Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip

by John Gilmore

A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip Acclaimed as a powerful chronicler of the American Nightmare through his gripping examinations of near-mythic murders (the Black Dahlia and Manson cases), author John Gilmore now turns his attention to our morbid obsession with celebrity and with caustic clarity unstintingly recounts his relationships with the likes of Dennis Hopper, Janis Joplin, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Jean Seberg, James...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878923080
• ISBN13: 9781878923080
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Amok Books
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.7" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

DARING AND SPELLBINDING

A truly wonderful book! John Gilmore is a master at recreating the old Hollywood, the places, the scenes, the people. For those who have lived it, this is true nostaliga as well as an engaging examination behind the "myths", the super people and super stars our culture has been conditioned to worship. Here, Gilmore removes the "shine" and we see and experience these stars as complicated individuals, lost in the maze of the Hollywood machine. A highly recommended read. Brilliant, entertaining; a true textbook on the desperation that drives some individuals to the top of the success ladder, only to destroy themselves in a sad, sad scenario of loss and despair.

A GREAT BOOK

I've read this book twice and each time I feel like I'm entering a time warp. I'm being transported back into the 1950's, the 1960's. I lived in Los Angeles during those years and this has captured every naunce that is LA in all its dubious glory. John Gilmore has seen the shadows and the spotlights as well. The book takes you all over, from Hollywood to New York, Paris, even Cairo, Egypt. I especially was drawn into Gilmore's relationship with the late actress Jean Seberg, who I always admired. He shows her as she has never been shown. At times this book is very strange, and very engrossing (see Janis Joplin, Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot... Gilmore has 'kissed' them all and gives us the dish). A tale of remarkable originality. Super highly recommened, and I can hardly wait for his next tome.

THE BEST BOOK ON HOLLYWOOD'S DARK SIDE

Or should I say Slide Side! I have never read a book about the "bad" "slide" "dark" side of Hollywood that comes anywhere near close to the REAL flip-side picture of behind-the-camera Hollywood as this one. John Gilmore is a teriffic writer who takes us through this myriad of real-life characters whose names we all know as well as our box of corn flakes. He opens up the lives and heads he writes about and allows us to see what makes them tick, drink, shoot up, bed-hop, turn upside down and inside out and fall from Heaven or kill themselves. All this through Gilmore's personal experiences, living alongside these individuals, sharing some of their good times as well as the tragic and pitiful times; James Dean, Brigitte Bardot, William S. Burroughs, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Lenny Bruce, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Jean Seberg, Sal Mineo--the list goes on; people Gilmore has worked with, known, slept with, done drugs with (Gilmore's good ex-friend Dennis Hopper appears in one of the most detailed, tragic portraits of a life on the Hollywood down side); Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, etc., etc. This is the Hollywood/New York Bright White Way 1950's 1960's Broadway scene told with relentless vision and insight. Not one of those books that promises dish but doesnt deliver. Gilmore DELIVERS and you get seconds on dessert! Anyone WAY out there who especially digs Janis Joplin is in for a treat! Read the book if only for getting into Janis. The author was on A & E and I have read interviews and he mentions an autobiography/memoir in the works; in other words, a bigger, fatter tale to beat the rose-colored glasses of our illusions. I can hardly wait and I'm no masochist! LAID BARE must surely rub a lot of people the wrong way or make them mad as hell. That is where the relentlessness is most apparent in Gilmore's literature. He is one of the best writers alive today, if not one of the most controversial. This is a one of a kind book: you won't find this close-to-the-bone first-person kiss-and-tell realism anywhere else. Go for it!

My Kind Of Book...The Juiciest of Truths

I would like to have walked in John Gilmore's booties or been his shadow in the fifties and sixties. This book is just too cool and tells all you ever would want to know about James Dean, including his romp in the hay with him while living in New York City before Jimmy was famous. I am an avid reader of non-fiction and this book is one of the best I have ever read. He has had more experiences with live and dead celebrities that any one person would ever hope to have. To mention a few headliners; Steve McQueen, Hank Williams Jr., Jean Seberg, Jane Fonda, James Dean, Janis Joplin, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Tom Neal, Barbara Payton, Ida Lupino, Errol Flynn and a cast of thousands. Listen to this. John Gilmore wrote the original storyline for Easy Rider only he had another title. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda hired Terry Southern to write the same story which ended up being Easy Rider using 90% of John's original story. Did he get any money for his idea? NO! And that really upsets me. However, John has survived and is successful in the way he must want to be. I enjoy his style of writing and will read more of his books.

Wilder than Fiction!

The story in this book defies credibility. What are the odds that one person could get to hang with Errol Flynn, Dennis Hopper, and Sal Mineo, get drunk with Hank Williams and high with Lenny Bruce, talk about writing with Ed Wood, Jr., become cuckolded by Steve McQueen, have sex with Jane Fonda, Brigette Bardot, Janis Joplin,and James Dean AND be able to write like this? Well, even if it isn't all true-- and I like to think it is, because there's very little here that's self-serving, and Gilmore rarely spares himself-- LAID BARE delivers much more than anyone has a right to expect from any one book. Reading it was like reading TROPIC OF CANCER for the first time, only the characters are Jack Nicholson, Roddy McDowell, James Dean, Jean Seberg, and so on. This is much more than Hollywood gossip. This is the human tragedy that we read gossip in order to infer, exposed completely by a master writer. Gilmore's prose is direct, honest, and muscular. His mastery of detail is astonishing, so much that the details might be a little too thick if this were a novel. However, when he writes about Janis Joplin-- her manner, her way of dressing, her scent-- the importance of his subject, the fact that she really did live, and the devestating fact that she is gone forever make every remebered detail precious, and Gilmore treats each of them with appropriate care. So why isn't John Gilmore famous? From reading LAID BARE, I think the answer may be that he doesn't care about fame-- and that may be the reason why he survived so much insanity, to tell of so many who did not. I can't wait to read this book again, and to read anything by John Gilmore that I can get my hands on.