Admit One

I don't think I really ever reviewed a memoir before. At least, not one written by someone who wasn't so famous my voice would go up a couple of octaves upon meeting them. This rather slight and slender tome is the memoir of up-and-coming British actor Emmett James. I was approached via email by someone representing the book who had no doubt stumbled across this much esteemed blog (haw haw haw) and wanted to know if I was interested in reading this book. Taking it to be some kind of analysis of films or a fictional novel heavily influenced by film-geekdom I replied - yes, of course I am interested, please send it along and I will read and review.

I'll cut to the chase for those involved with the book's writing and publication (in the off-chance case they are reading this review); I didn't hate this book, but it did leave me scratching my head a little.

Basically, the book is divided up into short chapters - each one named after and loosely connected to one of the author's favourite films. Each chapter deals with a chapter in the author's life, the earlier ones dealing with his Croydon-based childhood and the later ones dealing with his forays into the world of film-acting. It's a fairly brief book, probably owing to the fact that the author is relatively young and is yet to become a household name.

It starts in quite a promising fashion, with suitable payouts levelled at Steven Seagal and a cheeky and well-educated wit carrying along the prose, but I have to say that I was a little disappointed to find that the connection between each chapter's story and the films that they were named after became very tenuous at best, and I really was expecting less in the way of an actual memoir and more in the way of film analysis. I can't dwell on that too much because it was pretty much just my expectation after reading the tagline "A journey into film". I guess this is kind of subjective, so: my bad.

There are several amusing anecdotes throughout the book, the most amusing probably being the thinly veiled story about the author's attempt to audition for the part of Robin in Batman Forever. I couldn't help but laugh at how little effort he went to in disguising Joel Schumacher's identity when writing about this. But what ended up confusing me about this whole book was that just when the story started heading somewhere (I assumed it was building up to the author's big breakthrough role or something else that warranted the hyperbole written in the 'about the author' section) the book just ended. Is that it? Is the highlight of this guy's career a bit part in Titanic? Maybe the book is marketed oddly or something, I could understand it if the book was packaged as 'how I tried to break into Hollywood and almost made it' or the 'trials and the tribulations of an up-and-comer' but during the course of reading the book I just felt like it was selling Emmett James to me as a big star recounting his early days. I know everyone's life is of equal value (in theory) but if I was to write a memoir of my childhood and how I came to work in a bookstore at the grand old age of 28 I can guarantee there would be more than a few readers prefacing their reviews with a big 'so what?'

Sorry, it was an entertaining read and I always feel bad about not giving a great review when someone goes to the effort of sending a book all the way from America or England to my home in suburban Australia, but I felt a little disappointed when I finished reading this. I think it would've been much more effective if it had been fictionalised to an extent, making the book a literary adventure closely based on the author's experiences or something like that.