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Hooking Up: You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again Again
1996: You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again is published and rocks Hollywood with its no-holds-barred stories from girls who dare to name names and tell tales about what really happens with celebrities behind closed doors. Shocking, fearless, and dishing dirt like never before, You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again becomes a publishing sensation that rides the New York Times bestseller list for months. 2006: Ten years later, only the names have changed. Sex, money, drugs, rock and roll, porn and prostitution continue to flourish...and in Hooking Up four new women tell their intimate stories of life in the Hollywood fast lane ... Naughty games with legendary film and television producers and their wives... Debauched crack binges with one of television's biggest stars...Romantic "dates" with movies stars... Yachts, designer clothes, champagne, cocaine and hard cold cash.... It's all in Hooking Up, and it's all true!
- GenresSex Work
205 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 30, 2006
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63 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 11, 2013
Too much gossip, not enough substance.
The first account by "Olivia" is such a simplistic one wonders if it's just a word-for-word transcript from a taped interview, with no re-writes or editing. Example, "That yacht must have been worth millions and millions of dollars." Or "Life is funny. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day..."
"Olivia" refers to an Armenian prince, and later on to a Saudi Arabian president. Either she is truly ignorant about foreign affairs (something she admits to on page 5), or unable to fact-check her own writing (if indeed she wrote this, instead of having it transcribed by someone else, as I suspect).
Alternatively, her wealthy clients could be having her on, which only goes to show how naive she was (and still is). It's ironic that the one film she managed to have an acting role in is titled Pretty Smart!
The last two pages hold some promise, because that's where "Olivia" discusses the ethics of what she's been doing, and provides a better glimpse into her past and current motivations. But this section is brief, and there's not much explanation as to how her attitude (d)evolved.
"I used to do it for the thrill - now I would do it for the money."
"Call me a realist."
If only she had gone back and paid more attention to her narrative, I think she could have provided a more realistic insight into her complex life story.
Carly Milne's section is better written and/or edited. an attempt has been made to re-create dialogue and provide the reader with a spectator's view of a developing scene, rather than to passively provide an account of this happened and then that happened. There's a form and a method to this narrative, even if the dialogue is at a below-par level:
"So was Kevin Federline really jealous of you two?"
"Ommigod, he's the best. I've never had someone like him before."
Not to mention the large blank space gaps between the lines of dialogue, intended to stretch out a rather slim story.
Unfortunately, the by-now distracting Hollywood A-list namedropping continues. The segments could have been titled according to something related to the narrator's own life experience (eg, "Falling Apart" or "The Ironies of Life"). What started in the "Olivia" story, becomes more prominent here. Segments are now primarily labeled "Britney Spears and Tommy Lee" "Charlie Sheen and Michael Keaton" "Marlon Wayans" "The Music Industry Bigwig" and so forth.
Also, I felt that the writing style of some passages was inauthentic, with words and phrases selected to impress, rather than coming from an original voice. "Everyone gathered out front of the Sheraton Universal to mingle and chat while a minstrel wandered the crowd." This is a gathering of adult industry performers, not a Renaissance fair! And since when do women call a ladies' sleeveless top a wife beater, or choose to describe their job as being "drilled by some of the top swordsmen in the industry," even if they are porn film actresses?
Amanda's story is more informative and personal from the get-go. Early on she tells us "I realized just how tired of this kind of shit I really am... Actual sex is the least demanding part of my job - all this other craps is what gets so draining..." and then she proceeds to illustrate this with a run-down of her many and varied experiences. This time round there is an understood point of view, a purpose to the narrative.
It's a pity then that most of it by now reads like a rehash of the previous two memoirs. Her clients are more or less the same set of movie stars and film industry executives as Olivia's, while Adnan Khashoggi is yet again a favorite customer.
My suggestion is to skip the first two segments, read this one first and then if you are up to some more read the rest of the book.
The book closes with Jennifer Young's story "Hollywood Princess," your stereotypical celebrity offspring tell-all where throwing parties and inviting more celebrity offsprings is considered being a "real entrepreneur," until one ends up being Heidi Fleiss's go-fer. Enough said.
The first account by "Olivia" is such a simplistic one wonders if it's just a word-for-word transcript from a taped interview, with no re-writes or editing. Example, "That yacht must have been worth millions and millions of dollars." Or "Life is funny. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day..."
"Olivia" refers to an Armenian prince, and later on to a Saudi Arabian president. Either she is truly ignorant about foreign affairs (something she admits to on page 5), or unable to fact-check her own writing (if indeed she wrote this, instead of having it transcribed by someone else, as I suspect).
Alternatively, her wealthy clients could be having her on, which only goes to show how naive she was (and still is). It's ironic that the one film she managed to have an acting role in is titled Pretty Smart!
