Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby, in When Harry Met Sally, 1989
L to r: Helen Slater, Daniel Stern, Billy Crystal, Bruno Kirby and David Paymer, in City Slickers, 1991
By Nicholas Stix
Just kidding, though it would make for a much better book than the one he actually is getting paid to “write.”
I wonder who will ghost it for him? Perhaps Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who have scripted so many of his Tinseltown bombs.
Previously, at WEJB/NSU, on Bruno and Billy:
“Bruno Kirby: Rest in Peace, Pal”; and
“Billy Crystal: No More Mr. Nice Guy.”
Billy Crystal sells jokey book on aging for $4 million. Really?
By Carolyn Kellogg
August 10, 2012, 1:11 p.m.
Los Angeles Times
Billy Crystal has sold a joking book on aging to Henry Holt and Co., according to the Hollywood Reporter, for which he was paid $4 million. And just think: with that money, he can buy more than 75,000 jumbo packs of Depends.
True, that's not much of a joke. But Crystal's humor, of late, hardly seems worth $4 million. The comedian, actor and one-time "Saturday Night Live" cast member was most recently in the spotlight as the host of the 2012 Academy Awards.
"Billy Crystal, hosting his ninth Oscar show (his first was in 1990, his most recent was in 2004), seemed to be overseeing a cruise ship dinner show designed to appeal to the over-50 travel club. Early on, it hit the rocks and started to list," wrote Hank Stuever in the Washington Post. "Almost everyone drowned."
Stuever pointed to Crystal's "ba-da-dum gags" and creakily old-style musical medley as giving the show a "nursing home feel."
David Zurawik wrote in the Baltimore Sun: “I used to like Crystal. I really did. But by the time he made an empty joke about J. Edgar Hoover ‘in heels’ that drew no laughs and then said how funny the band thought it was in rehearsals, I wondered if this wasn’t some sort of cosmic time-warp punishment throwing us back to a Las Vegas lounge act 50 years ago — God’s way of telling us how vapid, lifeless and non-creative Hollywood and our popular culture had become in the dark years of 2011 and 2012.”
Sure, Crystal has sold a humor book on aging, but there's a difference between being funny about being old and old jokes. Even the Hollywood Reporter, which says a source calls the book "hilarious," notes, "Not all this material is new: Crystal's been telling age jokes ever since he got to middle age."
The book, whose title has not yet been announced, is scheduled to be released around March 14, 2013, when Crystal will turn 65.
1 comment:
Speaking of Bruno Kirby, I recall two TV movies he was in. One was "An American Tragedy," about the defense team in the O.J. Simpson trial. The second was the 2004 remake of "Helter Skelter," which focused on Manson rather than the investigation and trial which was the basis of the 1976 film.
In the first, Bruno Kirby played Barry Scheck. In the second, he portrayed Vincent Bugliosi.
David In TN
Post a Comment