Roxanne reviews Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker by Barry Sonnenfeld
When we were on our last day of curbside sales before the Covid19 shutdown, my fellow bookseller and I looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, “We better stock up on a few books!” Like being in a candy store before a sugar ban, so we had to choose wisely. Loving biographies and memoirs, I picked one up from our new Non-Fiction table and thought I’d give it a whirl. And what a great find it was! If you enjoy memoirs as much as I do and grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, you’ll love Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker. Barry’s hilarious upbringing will have you reminiscing about gas ovens your mother had to light, bad tv dinners, and self-involved parents who thought children should be seen and not heard. And if you’re also a movie buff, you’ll be tickled pink at reading juicy tidbits from the movie Big, with everyone’s actor/darling Tom Hanks, as well as obscure Hollywood meetings with the likes of Warren Beatty and John Travolta. Not to mention his beginnings as the Coen Brothers cinematographer on Blood Simple and Raising Arizona. His life wasn’t without a few bumps as is the norm, yet he tells about his trials with such heroic panache and humility, you realize with the right attitude, that any challenge can be overcome. And isn’t that a message we can all use right about now?