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Adventures Of A Suburban Boy [Hardcover]

John Boorman (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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From Publishers Weekly

British film director Boorman, famed for Deliverance, Excalibur and The General, is a product of WWII. More specifically, he comes out of the semidetached suburbs of WWII London. His memoir-part family history, part film bio-is both tender and restrained. Boorman's emotional life was shaped by his parents' triangulated marriage-his mother was in love with his father's best friend-and his longing to escape the drabness of suburban life. "I vacillated between overweening ambition and despair," he notes. Enamored of broadcasting, he got a job editing news clips for Britain's ITN network in 1955 and became so adept, he was recruited by the BBC, where he rose to produce documentaries. Yet film remained his first love. He got his break in 1965 with Catch Us if You Can. The die was cast: Boorman became a darling of British cinema, eventually seeking recognition in Hollywood. By all accounts, he did not achieve the financial success others did, but he managed, despite occasional setbacks, to fulfill his artistic vision. Why, he asks, are people so drawn to moviemaking? "We are escaping the vague dissatisfactions of safe and comfortable lives. We want to be extended, tested." Boorman pushes the envelope, creating inspired cinema on small budgets, often in dangerous locales. A devoted father, he also discovers the gift of friendship with Lee Marvin and Jon Voight. Not a lurid tell-all, this is an honest appraisal of a life well lived. It begins and ends with Hope and Glory, Boorman's semi-autobiographical film about a boy's suburban childhood, whose critical acclaim proves that the suburbs served him well. 40 b&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–This autobiography by the director of films such as Deliverance and Hope and Glory works as a telling celebration of the man's career. The book starts plainly enough with Boorman's childhood in London during the chaos of World War II. When he failed entrance exams for academic schools, his parents struggled to pay for and push him through private school. After spending some time in the military, Boorman gradually moved on to newspapers, documentary films at the BBC, and, finally, Hollywood pictures. Much of the rest of the book is devoted to anecdotes like tromping through swamplands to find the perfect site for Deliverance or dealing with the combating egos of actors in Hell in the Pacific. Boorman treats his successes lightly, using them as examples of how he pulled his projects together. He doesn't shirk from examining his failures. Overall, the book is a frank portrait of a man who, through extreme persistence and hard work, found success in the competitive world of Hollywood films.–Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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3 Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars amazingly enjoyable, Jun 2 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Adventures Of A Suburban Boy (Hardcover)
I found myself trapped in an airport beginning a longish flight and this book was the single semi-appealing book available; once I started reading I was again trapped by his self-deprecating and insightful wit. How difficult it must be to make a good movie if someone as thoughtful, intelligent and sensitive as this only succeeds a small part of the time.

An enjoyable book from the first with the added bonus of glimpses into the real lives of other artists and creators. I may be over-grateful because the book was much more than I expected or hoped - but I don't think so.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Lovely....and a bore, April 4 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Adventures Of A Suburban Boy (Hardcover)
Although it begins with great lyrical promise, Boorman's memoir loses steam less than half way through and becomes a stale and plodding bore. I enjoyed the writing in description of his hope-and-glory childhood, and some wonderful stuff taken from the Emerald Forest diary, but otherwise I've rarely seen a Briton write such flat-footed prose. And I bought the book looking forward as much to the prose as to the stories Boorman might have to tell.

As for his stories, he has a few to tell, and you might enjoy them, but eventually they all begin to recount the disasters that seem to surround his filmmaking. I grew impatient with them, and with him. (Does he never learn from these things?) Further, unless you regard Lee Marvin with the same outsized fascination that Boorman does, you'll learn far, far more than you ever wanted to know about the man. It's too much.

I've always regarded Zardoz as shallow and sophomoric. Boorman's extended discussion of this film and its attendant off-screen disasters does nothing to raise my opinion. Boorman is, mostly, a would-be Deep Thinker. But "would-be" is the key and the film remains a silly embarrassment.

Boorman has written elsewhere about The Emerald forest, and he cheats the reader of this book out of a decent discussion of that film, particularly the critical and social response to it.

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4.0 out of 5 stars suburban boy, Dec 15 2003
By 
Matthew A. Jones (Alexandria, virginia United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Adventures Of A Suburban Boy (Hardcover)
Boorman writes with great wit and humility about his career as a filmmaker, working his way up the ladder. He adds interesting stories about legends such as Lee marvin, Toshiro Mafuni, Neil Jordan, etc. He talks about the struggles of having his films made, and the fact that many filmakers ideas never make it to the screen. A very honest nad enlightening autobiography.
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