Ben Bryant

THE GOOD: Interesting, varied subject matter.

THE BAD: Apparently self-published without benefit of serious editing. Fair number of typos.

THE UGLY: Chapter heads feature quotes about the unreliability of memory. Nearly every page contains statements about things forgotten or lack of memory, or statements to the effect that further information on a subject will be covered later.

This is a memoir. The author's personality is clear in this writing. This book is the second of a series of three books about the author's career in film. I have not read book 1.

A career in film, in this book mostly in filming TV ads, is interesting material for those of us not in that field. I suspect the book could be especially interesting for someone in that field or a related line of work. The book has some quite funny moments and some of the stories are memorable. Mostly, the book is first person and reads like a diary of sorts, in that it seems the author is intent on recalling all that he can, including names of everyone he ever worked with. This gets confusing early on for the reader who knows none of these people. It's also a bit boring to read over and over every person's name and position who was on every shoot. I suspect writing the book was fine therapy and enjoyable remembrance time for the author, despite his many protests regarding memory.

The writing seems honest to me. Readers will understand something about who the author is and why he doesn't think he has anything in common with relatives at a family gathering. Ben Bryant lead an interesting career life, with an equally interesting spouse on a different career path. There's no doubt he knows his craft well, and he makes sure the reader knows that.

Chapters and paragraphs within chapters are not in chronological order. Besides the huge, almost endless cast of characters, it's hard to follow any timeline. The author and colleagues regularly used marijuana and liquor/beer, which is pointed out many times. They used while working and then later in the book, the author denies that they used while working, so this is confusing.

This is an opinionated, fascinating fellow, and some of his opinions are downright funny in a good way, depending on your point of view, naturally. Some of them may not be so good, but I felt the man has a good heart, after all the rest.

I don't see the book having wide appeal, though I do think people in the business would thoroughly enjoy it. For the author, the series seems like an exercise in getting his life down before he forgets any more of it, because he claims to have forgot much and yet he has written 3 volumes.

Someone who is a writer could make this into a truly fascinating book -- one book. It's unnecessarily wordy, with many memory loss apologies, too many "I'll get to that later" statements, and way too much detail about who and what for the average reader. For Ben, I suspect this is perfect. It's his life, after all. He wants details. The rest of us, maybe not so much.

Detail is great in a book if it's pertinent or lends ambiance to the story. But this isn't a story really. It's an accounting of jobs and a career. While it's an interesting one full of known names, who really needs to know every person on every shoot?

I learned quite a bit about the filming of ads and how things work, about networking in this industry, and what kind of a life this may be. Most of this volume is about technology that is no longer used, so the book may be useful for anyone needing this kind of information. The end hints at new technology to come and changing with the times.

I received this book from Goodreads Giveaways.


… (altro)