That, alone, was responsible for knocking the rating down a star. These mistakes aren’t just left in a couple of times but dozens of times! I listen to a lot of audiobooks and I’ve never heard one as slipshod as this one. You can actually hear them flub a line, take a beat and then start the whole line over again. The other two readers who voice the people that were interviewed do a very good job, but they’re failed by the producer. At one point, he says that HBO ended a year with 300 subscribers when the number is actually 300,000. Miller’s voice is flat and dull and he’s constantly rushing and slurring his words, going so fast that he often gets his own writing wrong. It’s rarely a good sign when an author is listed as a narrator, and that’s certainly no different here. The audiobook version of Tinderbox is really, really bad. I usually don’t review an audiobook performance unless it’s really good or really bad. Its execution means you’ll have to slog through some 43 hours to get through it and I can almost guarantee you’ll be bored somewhere along the way. The idea of an HBO oral history certainly seems like a good one in theory. I found myself skipping through sections devoted to programs I just didn’t care about. Unfortunately, there's also sections of business blather about subjects like stock acquisitions that are enough to put me to sleep.Įven if you are into some of the shows that have aired on HBO over the decades, there’s a chance you’re not a fan of every show that’s covered here (and this book covers a lot of shows). Author James Andrew Miller does a relatively good job of taking the "bored" out of "boardroom" with tales of love, hate, jealousy and backstabbing behind the scenes worthy of. A lot of this book is spent on corporate intrigue that can become very dull to people who just want to read about their favorite shows. Tinderbox, written by Live’s co-author, certainly isn’t lacking for subject material, which is one of its failings when it comes to the legend of HBO, there may actually be too much information to cover. Live from New York: An Oral History of Saturday Night Live was the first oral history I remember reading and it’s still pretty much the gold standard that others are judged by. Oral histories can be tricky things to pull off. This book is an oral history, which means that, rather than telling the story through a regular narrative, it’s mainly told through interviews with the people that were there. Tinderbox also takes a lot longer than it needs to in making that case. Tinderbox makes a pretty airtight case for how much TV history HBO has made over the years from its very, very humble beginnings broadcasting polka dances in 1970s Pennsylvania. As the very first pay-channel, HBO had people forking over money to watch it long before Netflix ever dropped its first DVD into the mailbox. It’s easy to forget what a broadcasting landmark HBO was. On the second day appeared HBO and God said “Just how long do I have to wait for the next season of The Sopranos?” On the first day appeared NBC, CBS and ABC and God said that it was good. In the beginning there was darkness upon the land. Over the course of more than 750 interviews with key sources, Miller reveals how fraught HBO’s journey has been, capturing the drama and the comedy off-camera and inside boardrooms as HBO created and mobilized a daring new content universe, and, in doing so, reshaped storytelling and upended our entertainment lives forever. J.) to Zendaya, as well as every single living president of HBO―and hundreds of other major players. As he did to great acclaim with SNL in Live from New York with ESPN in Those Guys Have All the Fun and with talent agency CAA in Powerhouse, Miller continues his record of extraordinary access to the most important voices, this time speaking with talents ranging from Abrams (J. In Tinderbox, award-winning journalist James Andrew Miller uncovers a bottomless trove of secrets and surprises, revealing new conflicts, insights, and analysis. By thinking big, trashing tired formulas, and killing off cliches long past their primes, HBO shook off the shackles of convention and led the way to a bolder world of content, opening the door to all that was new, original, and worthy of our attention. The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, The Wire, Succession …HBO has long been the home of epic shows, as well as the source for brilliant new movies, news-making documentaries, and controversial sports journalism. Tinderbox tells the exclusive, explosive, uninhibited true story of HBO and how it burst onto the American scene and screen to detonate a revolution and transform our relationship with television forever.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |