Don't pick up "With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant" expecting revealed Hollywood secrets, back-biting bitchiness or luminous Vanity Fair treatment.
Unlike Madonna's "Evita" diaries, published in VF a couple of years back, Grant - minor star of "The Player," "Age of Innocence," "L.A. Stories," "Hudson Hawk" (!) and "Bram Stoker's Dracula," as well as the star of the fab Brit cult favorite "With Nail and I" - indulges himself only long enough to express anxiety over landing a potential role, giddiness over landing said role, or, occasionally, bitter longing to land a punch on some director's jaw. He prefers instead to turn his insider's eye on the chaos, loooooong delays, clashing personalities, disasters and, every once in a while, triumphant moments of history-in-the-making that happen on movie sets.
Though Grant's breezy, informal Dear Diary style is a fun (and fast) read, it paints most of the real-life characters in a cartoon fashion. Steve Martin is a fretting, neurotic Charlie Brown, Sandra Bernhard is Beavis and Butt-head and Daria all rolled into one, Joel Silver is the blustering Bluto, and the Spice Girls are... well, they're the Spice Girls. Sometimes this actually works to the actor's advantage - with a few broad strokes, Grant paints certain stars and directors as egocentric assholes without fear of libel charges (look out, Sharon Stone!).
There's something charming to Grant's over-the-top and totally unreserved excitement at working with Coppola and Scorsese and Altman and even about going to the States for the first time. And his encounter with Barbra Streisand, an adored star to whom an adolescent Grant once sent a fan letter, offering a holiday at his family home in Swaziland following her much-publicized breakup with Ryan O'Neal, is a sitcom-worthy hoot.
Grant applies all the clichés, but endearingly, as when describing his maiden voyage into Manhattan: "My head is Gershwin going GAGA. Yes, I have seen this skyline of scrapers all my movie-going life, but Jeezus, this is the Coke slogan come true. 'It's the real thing.'"
(Shelly Ridenour)
- With Nails,
The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant
copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.