Big Kiss: One Actor's Desperate Attempt to Claw His Way to the Middle - Softcover

Alford, Henry

3.89

55 ratings by Goodreads

9780767907415: Big Kiss: One Actor's Desperate Attempt to Claw His Way to the Middle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0767907418 ISBN 13: 9780767907415

Publisher: Broadway, 2001

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Henry Alford was a well-adjusted, critically acclaimed author living quietly in New York City.

Then he decided to become an actor.

Thus begins Alford's hilarious romp through the uncanny world of the struggling actor, with its horrible headshots, gleefully sadistic acting teachers, and mutilated Shakespeare. Alford is rejected by directors, ignored by casting people, and educated in the finer points of Shakespearean thespianism at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in England, where he fails to convince the Queen to attend his final performance. Along the way, he auditions for the role of Wilbur the Pig in Charlotte's Web, triumphs as an extra in Godzilla, and takes his sixty-nine-year-old bird-watching, chain-smoking mother to improvisational-comedy camp. Original, absurd, and written with true comic grace, Big Kiss captures in a new and unforgettable way the experience of being a performer.

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From the Back Cover:

"As Whistler said to Wilde, 'Very witty.'"
--Vanity Fair

"In the tradition of George Plimpton and David Sedaris? Incisive wit twinned with snappy prose makes for some maliciously funny vignettes, rife with the command of someone who has found his niche as commentator, voyeur, and, in truth, showman."
--The Village Voice

"Arguably the definitive work on theatrical humiliation."
-?The New York Times

"While his style is reminiscent of writers like David Sedaris and Paul Rudnick, [Alford] has his own voice, one that is as charming as it is gleefully sardonic."
--Harper's Bazaar

About the Author:

Henry Alford is the author of Municipal Bondage: One Man's Anxiety-Producing Adventures in the Big City, published by Random House in 1994. He has been a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, and a staff writer at Spy. He has also written for The New Yorker, GQ, New York, Details, Vogue, Travel & Leisure, The Village Voice, and Paris Review. He can be reached at hankalf@aol.com.
From the Hardcover edition.

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