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Its an engaging enough book, but it becomes something else when you listen to it.
So, its a tense listen, to say the least.
Each sentence he starts sounds like it could be his last.
But its clear he loved her greatly.
He sobs openly as he talks about Shores kindness and openness, and all the advice she gave him.
Theres a ramshackle honesty to that memoir, and there was a ramshackle honesty to the man, too.
But something honest always came through, like hed let all of us in on a secret.
Maybe its because he had never planned to be an actor.
He dropped out of the Actors Studio after just a few sessions.
But he did have something else.
He replied that his problem was he didnt know how to turn itoff.
(None of them did, of course, and Reynolds left for Hollywood soon after.)
Like almost all movie stars, Reynolds managed to turn what might have been drawbacks into strengths.
But maybe thats why he seemed so confident.
You might mistake him for someone who doesnt care.
Reynolds was excellent in these parts, but something ineffable happened when he became a star.
Reynolds is laconic, smooth, sexy, but somewhat subdued.
Hes still basically doing a part.
Hes got the mustache now, and he spends much of the movie giggling and smiling.
This fit right in with his popularity as a self-effacing and garrulous talk-show guest.
(He was even open about the fact that hed been wearing hairpieces since the late 1960s.)
But maybe something was lost somewhere in there well.
He writes that a year afterThe Cannonball Run, he couldnt get his phone calls returned.
Id chosen too many films because I liked the location (Jamaica?
Ill take it!).
Or the leading lady.
Or because Id be working with friends.
But there was good work in this period as well.
Reynolds also famously clashed withBoogie Nightsdirector Paul Thomas Anderson, and claimed not to really understand the picture.
Which makes the performances of my fellow cast members all the more remarkable.
I keep returning to that word: honesty.
And I keep returning to Burt Reynolds crying as he remembers Dinah Shore.
Somewhere in that chapter, he relays a bit of advice Shore gave him.
The camera is an X-ray machine.
People look inside you and decide whether they like you.
If they do, theres almost nothing you could do to change their minds.
