People Are Crazy Here

by Rex Reed

For over two decades, the art of the interview was very nearly the sole province of Rex Reed, the Master of the Celebrity Profile. While still in his twenties Rex Reed became the widely-syndicated film critic for a succession of high-profile magazines and newspapers and from that vantage point began to interview everyone in the film and theater worlds who mattered. In People Are Crazy Here Rex Reed writes a long and intimate profile of Tennessee Williams, a rare look at George C. Scott in all his eccentricity, Doris Day's decision to leave Hollywood to care for animals, Jack Nicholson following his early success with Easy Rider, and much more. Writer Tom Wolfe has said about “Rex Reed…raised the celebrity interview to a new level through his frankness and his eye for social detail. He has also been a master at capturing a story line in the interview situation itself.”Along with Wolfe, Truman Capote, Kenneth Tynan, and Harry Crews, Rex Reed achieved a literary reputation for a genre, the celebrity profile, once relegated to gossip journalists who as often as not wrote studio-approved fantasies of the lives of the stars. Devault-Graves Digital Editions has reissued Rex Reed’s quartet of best-selling profile Do You Sleep In the Nude?, Conversations in the Raw, Valentines & Vitriol, and People Are Crazy Here. Virtually anyone who was anyone during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s in the movie and theater world are captured for the ages in these books. When asked why he no longer writes celebrity profiles, Mr. Reed answered “The movie stars of today are no longer interesting.”But when they were, Rex Reed was there to file them away for history. It is to the reader’s pleasure to rediscover them.Included in People Are Crazy Here are profiles Tennessee Williams, George C. Scott, Jack Nicholson, Doris Day, Alfred Hitchcock, Ann-Margret, Glenda Jackson, Bette Midler, Grace Slick, Alice Cooper, Cybill Shepherd, Tuesday Weld, and over twenty more.

Genres: Nonfiction

253 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Rex Taylor Reed is an American film critic and former co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies. He currently writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rex Reed's very entertaining fourth book (following DO YOU SLEEP IN TEH NUDE?, CONVERSATIONS INTHE RAW, BIG SCREEN LITTLE SCREEN), this 1974 collection of essays previously collected in Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate.

Profiles/interviews include: Tennessee Williams, The Cockettes, Marcello Mastroianni, Sally Kellerman, Grace SLick, Merle Oberon (when she has produced, edited and starred in her comeback film INTERVAL, which Reed calls "pretty awful"), Kay Thompson, Bette Midler, Carrie Snogress, Sylvia Miles, Joan Hackett, Cliff Robertson & Joel Grey (on the set of THE MAN IN THE SWING), Troy Donahue, Laurence Olivier & Micahel Caine (on teh set of SLEUTH); George C. Scott, Elia Kazan, Richard Chamberlain, Alice Faye, Dorothy Malone, Doris Day, Carroll Baker, Tuesday Weld, Gloria Graham, Joanne Woodward, Maggie Smith, Glenda Jackson, Liv Ullman & Edward Albert (on the set of FORTY CARATS), Jacqueline Susann, Ken Russell, Alfred Hitchcock, Alice Cooper, Roger Moore, Peter Bogdanovich & Cybill SShepherd (on the set of DAISY MILLER), Ann-Margaret, Jack Lemmon, Jack Nicholson and Adolph Zukor (at his 100th birthday party).

Another sensation collection of acerbic, brilliantly observant Hollywood profiles.

[Laura Ostermeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely a must read for anyone into the 1970s entertainment industry. Dishy and brilliantly hilarious in many places! A fun filled look back on, what now feels like, a long ago time.

[Noah McClintock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less bitter than Do You Sleep in the Nude? Was interesting reading some of these.

[Phoebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of interview/articles by Rex Reed, on the famous people. They were written around 1973 or 4, and so were snapshots of these people at that time, rather than what you get if you look them up on the internet, as history has decided to portray them, condensing their stories and viewed through the lens of our time rather than theirs, and with the knowledge/hindsight of however they "ended up" -- died or stopped being famous/fashionable. That makes this much much much more fascinating and fun. The only caveat is that I really cannot vouch for Rex Reed's accuracy/journalistic integrity. His first subject is Tennessee Williams, and Reed has him saying stuff that I recognize from an essay he wrote for a magazine on the nature of fame. I know this essay well, and long chunks are lifted verbatim. I very much doubt Tennessee Williams was quoting his own article word-for-word for this interview as though the words were just springing from his head in the moment. But the part about what he was wearing, the jumpsuits, that part I believe. That part I ate up. Good times!

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rex grows on you; at first he might come off a bit bitchy, but underneath that he has heart and a sense that his feet are planted firmly on the ground (no matter how high his subjects might be flying at the moment). And if the people in it do tend to sound a bit interchangeable at times, that's mostly the fault of show business--not him.

A guy who nicely managed to be in Hollywood (but not of it).

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is taking longer to read these than normal because I find myself Googling every interviewed subject to see what happened to them after the interview.