am so glad this book was a free download, If not, I don't think I would ever have recovered from my rage at paying money for it, I bought it because I am always fascinated by other people's work and I thought it would be all about what it's like being a television actor.
Instead, it started with a blowbyblow of Ms Shepherd's teenage backseat fumblings and progressed to the main part of the book which was chiefly concerned with her congratulating herself on wrecking people's marriages.
I must admit the actual writing was competent enough, but the material left me feeling as if I'd been rolling about in a sewer.
Apart from the unnecessary detail about Ms Shepherd's amours, the constant namedropping became quite tedious, I always thought that if one were famous oneself one wouldn't need to namedrop, I also think that dragging a person's name into a book, completely irrelevantly to the main subject, just so as to make some scurrilous allegation about the person, especially when he is dead and can't retaliate, is plain tacky.
Finally, I really think that the only appropriate venue in which to accuse one's grandfather of being a child molester is a police station.
Love her or hate her, . . Cybill apparently doesn't care, as she lets it all hang out in this memoir, I admire her frankness while being put off by her total selfabsorption, Pretty sure she earned that rep for being hard to work with,
This is your basic guilty pleasure trashy read, Quick and dirty. If you got it free on Kindle, as I did, more power to ya, All honesty, I skimmed it, I really just wanted to read the Moonlighting parts, But there was interesting stuff throughout, I think it's cool that Cybill hates high heels, The best Hollywood biography I have read so far! A deeply personal and upfront, first person narrated, look at Cybil from cradle tost century.
I loved details around 'The Last Picture Show' and 'Taxi Driver' as well as a lot of good material on 'Moonlighting' and 'Cybil'.
The book also covers Elvis Presley gender politics racism growing up in the South and of course, love and marriages.
out of.
I read quite a few reviews of this book before deciding to purchase, and some of them referred to this book as "smut.
" After reading those reviews, I had very low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it, It has a similar feel to other Hollywood autobiographies I've read, so maybe those same reviewers would feel everyone in Hollywood is "smutty.
" Which might be true come to think of it, And I will give consideration to the word "smut" to describe Cybill's enormous list of sexual partners, including several married men.
Ick. Her apparent lack of remorse was a bit upsetting,
However, if you're able to look past all of that, there is a lot more to her story.
She provided an excellent look at how difficult it was being a working woman in the's, especially one who was trying to launch an acting career.
As females, we are still struggling today for equal pay and equal treatment in the workplace, but her stories demonstrate just how far we've come.
Besides a general unequalness in pay, and lack of intelligent, strong female roles available, many of her male coattempted to knock her down a peg by saying and doing awful things to her.
Most could not handle working with an outspoken, opinionated female and frequently reported her as "difficult to work with.
" I enjoyed when she made Joey Bishop uncomfortable during their dinner show after he began mumbling obscenities at her under his breath during performances.
"What did you just say I didn't quite catch it, " she asked, momentarily flummoxing him until he could get back on track with his lines, For those readers who are upset that Cybill recounted detailed stories about what people did and said to her, maybe those individuals shouldn't have been saying and doing those things in the first place.
A good lesson in Hollywood is to be nice to everyone you meet and work with, because you never know when the guy bringing your coffee will write a tellall autobiography.
And finally, how could I not love this quote from her: To this day, I believe that any excuse to discriminate against any group of human beings violates their civil rights.
Regardless of their skin color, religion, sex, or sexual preference, all people must be treated equally, To do otherwise is unAmerican, Well said Ms. Shepherd.
I was ready to bring this down a star for multiple spelling and grammatical errors, which tend to drive me insane while reading, but it occurred to me that those errors may only be in the Kindle version I was reading, so I will leave this at.
. .stars, very entertaining! Kindle for iPhone, . . and free!
OK, when you can't get along with ANYONE, you have to start to think it might be you, right Not if you are Cybill Shepherd! If you can read this without rolling your eyes at least seventeen times, I'll buy you a Coke.
I loved Moonlighting and Cybill, especially, I enjoyed this short memoir, I like that Cybill is an outspoken feminist, Yet, sometimes, shes hard to like, She makes no excuses for all the men she became involved with, despite many of them being married, Perhaps like her character in The Heartbreak Kid, But dont do that to other women, It seems she learned early on that her only value was her looks and she learned to use it.
