Items from the Wish List: More Actors

Absolute Pandemonium: My Louder Than Life Story Brian Blessed

There's no one quite like Brian Blessed: actor, storyteller, mountaineer and coffin-maker. In this frank, riotous memoir he recalls his childhood in a Yorkshire mining town, his breakthrough on Z Cars, falling for Katharine Hepburn, raising hell with Peter O'Toole, meeting the love of his life, the actress Hildegard Neil - and punching Harold Pinter down a flight of stairs. No long dramatic pauses this time, Harold; he got one right on the side of the jaw. Wham! – Amazon.

Panther In My Kitchen by Brian Blessed  (Author)

Brian Blessed has a lifelong love of animals and over the years has rescued cats and dogs, horses and ponies, and even a very ungrateful fighting cock. All were characters in their own right, such as Jessie, a dog left languishing for a year at the local RSPCA, who ruled the entire household with a rod of iron, when she wasn’t out harassing the local vicar. Then there was Bodger, an abused terrier cross breed, who was nursed back to health by Brian and his wife, and Peppone, a stray cat and notorious thief, who was responsible for a crime epidemic in the Bagshot area. Most of all there was Misty, a soul mate and the first Jack Russell Brian met who didn’t take an instant dislike to him. Over the years Brian has encountered more exotic animals too, from Kali the black panther who had free run of his kitchen and the gentle boa constrictor Bo Bo who went for walks with him in Richmond Park to the female gorillas who found him incredibly attractive. Written with all of Brian’s ebullience, The Panther in My Kitchen is a laugh-out-loud, life-affirming book about the joy animals bring and why we should care for them. – Amazon.

Gilliamesque: A Pre-posthumous Memoir by Terry Gilliam  (Author)

The screenwriter, innovative animator, highly acclaimed visionary film director, and only non-British member of Monty Python offers an intimate glimpse into his world in this fascinating memoir illustrated with hand-drawn sketches, notes, and memorabilia from his personal archive.

From his no-frills childhood in the icy wastes of Minnesota, to some of the hottest water Hollywood had to offer, via the cutting edge of 1960s and ’70s counter-culture in New York, L.A. and London, Terry Gilliam’s life has been as vivid, entertaining and unorthodox as one of his films.

Telling his story for the first time, the director of Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, and Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas—not to mention co-founder of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—recalls his life so far. Packed with never-before-seen artwork, photographs and commentary, Gilliamesque blends the visual and the verbal with scabrous wit and fascinating insight.

Gilliam’s “pre-posthumous memoir” also features a cast of amazing supporting characters—George Harrison, Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Uma Thurman, Johnny Depp, Heath Ledger and all of the fellow Pythons—as well as cameo appearances from some of the heaviest cultural hitters of modern times, from Woody Allen to Frank Zappa, Gloria Steinem to Robert Crumb, Richard Nixon to Hunter S. Thompson. Gilliam’s encounters with the great and the not-so-good are revealing, funny, and hugely entertaining.

This book is an unrestrained look into a unique creative mind and an incomparable portrait of late twentieth-century popular culture. – Amazon.

Which Reminds Me by Tony Randall  (Author), Michael Mindlin (Author)

The actor and entertainer offers a collection of show business anecdotes from his forty years in television, motion pictures, and the theater, from Broadway to Europe. – Amazon.

Dear Me: Peter Ustinov by Peter Ustinov  (Author)

Autobiography of Peter Ustinov. – Amazon.

Ustinov: Still at Large by Peter Ustinov  (Author)

More Fool Me: A Memoir by Stephen Fry  (Author)

More Fool Me is a brilliant, eloquent account by a man driven to create and to entertain―revealing a dark side he has long kept hidden. By his early thirties, Stephen Fry― television darling and critically acclaimed and bestselling author with a coterie of equally talented friends―had, as they say, “made it.” Writing and recording by day, and haunting a never-ending series of celebrity parties by night, he was a high functioning addict in both work and play. He was so distracted by the high life that he could hardly see the inevitable, headlong tumble that must surely follow . . .  – Amazon.