read more
"...Her stories are rich and penetrating...." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read and engaging. They say it's a must-read for film buffs or business people interested in an insider look at the era.
"...This book is a rather bitter cautionary tale, but a rip-snortingly good read...." Read more
"...Her stories are rich and penetrating. A great read for anyone interested in an insiders look on the era when young directors were given the keys to..." Read more
"...Except, the other side of the lake. All in all, not a bad book. Just if you hope to find out anything new about the industry, get a different book...." Read more
"An amazing adventure. I love this book!!!!" Read more
Customers appreciate the author's honesty. They find the autobiography honest, funny, and tragic.
"This book is brutally honest and compelling, truly un-put-down-able...." Read more
"Look, this is a hilarious, honest, ultimately sad tale of ambition and frantic energy rewarded creatively and commercially...." Read more
"...she certainly wrote a fascinating, funny, tragic, and ultimately honest autobiography. Highly recommended." Read more
"...as talented or as important as she thinks she is, her honesty makes the book worth enduring...." Read more
Customers find the book offers good value for money. They say it's worth reading, even as a cautionary tale.
"...Very much worth the read, even only as a cautionary tale." Read more
"Lot's to read but worth it." Read more
"A+++ -- Fast, at a good price and exactly as described..." Read more
Customers have different views on the writing style. Some find it engaging and quick to read, praising it as one of the greatest literary acts ever published. Others find the writing style hard to follow, annoying, and incoherent. The book can become tedious after a while, with the author switching between third-person and first-person narration.
"...After a while, the book gets quite tedious, as the author describes yet another spat, another drug scene, another morose mood...." Read more
"...But nice? No way. This book is one of the greatest acts of literary self-immolation ever published...." Read more
"I found the read annoying, as she slips from 3rd person to 1st person. It seems to me that should have been caught by the editor...." Read more
"...She is also a great writer and has an eye for detailed memory of her experiences as the co-producer of Taxi Driver, The Sting, and Close Encounters..." Read more
Customers find the pacing of the book slow. They describe it as a depressing tale from a woman who did her best work while married to a man she disliked. The story is described as a bitter cautionary tale and an ultimately tragic self-portrait.
"...This book is a rather bitter cautionary tale, but a rip-snortingly good read...." Read more
"...What a profoundly bitter person. All in all, a self-destructive person who has contempt for all life...." Read more
"Depressing tale from a woman who did her best work while she was married to a man she would later divorce because she was no longer in love with him..." Read more
"A savage, bitter, ultimately tragic self-portrait...." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2017Ah, Julia. I was sorry to get to the end of this book and my journey with you through this amazing record of your path through Hollywood as a smart, ambitious woman in the 70's. There are many key players who fell several notches in my esteem and several who behaved exactly as I would have expected. It was great to see the younger generation embrace you as you started writing; hope some of them made it to power positions to change things, but after the emailhacking scandal of a few years ago,I am not so sure. This book was like a kaleidoscope of thoughts, flashbacks, ideas, strategies, and cliffhangers. I loved it and ended up loving Julia, who is told repeatedly in the book nthat she is hard to love. Would anyone ever even think to say that to a man in business? Arghh, the chutzpah! So glad she wrote a sequel!
- Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2013This book is brutally honest and compelling, truly un-put-down-able. The drugs are more evilly destructive, the sex-and-feuds-and-chaos more amazingly tempestuous, the rise and fall more precipitous. If you ever thought something is perhaps not quite right with Hollywood, these two books will forever confirm your suspicions. Phillips spares herself nothing in telling her amazing and painful story, leaving nothing out and letting the chips fall where they may. Along the way, she produced such great films as "The Sting", "Taxi Driver" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". She won the Oscar for "The Sting" at the age of 29, can you imagine? This book is a rather bitter cautionary tale, but a rip-snortingly good read. Enjoy it without guilt, perhaps even with a bag of potato chips at the beach. Or even popcorn.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2024They took out about 500 famous names from the original book. I have no idea if the author had anything to do with this change, as she is deceased. The revised book is cute, but nothing like the original.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2013Look, this is a hilarious, honest, ultimately sad tale of ambition and frantic energy rewarded creatively and commercially. Julia P. produced, THE STING, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, TAXI DRIVER and generally raised hell and money in Hollywood.
She was a good looking woman with a good education, a marriage and a kid. Plus a house in Malibu which is all enough for most people. But the combination of the drugs, up to and including crack and the possibly even stronger drug of a voracious hunger for recognition and wealth plus the slippery trail of a business that is a capricious meritocracy at best, a bad odds gambling table at worst, brought Julia P. down to a sorry level of dependency and chaos.
