Rating: 
Summary: With one book, all of N D's secrets revealed....
Review: Although I've never even watched Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder's dark and biting satire/tragedy about the dark side of Hollywood, I have enjoyed reading Sam Staggs' riveting look at the making of -- and cultural impact of -- a bizarre-sounding film about a Hollywood has-been, a dead monkey, and a gigolo who ends up face down in a swimming pool.Close Up On Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream covers not only the nitty-gritty of the making of the 1949 film, but delves into the long partnership of writer-director Wilder with screenwriter Charles Brackett, the personalities of the stars (Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stronheim, William Holden, Nancy Olson), and even bizarre facts about the supporting cast (who'd have thought Jack Webb, Dragnet's straight-laced Sgt. Joe Friday, was into bondage?). Staggs also tells the long journey of Sunset Boulevard from the screen to the stage, starting with Gloria Swanson's long and eventually failed crusade to buy the rights from Paramount Pictures and concluding with the almost Byzantine tale of how Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber finally adapted the story of Norma Desmond, Joe Gillis, Betty Schaeffer, Max, and yes, the dead monkey into a musical. Staggs, who also wrote All About All About Eve, clearly knows his film history and it shows, but his prose is not without its flaws. He blasts Wilder's Stalag 17 as being a "misbegotten" World War II satire/concentration camp comedy. While he is entitled to his opinion about the quality of his movie, he is confusing his terminology, since a Stalag was a military-run prisoner-of-war camp subject to the Geneva Convention, while a concentration camp was under the jurisdiction of the SS Death's Head organization. However, while I'm still not sure whether I'd ever watch either the film or musical, I did enjoy reading this 2001 expose of one of the landmark films of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Rating: 
Summary: Staggs Stumbles down "Sunset Boulevard"
Review: Being a "Sunset Boulevard" fan of both the movie and the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. Alas, it wasn't worth the wait at all. The book is broken into three parts; the movie, post-movie to pre-musical, and the musical. The movie gets the most in-depth coverage, because the movie is the most definitive. There's not much he can tamper with there, since most of it has been discussed before. Still, most of what he reports as fact is really a 'he says/she says'. The 'post-movie/pre-musical' is incosequential filler... rambling pages of nonsense. He talks about everything from the many attempts at turning the movie into a Broadway musical (Swanson's idea, originally), to television adaptions, to projects 'influenced' by "Sunset Boulevard". There's quite a bit there, yet not much to say. Finally, we get to the Andrew Lloyd Webber mega-musical. As anyone familiar with the play knows, there were times when the 'back-stage' scandals threatened to over-shadow the production itself. Yet Staggs just touches upon the most-reported (the Glenn Close/Patti Lupone fiasco, the Streisand recordings, the opening-night fiascos), and stays away from the less-reported-yet-juicier stuff (the Barbara Walters 'scandal', Diahann Carroll's vocal troubles). Not much research seems to have been taken, for these incidents surely would have surfaced. Overall, Staggs fills his book with the mundane and rhetoric. Even his 'side-bars' become distracting drivel (do we really need to know his opinion on Streisand playing Norma Desmond in the often-talked about movie version?), taking away from what could have been a more enjoyable stroll down the Boulevard.
Rating:
Summary: Fade to black
Review: Fasten your seat belts--it's going to be a bumpy boulevard! Are you one of the fans who devoured Staggs' wonderful "All About `All About Eve'"? Unless you were born yesterday, you're bound to be disappointed in this lumbering follow-up that attempts to provide a similar behind-the scenes look at "Sunset Boulevard." Granted, the author has a flair for florid prose and, research-wise, obviously did his homework. But for whatever reasons (probably because unlike the volatile "Eve" cast, Billy Wilder's actors weren't at each other's throats), there wasn't a whole lot to study and Staggs comes up with little new information of any real interest. As a result, what might have made for a juicy "Vanity Fair" article is padded to a numbing 400-page-plus length with the sort of dense minuitae that will tax even the most ardent movie buffs. (Do we really need a mini-bio of the former manager of the Paramount commissary?) Having run out of trivia (including a complete run-down on gay porn "Sunset Boulevard" parodies)and a waaay too long rehash of Andrew Lloyd Weber's troubled stage adaptation, Staggs even resorts to wild speculation, somehow imagining that Lucille Ball's famous nose-lighting scene from the William Holden episode of "I Love
Lucy" is a direct homage to "Sunset Boulevard"! Still, worth a look-through during your next trip to the bookstore, if only to check out page 97 for the eye-opener about Norma Desmond and her monkey.
Rating: 
Summary: Everything a Movie Book Should Be.
Review: I haven't had this much fun reading a movie book since Sam Staggs' last book, All About All About Eve. That was one of the best books I ever read about Hollywood, and I've read just about all of them. This one is on the same level. Yes, Staggs puts in everything but the kitchen sink, but it's all enjoyable, so I didn't mind--the more juicy tidbits the better, as far as I'm concerned. And to think that Gloria Swanson's final years, as Staggs relates in one of the final chapters, was spent with a much younger man in much the same way as Norma Desmond--what delicious, and sad, irony. Anyway,it's full of fascinating characters and great scenes, just like a great movie. Loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Great subject, mediocre treatment
Review: I read and enjoyed Staggs's book about All About Eve, but it was a bit too self-referential. But this one goes over the top. Staggs inserts himself into the narrative far too frequently, often with salacious but irrelevant anecdotes. And for someone who takes others to task for creating purple prose, Staggs's writing is all too violet for my taste. For example: "At the age of fifty, [Swanson] had devolved from the great silver screen to the thirteen-inch home set, and those wonderful people out there in the dark now kept the lights on, talked back, munched frozen dinners, washed them down with beer and, in place of tears and laughter, emitted loud satisfied burps." Puh-leez. Bottom line: the behind-the-scenes info is dishy and enjoyable, but the writing style is irritating.
