Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time

September 2, 2024
Sonnenfeld follows Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother with another entertaining glimpse at his decades-long career as a film director and cinematographer. In short, punchy chapters—which largely avoid the uneven stabs at pathos that plagued his previous memoir—Sonnenfeld covers encounters with celebrities from Michael Jackson to a prepolitical Donald Trump and pulls back the curtain on his best-known movies, including The Addams Family and Men in Black. Especially captivating is the section on the 1987 dark comedy Raising Arizona, in which Sonnenfeld goes deep on his frugal camerawork and recalls a mother “react in horror when she saw her toddler take his first steps” during a casting call for babies who were only supposed to crawl. While the prevailing tone is buoyant and gossipy, Sonnenfeld is quick to acknowledge his missteps—he freely admits that 1999’s Wild Wild West “wasn’t a good movie”—and includes some lurid peeks at the darker side of Hollywood, including a mob-connected actor threatening murder over a casting decision. The result is an illuminating, sometimes hilarious look at how the Tinseltown sausage gets made. Movie buffs will be in heaven. Agent: David Granger, Aevitas Creative Management.

September 1, 2024
Director and cinematographer Sonnenfeld dug into his family history and career in Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother (2020). He follows with another behind-the-scenes look into what it's like to work on big-budget f ilms in Hollywood. Sonnenfeld shares anecdotes from such films as Misery, Get Shorty, and the Men in Black trilogy, revealing some antics of big stars on set, from James Caan's fidgeting to John Travolta's struggles with memorization to Gene Hackman's combative attitude to the ways Will Smith changed as his star ascended over the course of the Men in Black films. Sonnenfeld also laments the two films that got away from him, Forrest Gump, which he couldn't direct because it conflicted with Men in Black, and Ali, which Will Smith booted him off of (an act he apologized for years later). The book's title, taken from an R-rated on-the-set riff by Tommy Lee Jones, perfectly encapsulates the joys and frustrations of working in Tinseltown. A delightful tour of a storied career.

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September 20, 2024

Once described by actress Cheryl Hines as the most neurotic person she'd ever met, director and filmmaker Sonnenfeld's follow-up to his 2020 memoir Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, is a neurotic delight. Sonnenfeld shares anecdotes that read as outtakes from his memoir, which is not to say that the stories are superfluous--far from it. He knows that readers of show business memoirs want all the juicy details, and he delivers with nonstop hilarity. This time, he takes readers behind the scenes of the many memorable movies and television shows he's been a part of, from When Harry Met Sally, Get Shorty, and the "Men in Black" franchise to Schmigadoon! He's not shy about discussing his less successful projects like Wild Wild West; in fact, he is at his funniest in those self-deprecating moments. The book's format (or shtick, as one might call it) of short, episodic chapters works exceptionally well for capturing Sonnenfeld's unique personality and sense of humor. VERDICT As they say in Hollywood, you're only as good as your last movie, and Sonnenfeld is in top form.--Claire Sewell

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