But she recounts her adventures with verve and self knowing and a crackling spirit and it , the book , is an entertainment in itself.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2002In her Oscar acceptance speech for Best Picture, Julia Phillips described herself as a "nice Jewish girl from Great Neck." Well, she got 2/3 of it right. But nice? No way.
This book is one of the greatest acts of literary self-immolation ever published. It's hard not to feel sorry for Phillips at first, suffering as she does from a toxic mother, a workaholic father, insomnia and a Talmudic intellect.
But you get over that feeling in a hurry, as Phillips bullies, maneuvers, sleeps and stomps her way to the top, winning an Oscar for The Sting at the unheard-of age of 29. Her motto: overcompensate; overachieve. If you can't be best, be first.
As she notes, no young person is ever ready for massive success, and her career crashed just as quickly. After being more or less fired from Close Encounters by Steven Speilberg, her life became a broken record of drug abuse, failed relationships, financial problems and closed doors gleefully slammed by those she used and abused on the way up. Through it all she makes it all seem like a big game, but the human wreckage strewn across the landscape will give the reader pause.
It's hard to know whether Phillips' broadsides at anyone and everyone with whom she had contact are simply through spite, or whether we'd all be better off if Hollywood simply disappeared in the next big quake. Phillips claims that she's just being honest, but snide remarks about a crewmember's physical deformity make her seem only nasty.
Hate it as she did, Phillips revelled in the politics, the backstabbing, the lies and shallowness, the feeling of power that came with the title of Producer. She learned fast ("Always negotiate the height and WIDTH of your [on-screen] credit," she advises, after her on-screen credit for The Sting is "willow thin.") Her films (Taxi Driver, The Sting, Close Encounters, among others) were good, though one gets the sense it was in spite of her take-no-prisioners approach.
One wishes at the end that Phillips would "get it," but instead she reaps what she sews. There was to be no Hollywood redemption for her. Phillips' death this january was untimely, but no human being could possibly survive for long carrying around so much bile. Very much worth the read, even only as a cautionary tale.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2023I know this was an old timey book but was interested in it as I was curious about her adventures in Hllyd. This was one of the weirdest books I have ever read -- I slogged thru many pages -- trying to get a sense of what it was all about and also curious about her comments about the famous people she knew.
What I got is a very intelligent woman who probably overestimated her value as a Producer of some good films. She, however, was a very shallow lady who was focused on what expensive label clothes she would wear, how thin she was or how fat?, her very negative comments about everyone she met (under the guise of humour), and how she was so important that the trendy restaurants (in the day) always kept a table available to her. This was more important to her than anything else.
Her descriptions of the drug use she and apparently most of Hollywood folks imbibed in was an eye-opener to me -- not sure now -----but??? Also so much of her back and forth was totally confusing to me -- I just moved on and didn't read of some of this stuff -- waaaay too boring. A very sad end for a woman who actually had a good brain but was too messed up to make a good life for herself!!
Top reviews from other countries
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on September 1, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Quick delivery.
For my reading entertainment.
- crimewormReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2013
5.0 out of 5 stars Great stuff
The stuff of legend, all the gossip you've been dying to hear about Hollywood in the 70s. Coke, sex, adultery....
- Patricia WilsonReviewed in Canada on August 20, 2013
4.0 out of 5 stars 2nd purchase of this book
I had this book before and lent it out and wanted to re-read it. The writing style is a little jumpy, like she jumps from her childhood to present day (at the time) but she does talk about the Hollywood mystique. It must have rattled some people when it was originally published. It is interesting for anyone who wants to get the vibe of the stars.
- KikinthenakasReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 29, 2014
4.0 out of 5 stars Hedonistic
Julia Philips drives herself through this biography fuelled by drugs, ambition and more than a little savvy and street smarts. The excesses of the era are captured as is the razor tongue comment on her contempories, actors, directors, drug dealers and movers and shakers. A woman who is ballsy but won't be everyone's cup of tea, her story is well worth a read, the first woman producer to win an oscar in a male dominated, sexist environment of back stabbers, wannabes, losers and winners, it is a great read and worth a movie in itself.
- Shirley taitReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 15, 2018
3.0 out of 5 stars Book not as juicy as it could have been
Thought this book would be juicy , but it's not ,there are some interesting tales though that shocked about some famous people , but on the whole more about the author who I hadn't heard of and written in a way that's heavy and hard to read