Wishful Drinking
by Carrie Fisher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carrie FisherEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-02
ISBN: 1439102252
Number of pages: 163
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Book Reviews of Wishful Drinking
Book Review: Wishful Drinking produces Wishful Thinking...
Summary: 5 Stars
...that alcoholism, mental illness, drug addiction, and shock treatment can actually work together to deliver the most outrageous humor in authorship history to our eager front door (and even inside the house.) Now I've always been a fan of Hollywood Brat autobiographies, and Carrie's latest one is the FUNNIEST and most brilliant one I've ever devoured. I have to give credit, though, to Ned Wynn, whose book "We Will Always Live in Beverly Hills" contained a prologue so hysterical that no one else can top that one short page in their own books. And sure, I've found humor in other H-wood memoirs too. Jane Wyman was apparently so busy with her career and her social life that son Michael thought their black cook was his mother until he reached the age of eight. And Lana Turner was always so absent from home that Cheryl Crane actually envied her next-door-playmate, Liza Minnelli, because Liza's mom, Judy Garland, seemed to always just be laying around the house.
Well, I saw the humor. But I think the kids were serious.
Not to worry about Carrie Fisher though...not a single mishap or "tragedy" escaped her keen observation and a very blunt funny-bone. The only way to review "Wishful Drinking" is just to give you a few of her reflections, her lines, that had me laughing out loud. And I'm too damned old to laugh out loud.
Carrie became a star at 19 in "Star Wars" just as her mom, Debbie Reynolds, did at 19 in "Singin' in the Rain." Other than that, they shared very little, since Debbie seemed to take herself so seriously, and Carrie is totally relaxed telling us that she had an affair with a Democrat politician (Chris Dodd) but it was a Republican politician named Greg who died in her bed. Not that she'd ever have SEX with a Republican, and Greg was gay anyway, but they had both taken too much oxycontin and just passed out together. Carrie was the only one who woke up, but she still wants to honor Greg with a story about how he had shared office space in the White House with W. when George the First was President...and even tells in hysterical detail the 'frat boy fart prank' W. continually played on poor old Greg. Dead Greg. (Though I assume it was oxycontin that killed him, not W.'s flatulence.)
But politicos and her own parents are not the only ones cleverly ripped by Carrie's sharp tongue. About the Oscar nomination Debbie Reynolds accomplished for "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," Carrie goes on..."But tragically she lost to Julie Andrews for her stunning, layered, and moving portrait of Mary Popppins. IBSEN'S Mary Poppins, of course."
Her dad and mom had been Best Man and Matron of Honor at the wedding of their dear friends, Mike Todd and Liz Taylor. But upon the sudden demise of Mike Todd's private plane... "Naturally my father flew to Elizabeth's side, gradually making his way slowly to her front. He first dried her eyes with his handkerchief, then he consoled her with flowers, and he ultimately consoled her with his penis."
But Debbie bounced back by marrying "very, very old" Harry Karl, a shoe tycoon, who housed his new family in a gaudy mansion... "containing eight little pink refrigerators (you know, in case Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came over) and we had a lanai and many utility closets and three pools (you know, in case two broke.)"
Not only does she dissect her new step-dad, but gets (and gives) some good laughs out of his past. He had been married to, and divorced twice, by... "the actress(ish) Marie 'The Body' McDonald, who married a total of nine times. That many marriages could give you a headache. Anyway it did with Marie because she overdosed on pain-killers. And that last husband, not to be outdone, shot himself. You might say they loved each other to death."
Her dad, the crooner, also takes a lot of blows from his loving daughter, who enjoys telling about how he once swallowed two new miniature hearing aids thinking they were pills of some kind. Eddie had moved on from Debbie to Liz, and then Liz went on to Richard Burton, so Eddie went on to Connie Stevens, and then to a "Miss Louisiana" who was in her early 20's wedding Eddie in his late 50's. But after that disaster, he did find a really wonderful Chinese lady named Betty Lin, and they were together for several happy years. But... "Betty passes away. But don't worry about him. He's not done for long, because now he dates all of Chinatown! He does this partly as a tribute to Betty and partly because my father has had so many face-lifts that he looks Asian himself."
You know, I'm saddened by Carrie's alleged mental problems...but I'm still laughing. And folks, all those little quotes and stories from her were just segments of the first two chapters! Wait till you get to chapter 3. If you are possessed with a dark, warped sense of humor like mine...you're gonna LOVE "Wishful Drinking." Honest.
Summary of Wishful Drinking
Finally, after four hit novels, Carrie Fisher comes clean (well, sort of ) with the crazy truth that is her life in her first-ever memoir. In Wishful Drinking, adapted from her one-woman stage show, Fisher reveals what it was really like to grow up a product of "Hollywood in-breeding," come of age on the set of a little movie called Star Wars, and become a cultural icon and bestselling action figure at the age of nineteen.Intimate, hilarious, and sobering, Wishful Drinking is Fisher, looking at her life as she best remembers it (what do you expect after electroshock therapy?). It's an incredible tale: the child of Hollywood royalty -- Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher -- homewrecked by Elizabeth Taylor, marrying (then divorcing, then dating) Paul Simon, having her likeness merchandized on everything from Princess Leia shampoo to PEZ dispensers, learning the father of her daughter forgot to tell her he was gay, and ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.
Wishful Drinking, the show, has been a runaway success. Entertainment Weekly declared it "drolly hysterical" and the Los Angeles Times called it a "Beverly Hills yard sale of juicy anecdotes." This is Carrie Fisher at her best -- revealing her worst. She tells her true and outrageous story of her bizarre reality with her inimitable wit, unabashed self-deprecation, and buoyant, infectious humor.
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