"Celluloid is about dreams, movies are about fantasy, and motion picture are about things you couldn't possibly even imagine in your wildest dreams, brought vividly to life in front of your very eyes" (xv). This is how Emmett James' memoir Admit One: My Life in Film
begins, and based on that quote alone I had fairly high expectations for this book. Each chapter in the narrative begins with a movie, the very first is the Jungle Book, a quick synopsis of the movie and then moves into James' own story. The memoir is divided into two parts. The first, Coming Attractions, is about his life growing up in and outside of London as a child deeply obsessed with movies and everything that went along with him. The second half, Feature Presentation, is about his life as a struggling actor in Hollywood, trying to make a career out of his childhood passion.
I loved the way this book was set up, I just wish it would have been executed a little bit better. There were times in most of the chapters in the book where I had a hard time remembering what movie he started talking about. The first few chapters stayed with the movie alright, but the tangents kept getting more confusing as the book went on. It felt like a gimmick, because most of the movies really had nothing to do with the story he was telling. I got so caught up in trying to make a connection to the movie that I could enjoy the great storytelling and humor that was happening in the book. And let's be clear about that, this is a funny book. James is very funny, comparing his mother to the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz and talking about one of his first acting jobs dressing up as a woman. He pokes fun at others, but he also pokes fun at himself and that is a saving grace in this book.
But even though he is a good storyteller, and he can make me laugh so hard my abs get a good workout, I wish there was a little more substance to this story. Yeah it's interesting, but I think there were things James could have pushed a little harder. He begins to in a later chapter about working on the movie the Titanic; "The joy, excitement, and arrogance I had felt upon leaving Los Angeles had been quickly replaced by an overwhelming sense of guilt and sadness. It struck me as more than a little ironic that I was making my way to participate in a film surrounding the horrors of an unforgiving class system. Here, now, in front of me eyes, nearly one hundred years later, was the most blatant wealth and poverty line I had every physically experienced" (156). He begins to push here, into the falsity of movies, celebrities, and film making, but he pulls away too quickly. This is something that I really struggled with towards the end of the book. It seemed like the story got too stuck int he gimmick of the movies that it couldn't explore throughout the book what was finally found at the end. James says he didn't want to be a celebrity, but he wanted to be an actor. And there is a difference, one that I don't ever really think about. He talks about how his views have changed. The ending was the most interesting part of the memoir. I wanted to transplant some of that deep thinking into the first half of the book, which basically just felt like childhood stories that went nowhere.
This book got a C. I received the book from a publicist.
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