Open by Andre Agassi

I tend to think that child prodigies are born with a special gift, destined for fame, shoved along by a god of greatness or something, but what Open, by Andre Agassi reminds us is that kids that become really, really good at something, probably spent their childhood being hammered by an adult to practice, practice, practice. Such is the case with Andre Agassi, whose father was a relentless “stage father,” and slave driver.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

I have a rather macabre fascination with Hollywood, actors and the motion picture industry in general, so when I saw the title, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, which was written by Mark Harris, I jumped on it faster than a toad on a June bug. For some ridiculous reason I had a counter-intuitive need to understand what gave Mr. Harris license to write about motion pictures – as if anything about that industry even implies truth or reality, but when I went to the Mark Harris page at amazon.com, it was pretty blank, this evidently being his only book. But critics who know what their talking about (unlike moi) seem to think his observations in Pictures at a Revolution are pretty credible, so I’ll just leave that be and move on to the meat.