Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 22, 1990 TAG: 9004220252
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
William Goldman is never less than interesting and entertaining. Even when his fiction is wildly improbable and unstructured, he manages to keep the reader hooked. He uses wit, pared-down prose and sheer inventiveness so well that he's able to cover up lapses in logic and plot twists that would sink lesser works.
He brings the same sharp skills to his non-fiction. "Hype and Glory" is an account of his experiences as a judge at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant in 1988. It's fascinating all the way through, even for readers who think they have no interest in the workings of the movie business or beauty contests. It contains enough choice bits of gossip to satisfy inquiring minds, but it's got substance, too.
Part of that fascination comes from Goldman's revelations about himself. At the same time he was being a judge, he was going through a divorce and eye surgery. In several ways, this is a book of self-discovery. Goldman describes a series of misadventures too painful and funny for fiction that somehow give meaning to all the foolishness; from his own dealings with a woman he refers to as the Beast of Air France, to host Gary Collins winging it for 11 interminable minutes while the Miss America judges resolved a tie.
Goldman looks beyond the immediate events and people involved and tries to find the real importance of both events. Even though the Cannes festival is dedicated to genuinely "artistic" films, its power is economic. Winning the right award there can change a career. But, according to Goldman, the judges work strictly on a personal level, untainted by business considerations. Individual politics, though, play an important part.
Goldman's 1983 "Adventures in the Screen Trade" is one of the most perceptive and informative books ever written about movies. This book isn't as detailed and informative - it was virtually written on the fly from notes taken on a microcassette recorder. Goldman did not go to Cannes as an old hand. He was as awestruck and ignorant as a kid at his first Saturday matinee and so he's able to give the notorious insanity of the festival a fresh perspective.
Anyone might have noted, "The great thing about the gorilla was not her cute yellow skirt, all short and frilly, or the way she flounced along the sidewalk clutching her handler. What made her special was that no one was paying that much attention." But would anyone else have been able to tell us that wrestler Andre the Giant and playwright Samuel Beckett were from the same small town?
Working from a different kind of innocence, Goldman comes to have genuine sympathy and admiration for the Miss America contestants. He cuts through the cliches and self-justification of the event and sees these young women not as "beauty queens" but as college students who are using the contests to pay their way through school.
Almost two-thirds of the book is focused on the film festival, and that's justified. It's longer and louder than the pageant. But Goldman sees both of them for what they are. He makes sense of their excesses and even if he does not reveal as much of himself as some readers might want, he arrives at an honest and surprisingly hopeful conclusion.
by CNB