The last two pages hold some promise, because that's where "Olivia" discusses the ethics of what she's been doing, and provides a better glimpse into her past and current motivations. But this section is brief, and there's not much explanation as to how her attitude (d)evolved.
"I used to do it for the thrill - now I would do it for the money."
"Call me a realist."
If only she had gone back and paid more attention to her narrative, I think she could have provided a more realistic insight into her complex life story.
Carly Milne's section is better written and/or edited. an attempt has been made to re-create dialogue and provide the reader with a spectator's view of a developing scene, rather than to passively provide an account of this happened and then that happened. There's a form and a method to this narrative, even if the dialogue is at a below-par level:
"So was Kevin Federline really jealous of you two?"
"Ommigod, he's the best. I've never had someone like him before."
Not to mention the large blank space gaps between the lines of dialogue, intended to stretch out a rather slim story.
Unfortunately, the by-now distracting Hollywood A-list namedropping continues. The segments could have been titled according to something related to the narrator's own life experience (eg, "Falling Apart" or "The Ironies of Life"). What started in the "Olivia" story, becomes more prominent here. Segments are now primarily labeled "Britney Spears and Tommy Lee" "Charlie Sheen and Michael Keaton" "Marlon Wayans" "The Music Industry Bigwig" and so forth.
Also, I felt that the writing style of some passages was inauthentic, with words and phrases selected to impress, rather than coming from an original voice. "Everyone gathered out front of the Sheraton Universal to mingle and chat while a minstrel wandered the crowd." This is a gathering of adult industry performers, not a Renaissance fair! And since when do women call a ladies' sleeveless top a wife beater, or choose to describe their job as being "drilled by some of the top swordsmen in the industry," even if they are porn film actresses?
Amanda's story is more informative and personal from the get-go. Early on she tells us "I realized just how tired of this kind of shit I really am... Actual sex is the least demanding part of my job - all this other craps is what gets so draining..." and then she proceeds to illustrate this with a run-down of her many and varied experiences. This time round there is an understood point of view, a purpose to the narrative.
It's a pity then that most of it by now reads like a rehash of the previous two memoirs. Her clients are more or less the same set of movie stars and film industry executives as Olivia's, while Adnan Khashoggi is yet again a favorite customer.
My suggestion is to skip the first two segments, read this one first and then if you are up to some more read the rest of the book.
The book closes with Jennifer Young's story "Hollywood Princess," your stereotypical celebrity offspring tell-all where throwing parties and inviting more celebrity offsprings is considered being a "real entrepreneur," until one ends up being Heidi Fleiss's go-fer. Enough said.
August 13, 2010
Reasonably entertaining account from two callgirls, one porn publicist, and a chick who does something, I'm not sure what, but seemed to be in the book because she was Heidi Fleiss's assistant for a while. I think she was mostly one of those Kim Kardashian what-does-she-do-again? types. That seems to be a running theme in this book; it's all so name-droppy, which I guess was the point of it, but it got a little thicker than I cared for. I was more interested in what the experience of doing sex work is, rather than whether Robin Williams has a hairy chest or Matt LeBlanc is a douchebag. There's some of both, but a LOT of name-dropping.
I almost skipped the porn publicist's story, having been there and done that and being kind of sick of it, but I put my emotional baggage aside and read it anyway; that was by far the most interesting section of the book. By Carly Milne, it just had a lot more dynamism and self-awareness than the other accounts.
However, I picked this thing up thinking I would get a bunch of tell-alls from prostitutes, out of -- I admit it -- purely salacious interest. It's not really that. It feels icky and gross, and made me seriously not want to ever have sex again. The two women who were callgirls express some bizarre on-again, off-again contempt for sexual variation; one of them, in particular, seems to think every guy who's into anything even remotely atypical (like Aaron Spelling, who supposedly watched his wife Candy Spelling with another man) as maybe being gay. I dunno what that's about, other than typical bonehead homophobic ignorance.
The whole book gave me an icky feeling. I don't really feel like some of the "typical" sex worker presumptions are harped on, meaning drugs, sexual abuse, etc. There seems to be LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of drug use described in the book, but I feel like the authors were just describing their reality, so if there were really drugs there, I don't hold that against them in terms of prejudicial perception of sex workers.
But this I *do* hold against them: They all seem like really, really, really shallow bitches. That's probably why I liked Carly's section best -- because the porn stars in that section do come across that way, or at least empty and confused, but at least the narrator comes across as something different.
Having known a lot of porn stars and callgirls, I don't think the bubbleheadedness reflects reality at all. Maybe it reflects the callgirl scene in Los Angeles and a certain subset of porn stars; I've never known prostitutes from LA. The whores I know in San Francisco all seem to have half-completed PhDs in Russian literature. The girls in this book don't seem to. To be fair, I've known a LOT of porn stars from LA who are not stupid, even remotely, and who are incredibly nice people and not shallow bitches at all. So...there you go. Whatever.
