Howard Stern Comes Again Book Review
Books of The Times
Howard Stern Tin Talk. This Volume Shows He's Likewise a Good Listener.
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Nobody merely Howard Stern could take gotten Harvey Weinstein to prevarication quite equally brazenly as he does in Stern's encyclopedic new interview collection. That's considering nobody else would have asked such nervy questions. Interviewing Weinstein in 2014, Stern goes right for the actresses and the casting burrow, riffing on some of his standard motifs as he asks well-nigh actresses who might want to work for Weinstein: "You tin can't walk into the room, pull your pants off and say, 'O.K., honey, let's talk…." Can you?
"I hate to disappoint you lot," fibs Weinstein, whose Thou.O. was allegedly much less cordial. Pressed further, he insists: "It's really nothing. Nope." Strike three comes when Stern forces Weinstein to talk near his "solid" matrimony ("Sex activity with her must be through the roof") to the wife who has since divorced him.
You tin can find this and a lot more similar it in "Howard Stern Comes Again," Stern's hefty all-star tutorial on the fine art of the interview, which draws on his work over the by two decades. For anyone who all the same thinks of Stern as a jokey voyeur, overgrown teenager and smutmeister, he would like you lot to know how much he's evolved. He's become more than sensitive. He's in therapy, to the betoken where it becomes a abiding refrain. He feels his subjects' hurting. Which might be problematic if he weren't nevertheless such a sharp, funny, conversational sparring partner.
Bragging rights for "Howard Stern Comes Again" really do go to Donald Trump, who is far and away its most arresting field of study. Stern has interviewed him many times, and the conversations leap out as if in neon. Some take already been well publicized, every bit when Trump remarked that dating in the age of AIDS was his personal Vietnam. Merely there's so much more. His farthermost richness; his treatment of the "girls" he dates; his easily debunked lies; his excitement about hot new projects (Trump Earth magazine, Trump University): All are matters of record here. And the transcript of his 2001 radio brawl with the gossip columnist A. J. Benza, with Stern presiding "like Solomon," must be read to exist believed. Trump: "I won your girlfriend, A. J. You know information technology." Benza: "He sends things to her, paper clippings with him mentioned, circles his proper name and writes 'billionaire.' Yous have no idea. He's out of his mind."
Information technology matters a lot how this handsomely produced, notably well-edited book is ingested. I don't recommend reading it direct through. That will make it seem long and repetitive, with Stern oft striking on his favorite themes — which is to say, the ones that take the most to do with him. He likes asking about masturbation, coin, making it big and psychotherapy, all of which demonstrate more than narcissism than curiosity. It's much better to pick the volume upwardly and choose interview subjects at random. And don't practice it on the footing of your pre-existing involvement in the person. Vincent Gallo, ane of the most loathed people in filmmaking, gives one of the all-time interviews here.
The real standouts are people who are thrown off guard past the fact that Stern has institute out then much about them. As he says in the introduction, doing your homework is essential to winning people over — and to pushing them toward places where they wouldn't otherwise go. One case in betoken is Gwyneth Paltrow, whose section of the book is almost certain to change your impression of her, no matter what it was in the start place. Interviewing her in 2015, Stern gets her going by knowing which roles she turned downwardly ("Titanic"?) and playing to her seldom-seen sense of sense of humour, which turns out to be as good every bit his. He also brings her dorsum to the days when she was nobody, Brad Pitt was a huge catch and their falling in love on the set of "Seven" changed her condition. As ancient history, it's ambrosial.
Paltrow's helpful hint on how to quiet an obstreperous husband will be one of the book's big takeaways, fifty-fifty though these radio interviews aren't technically news. Simply the noisy parts aren't what matter. Information technology's the intimacy Stern establishes with his subjects that makes this collection worthwhile, as when Jon Stewart opens up about the father who abandoned his family unit. The stories Stern elicits are astonishing. When Stewart was 17, seven years later the split up, the two met for a monthly visit and Stewart'southward father asked, "What do you remember nigh if I got remarried?" When teenage Jon said he wouldn't object, his male parent replied: "Um, I got married and I have a 2-yr-old."
Stern is no stranger to sparse ice. On multiple occasions here, he asks a white person whether he or she would take sex with a black person. It's unfortunate if authentic that these queries remained in the book's otherwise slimmed-downwardly transcripts. And even for his most ardent fans, his ways of talking about girls and hotness may no longer be role of his charm. (In the Trump interviews, he constantly wanted to know whether the future first lady was naked. Trump was willing to answer, but he was too notably protective of her from the start.)
Stern has said that his 2015 Conan O'Brien interview is his favorite. Peradventure that's considering it describes O'Brien'south burdensome disappointment at not landing the "Tonight Show" hosting task and his reasons for staying at NBC anyhow — but the choice says more about interviewer than interviewee. Expect for standouts with Ozzy Osbourne, Joan Rivers, Courtney Beloved, Gallo, Michael J. Fox and Lady Gaga, for starters. And look for the one that isn't here. The book includes a brief chapter on Hillary Clinton, who was wooed by Stern but was, he says, too agape to face up his questioning. Had she done so and revealed a softer, more likable side, she might have won the election. Or at to the lowest degree that is what Howard Stern thinks about "The Howard Stern Show."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/books/review-howard-stern-comes-again.html
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