What a life! What a book!

You never know what you’re getting into when you pick up a show business memoir.
Some are unreadable.
Some are so egotistical and virtriolic that you end up hating the author (and yourself for wasting so much time!)
Every once in a while, however, a superior example of the genre comes along — the Lauren Bacall and Mia Farrow books come to mind.
But, Christopher Plummer’s new book, “In Spite of Myself” (Knopf) is in a class by itself.
Unlike some premature memoirists — who put out their first “book” in their 30s or 40s — Plummer has lived a full life and career worth writing about. A stage and screen star for more than a half-century, Plummer has earned the right to tell his story because he has triumphed in classic stage roles on both sides of the Atlantic and proven himself to be an extraordinarily durable and powerful film actor.
The star has worked both sides of the show business fence — the high art of Shakespeare and the other great stage writers and the slightly lower art involved in being a jobbing film and TV actor.
Unlike many actors who get a bit soft and sentimental as they age, Plummer has stayed as sharp as a tack into his 70s, giving spectacular late-life performances such as his Mike Wallace in the Michael Mann film “The Insider” (1999) and a towering Lear at Lincoln Center two seasons ago.
“In Spite of Myself” reveals Plummer to be a terrific writer who takes us through the highs and lows of his amazing career with an unflagging sense of humor and a down-to-earth style that draws the reader right in (the 648 pages race by).
Of course, there are full acounts of such famous Plummer projects as “The Sound of Music” (1965) — which he has come to admire after dissing it in the years right after its huge success — and his stage triumphs in the Archibald MacLeish-Elia Kazan collaboration “J.B.” and “Barrymore.”
But what I really love about the book is the way that Plummer tips his hat to the other actors who have played key roles in his career. Jason Robards and Julie Harris are just two of the legendary performers who are featured prominently and Plummer also took the time and space to remind us of such lesser known (and long gone) stage greats as Edward Everett Horton and Kate Reid.
“In Spite of Myself” takes us back to a halcyon era on Broadway in the 1950s when plays were as important as musicals and Plummer spent countless nights carousing in theater district bars with folks like Elaine Stritch, Jack Warden and Ben Gazzara.
There are a several chapters that Plummer could have expanded into small books, especially his funny and scary account of the chaotic and primitive Russian production of “Waterloo” which he worked on with Rod Steiger in the late 1960s.
Another memorable chapter is devoted to Plummer’s experiences starring in one of the biggest and most expensive epics of the 1960s — “The Fall of the Roman Empire” which failed at the box-office in spite of spectacular sets and costumes and a cast that included Sophia Loren, Alec Guinness, James Mason and Omar Sharif.
“In Spite of Myself” is a very big book, but I was still sorry to reach the last page.

No questions/No answers

Robinson Devor’s sort-of-documentary, “Zoo,” was chosen for the prestigious Director’s Fortnight slate at the Cannes Film Festival last year, but it received few theatrical engagements in this country after debuting to mixed reviews in Los Angeles and New York.The film has been released on DVD by ThinkFilm and is now available through NetFlix.I watched Devor’s movie the other night and I am still not quite sure what to make of it.The non-fiction film is done in the self-consciously artistic, pseudo-documentary style pioneered by Errol Morris in films such as “The Thin Blue Line,” which mixed dramatic recreations with hypnotic music by Philip Glass.Morris used music and fictional cinematic techniques to present the case of a Texas man who was falsely accused of murdering a cop. But,the art film style was combined with actual interviews in which people on both sides of the case had their say.Devor’s film is ostensibly about the death of a Washington State Boeing executive named Kenneth Pinyan in 2005 after he took part in equine bestiality rituals with a group of people he had met on the Internet.These “zoos” — they call themselves this because of their practice of zoophilia — claim they have a special affinity with animals that is about more than sex.Devor and his co-writer Charles Mudede seem to be so afraid of the subject of their film that they spend the whole movie staging beautifully photographed sequences that evade rather than illuminate what happened in the countryside outside Seattle three years ago.In the director’s commentary on the DVD, Devor brags about the fact that he never resorts to “talking head” footage, but after 15 or 20 minutes of his eerie shots of men gathering in an isolated farmhouse and proceeding to the barn, I began wondering if we would ever hear from one of Pinyan’s non-”zoo” friends or family members or a cop or even one of the politicians who pushed for successful anti-bestiality legislation in the wake of the widespread press coverage of this case.“Zoo” asks no questions, so we never get any answers.Devor’s film leaves the viewer with the impression that a straight-on examination of what motivated Pinyan to do what he did would be too pervy. Instead, we get a dreamy, creepy, pointless feature-length introduction to “shocking” material that is never explored.I’m not suggesting that I would want to see or hear graphic descriptions of “zoo” behavior, but as a journalist I don’t really understand a non-fiction movie that skirts its own subject matter.