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Wake Up, I'm Fat!
 
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Wake Up, I'm Fat! [Abridged] [Audio Cassette]

Camryn Manheim (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (114 customer reviews)

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Product Description

From Amazon

You already know Camryn Manheim can act. She won the Emmy Award as the don't-mess-with-me attorney Ellenor Frutt on The Practice. Manheim made the ceremony itself entertaining by hoisting her trophy and hollering, "This is for all the fat girls!"

But can she write? Yes. This memoir is by turns funny ("If Barbie were a real woman, she'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions") and excruciating. It helps that the material was honed in a one-woman show that sold out at New York's big-deal Public Theater, but the subject matter was strange and interesting in the first place. Manheim could not possibly be a less likely candidate for artistic and commercial success on TV. Born Debi Manheim in Peoria, the very metaphor for mainstream culture, Manheim re-created herself as a dozen-earringed California biker chick, a Renaissance Faire wench, a protester who helped drive the Miss California Pageant out of Santa Cruz, and one of 28 actors in America accepted at NYU's exclusive graduate school. In her book, Manheim gets even with her cruel, fat-bashing teachers; credits the director who gave her her first ingenue lead role (Tony Kushner, who cast her in Fen); and tells how the same temper that got her booted from school and arrested also won her the TV role that made her name.

There's good gossip for drama buffs. Manheim ribs her famous boss David Kelley within an inch of her livelihood; rips into Celeste Holm for cattiness backstage in Clare Boothe Luce's The Women; and opines that Bridget Fonda, whom she got naked next to in a movie, "could use a sandwich." But it's the private-life stuff that sticks with you. Read her touching, hilarious account of a personal-ad date from hell, and how she got even by picking up the hunky model who plays the Marlboro Man. She is not making this up! --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

It's okay to feel okay about yourself. That's the message from actress Manheim (on TV's The Practice), which comes across more strongly in her first-person tales of being an overweight person than it ever could from a more traditional self-empowerment audio program. "Everyone can find a reason to hate themselves," Manheim opines, and for her, "fat equaled hate." Today, she sounds amazingly self-confident, poised and full of sass: no one better stand in her way. But it wasn't easy getting to this point. She tells of her childhood in Peoria, Ill., her young years as a would-be hippie California motorcycle mama and her struggles as a drama graduate student at NYU. In all these life phases, she met with prejudices against her; it only got worse when she became an actress and found herself constantly stereotyped in the role of the "butt-of-the-joke fat girl." Through doing her own one-woman show at New York's Public Theater, she was able to get beyond that impasse, raise people's consciousness and triumph as advocate and role model. Spoken audio is a similarly perfect soapbox oratory medium for ManheimAand she attacks her reading with a palpable fierceness of purpose. Based on the 1999 Broadway hardcover. (May)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews

114 Reviews
5 star:
 (106)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (114 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Very funny, Jan 14 2010
By 
Kona (Emerald City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Wake Up, I'm Fat! (Hardcover)
Camryn Manheim ("The Practice," "Ghost Whisperer," etc.) tells her life story in a humorous memoir about her long battle of the bulge. Stories of her teenage drug use, grad school tribulations, dating woes, and eventual successes in TV are told with wit and sassy charm.

I've never seen Manheim in movies or TV, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of her book. She's an excellent writer. In the nineties, she wrote and starred in a one-woman show called, "Wake up, I'm Fat!," and much of the show's material is in the book so it reads like a good stand-up comedy routine. She balances humor with the sadness and frustration of being overweight and a plea for fat acceptance. This is an entertaining and eye-opening book.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book by a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman, Feb 26 2004
By 
COBRA123 (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wake Up, I'm Fat! (Paperback)
After reading the past reviews, I wonder if I'm the only man who read this book. The first thing that caught my eyes, I'll be honest, was the cover picture. Camryn is a gorgeous woman with very nice legs. She is also a person of deep character, who has persevered and triumphed despite the prejudices of our shallow society. She relates her struggles in a moving way, but avoids the whining, "why is the world so unfair?" tone that unfortunately characterizes some similiar works. If you want a glimpse into the mind of a powerful, beautiful and intoxicatingly magnificent woman, then you will enjoy this book.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Very inspiring, Jan 8 2004
This review is from: Wake Up, I'm Fat! (Paperback)
Like the author of this book, I have had a weight problem all of my life and have only recently managed to come to terms with the fact that I will likely always be a plus-sized woman. Thanks to this funny and inspiring book, I now realize that being large doesn't have to get in the way of achieving my dreams. Who says being skinny is a prerequisite for happiness anyways?
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