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A Thinker's Damn: Audie Murphy, Vietnam, and the Making of the Quiet American
A tale of the unmaking of the first American movie filmed in Vietnam in 1957, the scandalous and disasterous undertaking is finally exposed. Surviving cast and crew members explain a contorted drama behind the scenes as Audie Murphy goes to Vietnam, foreshadowing the war-to-come. It depicts Hollywood at its worst!
245 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 1999
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 11, 2014
I checked Russo's book out from the library after having read Michael Redgrave's autobiography as well as some film reviews of The Quiet American that said Redgrave's performance as Fowler was brilliant. Also, 9 reviewers on Amazon gave this book 5 stars.
However . . . it's obvious Russo acted as his own editor in this self-published book. His story is one worth telling but it would have been so much better if an editor had done what editors do best, which is assist the author to put words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters. As it is, Russo's story reads like a first draft. At 223 pages of text, it is thrice as long as it should be. Typos run rampant, but these can be ignored. However, his sentence structure and repetitiveness are not easy to ignore. Chapter 1 elaborates and repeats ad infinitum details of Olivier's and Clift's careers and Redgrave's competitiveness with Olivier so that the reader wonders if Russo will ever get to the point, the point being making a film of The Quiet American in Vietman in 1957.
Considering the access the author had years later to film cast and production members, the chapters covering the actual filming in Vietman and then in Rome should have told us a lot more than they do. What's missing is too apparent. What's included is too often irrelevant. Despite the book's limitations, for those who liked the Audie Murphy film, or the later Michael Caine film version, Russo provides some useful and welcome background information.
However . . . it's obvious Russo acted as his own editor in this self-published book. His story is one worth telling but it would have been so much better if an editor had done what editors do best, which is assist the author to put words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters. As it is, Russo's story reads like a first draft. At 223 pages of text, it is thrice as long as it should be. Typos run rampant, but these can be ignored. However, his sentence structure and repetitiveness are not easy to ignore. Chapter 1 elaborates and repeats ad infinitum details of Olivier's and Clift's careers and Redgrave's competitiveness with Olivier so that the reader wonders if Russo will ever get to the point, the point being making a film of The Quiet American in Vietman in 1957.
Considering the access the author had years later to film cast and production members, the chapters covering the actual filming in Vietman and then in Rome should have told us a lot more than they do. What's missing is too apparent. What's included is too often irrelevant. Despite the book's limitations, for those who liked the Audie Murphy film, or the later Michael Caine film version, Russo provides some useful and welcome background information.
Displaying 1 of 1 review