Rating: 
Summary: For People in and of the Dark
Review: I've always been a huge fan of SUNSET BOULEVARD. From that outstanding opening shot of William Holden floating face down in that "pool he always wanted" to Norma Desmond's descent down the stairs into triumphant insanity, this film will always be one of the all-time greats. Sam Staggs has written an exhaustively-researched book about the whole SUNSET BOULEVARD experience. It goes into everyone and everything connected with the production, from biographical sketches of the guys playing the piano during a party scene to Jack Webb from "Dragent" (And does Mamie Van Doren have a memory of Sgt. Joe Friday that'll blow you away!). I would've given the book five stars but I felt my interest waning after the book left the movie behind to discuss the Broadway shows (as well as every instance where someone quoted the movie over the years). I've never seen the Broadway shows but I'm sure those chapters would've been more interesting if I had (I have more respect for Glenn Close after reading about her).
Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of SUNSET BOULEVARD.
What blew me away the most?
That they weren't really sure what they were doing and where they going when they were shooting the movie. That it all fell together into one of the great Hollywood classics is a miracle.
Rating:
Summary: For People in and of the Dark
Review: I've always been a huge fan of SUNSET BOULEVARD. From that outstanding opening shot of William Holden floating face down in that "pool he always wanted" to Norma Desmond's descent down the stairs into triumphant insanity, this film will always be one of the all-time greats. Sam Staggs has written an exhaustively-researched book about the whole SUNSET BOULEVARD experience. It goes into everyone and everything connected with the production, from biographical sketches of the guys playing the piano during a party scene to Jack Webb from "Dragent" (And does Mamie Van Doren have a memory of Sgt. Joe Friday that'll blow you away!). I would've given the book five stars but I felt my interest waning after the book left the movie behind to discuss the Broadway shows (as well as every instance where someone quoted the movie over the years). I've never seen the Broadway shows but I'm sure those chapters would've been more interesting if I had (I have more respect for Glenn Close after reading about her).
Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of SUNSET BOULEVARD.
What blew me away the most?
That they weren't really sure what they were doing and where they going when they were shooting the movie. That it all fell together into one of the great Hollywood classics is a miracle.
Rating:
Summary: Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up....
Review: is a famous line from the darkly camp classic, Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard". Sam Staggs book manages to recreate the story behind the film, not only the making of it, but the world which existed during the making of it. Hollywood itself is a major player in "Sunset", that artificial and arrogant place, dasher of dreams, and fame beholder. In Stagg's first book, "All About All About Eve", the author seemed to dwell too much on minutia and ponitless facts (his fascination with Zsa Zsa Gabor's hair color still resonates with me), but now he seems to have learned his lesson. Close Up is rich with information, and moves along at a brisk pace, chapters closing, leaving with you the feeling of wanting more. He recounts the making of the film in a somewhat linear fashion, moving along topics as they seemingly come up. You learn about the great Gloria Swanson's involvement with the film, and the role she played in shaping the great Norma herself. Cecil B. DeMille comes across as a great, crusty old man. Nancy Olson, one of the surviving actors, brings her personal stories and charm to the book. Stagg's sense of humor was enjoyable throughout the book. A couple of times, I found myself laughing outloud at some of his comments. While I agree with a reviewer's claim that he does inject himself into the book, it didn't bother me. It's a story of Sunset Blvd. but also a story about how he came to find out all the information; both are interesting. In the end, I had trouble putting down this book. Staggs learned much from his thick opus "All About Eve", thank goodness for bringing this classic movie back to life.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and very informative.
Review: It never occured to me that someone would write a book like this, going in-depth on a certain movie, until I just happened to see it on a "new releases" table at the bookstore. I had to buy it to read about one of my favorite movies, and I wasn't disappointed. I greatly enjoyed the author's funny, witty, intelligent writing. I found the book to be a real page-turner, even in sections where I didn't have a great deal of prior interest in the celebrity he was talking about. The only place I disagreed with the author was when he asserted that Petula Clark didn't make a good Norma Desmond (in the musical). I came to the movie backwards - first, I heard about the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and wanted to see it. The only version available in San Francisco was the one with Ms. Clark. I thought she was wonderful - her voice has a little girl quality that really made you believe that Norma was stuck in the past, in her younger years when she was "big" in pictures. When I later heard Glenn Close play Norma and saw her in clips, I thought she sounded way too assertive, like a real ball-breaker. You had less sympathy for her. So, consider, Mr. Staggs - if I'd never seen Petula Clark play Norma, I would never have bought the video and watched the original movie! I would never have enjoyed it enough to want to buy an in-depth book about it! At any rate - great book. It's the entire back story (and forward story) of the movie, from conception to public response and the effect the movie had on the stars and director (and others). I especially enjoyed the interviews with the stars who are still with us, and the sections discussing the musical. It was refreshing to read a book written by someone who obviously cares deeply for the movie. I really enjoyed the fact that the writing style was chatty (yet intelligent) and not dry and scholarly.
Rating:
Summary: TOUGH TO PUT DOWN....
Review: Mr.Staggs has written another engrossing and entertaining look at a classic film. The history of the making of "Sunset Blvd."---warts and all. It's all here and it's fascinating. Funny, touching and sad looks at the stars, the director, the works. Even the sad history of Norma Desmond's mansion. At times you feel that you're right there with the author as he's explaining it all. This a must have companion piece to the film and I can't recommend it enough. Also read Staggs' "All About All About Eve"---another must have for Golden Hollywood buffs and a great companion piece for that film as well.
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