Be Cool and Book 30

If you've seen Get Shorty, you've seen Be Cool. If you haven't seen the former, you'll probably get a kick out of the latter. If you have, well, you'll enjoy it, but you'll experience a lot of déja vu. Oddly, I enjoyed Get Shorty the movie over Be Cool, but Be Cool the book over Get Shorty.

Be Cool brings everybody's favorite shylock, Chili, back, only this time he's taking on the music industry. They opted to compress/cut down several of the characters in the book, but they kept a lot of the twists and turns. So if you've read the book, you'll have a better chance of knowing what's going on, but you'll occasionally be surprised at who's doing it. If you haven't read the book, things are a bit muddy. But it's still got some of the Elmore Leonard humor. I've heard that the reason Get Shorty was as good as it was had to do with the fact that they used a lot more of Leonard's dialogue. I suspect this is true. Be Cool isn't quite as true and that's where it suffers. But The Rock does a great job. So, it's an enjoyable time remembering how much you liked Get Shorty (except for the bit where you're remembering how much you liked Pulp Fiction).

Rebel Without a Crew documents Robert Rodriguez's experiences making El Mariachi (and yes, before you ask, reading this book was indeed a bit of a push to finally watching the movie - I've wanted to for years, but now I had no excuse...) Between this book and Bruce Campbell's If Chins Could Kill you've got an excellent look at all sides of making a film. If you have any interest in film making, you need this book. If you like reading interesting stories about the crazy things people do and the crazier things that happen to them, you need this book. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read and one that just might push you into film making if you have any leanings that way. Great book...