Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Book review - "A Lotus Grows in the Mud" by Goldie Hawn (2005)

At first I was disappointed this wasn't a more standard bio - I would've loved to read more (actually, make that I would've loved to have read something) about films like Butterflies are Free, Shampoo, First Wives Club etc etc. This is less conventional - it's a series of non-chronological diary entries, reminiscences, encounters, reflections, poems.

Once I accepted the book for what it was, rather than what I wanted it to be, it was enjoyable - it feels authentically "Goldie" if you know what I mean: sweet, reflective, very hippy-new-age-ish like you'd expect from a former dancer and child of the sixties.

And there is plenty of solid memoir stuff: growing up, essays on her parents (very evocatively depicted), sexual harassment encountered while a dancer, an attempted molestation as a child, working on Laugh In, adventures making Cactus Flower (Walter Matthau was a grump, Ingrid Bergman a dream), turning producer with Private Benjamin, her side of the story on Swing Shift (she's defensive, argues the cuts were pushed by the studio, but agreed they were necessary), holidays with the kids, some gushing over Kurt Russell, brief mentions of her first two husbands, working with Peter Sellars. Some of it was a bit cringey (eg visiting Africa, India) but it was consistently interesting, like its writer.

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