Funny Lady

"Video Slut - How I Shoved Madonna Off an Olympic High Dive; Got Prince into a Pair of Tiny Purple Woolen Underpants, Ran Away from Michael Jackson's Dad and Got a Waterfall to Flow Backard so I COULD BRING ROCK VIDEOS TO THE MASSES" by Sharon Oreck Faber & Faber 241 pages $16

The title pretty much spells out the contents... Oreck co-owned the production company, O Productions, from 1986 to 2000. During that time, she won a Grammy, two Women in Film awards, several MTV awards and an Academy Award nomination.

Her writing style is funny, wry and I enjoyed the book. Random selections: "Although Prince could sing really, really loud, he liked to speak really, really softly, so softly, in fact, that the collective table had to shut its mouth, hold its breah and lean forward just to hear him at all." (during a planning meeting.)

At 16, she had a sexual encounter that resulted in a pregnancy. Her horrified parents (denizons of Palos Verdes) told her there was no question of her keeping the baby, and put her into the Florence Crittenden Home for unwed mothers. (She did keep her baby boy "the fattest white infant born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in 1972." ) An illuminating passage from that time: "My parents, on the other hand, would come by on Sundays to remind me that I was a useless, worthless guttersnipe who would never amount to anything in any way whatsoever. In this vein, they had developed a plan for my futue. I would spend one year being ashamed, after which I could rehearse being contrite. Then, I could devote the rest of my life to the good of our country by becoming a minimum-wage Information Operator for the Bell Telephone Company!"