The moral? Generalizing about a class of people from four life stories of people, especially in three different and essentially unrelated job functions (callgirl, madam's assistant, publicist), is dangerous. But it's kind of unavoidable when you're a reader, unless you stay extremely vigilant.
Overall, easy to read, fairly entertaining but sort of annoying for the reasons stated above. I still enjoyed it, and would give it four stars except the third author's insistence on speculating on male clients' gayness utterly infuriated me.
I almost skipped the porn publicist's story, having been there and done that and being kind of sick of it, but I put my emotional baggage aside and read it anyway; that was by far the most interesting section of the book. By Carly Milne, it just had a lot more dynamism and self-awareness than the other accounts.
However, I picked this thing up thinking I would get a bunch of tell-alls from prostitutes, out of -- I admit it -- purely salacious interest. It's not really that. It feels icky and gross, and made me seriously not want to ever have sex again. The two women who were callgirls express some bizarre on-again, off-again contempt for sexual variation; one of them, in particular, seems to think every guy who's into anything even remotely atypical (like Aaron Spelling, who supposedly watched his wife Candy Spelling with another man) as maybe being gay. I dunno what that's about, other than typical bonehead homophobic ignorance.
The whole book gave me an icky feeling. I don't really feel like some of the "typical" sex worker presumptions are harped on, meaning drugs, sexual abuse, etc. There seems to be LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of drug use described in the book, but I feel like the authors were just describing their reality, so if there were really drugs there, I don't hold that against them in terms of prejudicial perception of sex workers.
But this I *do* hold against them: They all seem like really, really, really shallow bitches. That's probably why I liked Carly's section best -- because the porn stars in that section do come across that way, or at least empty and confused, but at least the narrator comes across as something different.
Having known a lot of porn stars and callgirls, I don't think the bubbleheadedness reflects reality at all. Maybe it reflects the callgirl scene in Los Angeles and a certain subset of porn stars; I've never known prostitutes from LA. The whores I know in San Francisco all seem to have half-completed PhDs in Russian literature. The girls in this book don't seem to. To be fair, I've known a LOT of porn stars from LA who are not stupid, even remotely, and who are incredibly nice people and not shallow bitches at all. So...there you go. Whatever.
The moral? Generalizing about a class of people from four life stories of people, especially in three different and essentially unrelated job functions (callgirl, madam's assistant, publicist), is dangerous. But it's kind of unavoidable when you're a reader, unless you stay extremely vigilant.
Overall, easy to read, fairly entertaining but sort of annoying for the reasons stated above. I still enjoyed it, and would give it four stars except the third author's insistence on speculating on male clients' gayness utterly infuriated me.
October 23, 2008
Matt Leblanc unwinds by freebasing, then watching hookers have sex. Also, hookers tend not to write very interesting books.
November 17, 2016
Una prostituta (+ tardi le avrebbero chiamate escort) ha raccolto le sue esperienze con personaggi famosi (ma mooolto famosi) di Hollywood e dintorni (nomi e cognomi in chiaro).
L'avevo letto perché tra i personaggi c'era pure Prince, che in una divertente scenetta (al contrario degli altri uomini) si era fatto desiderare diventando così l'unico rimpianto della scrittrice.
Nel libro c'era spazio anche X un Brad Pitt (pre-Jolie) solitario.
Come mi aspettavo, i ricchissimi uomini che frequentavano escort erano giudicati pessimi dalla scrittrice/prostituta, X diverse ragioni: perché non mostravano sentimenti o per le loro perversioni.
L'unico che ne usciva come un vero signore per i modi e per la generosità era Charlie Sheen, che un anno fa ha detto di essere positivo all'HIV.
L'avevo letto perché tra i personaggi c'era pure Prince, che in una divertente scenetta (al contrario degli altri uomini) si era fatto desiderare diventando così l'unico rimpianto della scrittrice.
Nel libro c'era spazio anche X un Brad Pitt (pre-Jolie) solitario.
Come mi aspettavo, i ricchissimi uomini che frequentavano escort erano giudicati pessimi dalla scrittrice/prostituta, X diverse ragioni: perché non mostravano sentimenti o per le loro perversioni.
L'unico che ne usciva come un vero signore per i modi e per la generosità era Charlie Sheen, che un anno fa ha detto di essere positivo all'HIV.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 5, 2015
Ok read
I really enjoy tell all books. This one was good because it came from four different women. It wasn't as juicy as I thought it would be though, a little boring in parts.
I really enjoy tell all books. This one was good because it came from four different women. It wasn't as juicy as I thought it would be though, a little boring in parts.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews