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Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker
Maybe someday
32
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
47/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Barry Sonnenfeld
Publisher:
Hachette Books
Date:
March 10, 2020
Film and television director Barry Sonnenfeld's memoir traces his idiosyncratic upbringing in Washington Heights, his breaking into film as a cinematographer with the Coen brothers, and his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black, and beloved work like Get Shorty and A Series of Unfortunate Events.
What The Reviewers Say
Mr. Sonnenfeld, whose past experience as an Esquire columnist gave him a head start in writing a book this sharp, punctures the myth of the Director as God and instead offers the Director as Nervous Wreck.
Sonnenfeld...does more than name-drop or recall Hollywood vignettes in this funny, wry and thoroughly entertaining memoir. Sonnenfeld is, above all, a storyteller, and while his own journey from a skinny, French horn-playing kid to a successful director drives the breezy narrative, he takes time to bring supporting characters irreverently to life—his overprotective mother, Kelly, who spent years threatening suicide, and his father, Sonny, who tormented her with his many affairs. Against this backdrop, Sonnenfeld’s loving and happy family life with his wife, Sweetie, shines through..
Sonnenfeld views all of this with an unflinching eye, going into stark detail about everything from his first professional shoots on nine pornography films to his adventures with the Coen brothers to the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother’s cousin. A candid, sometimes dark, entertaining, anecdotal trip down memory lane from a Hollywood icon..
Sonnenfeld recounts harrowing childhood experiences followed by his success in the film business in this episodic and uneven debut memoir.