Its sad that this message
is sent to women, Cybill comes across as entitled and selfish and difficult to get along with, But at the same time, she worked hard in theatre and TV, and she was a single mother tokids.
Shes tough and unapologetic and in your face, Well behaved women seldom make history, as they say, She says she went to therapy so maybe shes working on her issues, We all have them. Shes proud of her Southern roots though horrified at the racism, Im surprised at all the little errors in this book, My biggest complaint is that there were no photos! I've always enjoyed the work of Cybill Shepherd as an actress.
It doesn't hurt that she is quite beautiful, but I've always liked her sassy personality,
That personality is on full display in her memoir, appropriately entitled Cybill Disobedience and coauthored by Aimee Lee Ball.
There are many things missing from this work, including an awareness of her own entitlement, sympathy for the wives she cuckolded in a life rife with sexuality, and very little concern or even acknowledgment of her fans.
However, she shows a striking degree of awareness of her art that I certainly did not suspect before reading this work.
She truly understands both the fashion and entertainment industry, even if many of those lessons were painfully learned,
Even though she seems to show a degree of selfawareness as to why she has been generally vilified in Hollywood, I would think that that very selfawareness, as exhibited in the title, would lead to a greater understanding as to why her two television shows ultimately failed.
I don't think, even at the end of the book, that she believes or even cares that it may have been her own fault and her own abrasive personality that brought down two extremely good and very popular shows.
She certainly hasn't been an angel throughout her career, Though she acknowledges breaking up marriages by having sex with somebody's husband, she really doesn't seem to get that this is a bad thing.
I am a little old fashioned in this regard and I find that complete lack of guilt goes totally unacknowledged throughout the book.
Anyway, it is an interesting memoir, just for the promiscuity and for her insights on the culture of television and film.
After recently reading a few heavy tomes I was looking to take a break with something lighter, So I picked Cybill Disobedience from my long waiting list, where it had found its way after I cleared my parents house.
I had always liked Cybill Shepherd this sassy, sexy troublemaker a description shared by the back cover since seeing The Heartbreak Kid as a teenager the original, not the awful recent remake and thought it was time I learnt something of her life story.
The book moves along at a blistering pace, racing between events on the family homes, the film set, and the bedroom or the trailer in what feels like a true reflection of the way Shepherd actually lives her life: an inthemoment immediacy that shuts out past and future combined with a resilient letbygonesbebygones capacity to always move on with few regrets.
In this sense, the long subtitle to the book pretty much says it all,
Nevertheless, as you read, what also emerges is a selfconscious selfabsorption that is the source of her combative humour but also a certain proud cold aloofness that led to a naive belief that its ok to speak your mind at all times.
Not surprisingly, she states “I was never a company girl”, Speaking her mind has usually trumped considerations of her wider selfinterest,
The book is no different: it is brutally honest but, notwithstanding the various titillating indiscretions, it remains a rather arid read that leaves readers feeling that they still know little about the real Shepherd.
The predominant “takeaway” is a renewed revulsion for the revolting milieu of Hollywood and mild admiration for anyone willing to put themselves through it and stick with it in search for whatever they believe they seek.
Im so glad I was curious enough to read this despite the bookcover putting me off it, After I ordered this book I could only find very negative comments about it so I was pleasantely suprised after going in with such low expectations.
Cybill really tells it like it is how her beauty gave her unfair advantages,it made people like her but also hate her.
She tells of the sexism and boys club in Hollywood and is refreshingly honest about sex, She writes with humour and the book is an easy read and really entertaining theres alot of obvious namedropping but we all know thats why alot of us read celebrity memoirs.
Sometimes she goes over things too fast, and the use of humour throughout the book sometimes made me miss the serious parts oh thats wasnt supposed to be funny.
I think people have a problem with women acknowledging that they're Beautiful, and certainly with them being powerful and sexual and thats were the bad reviews come from.
Quite a delightful account Cybill Disobedience is kind of a silly book,
Cybill thinks she can get a pass by looking smart and writing well, but at the end of the day, she remains a notalented actress who was lucky to be born with looks.
That's why she aptly said that she started at the top when she appeared nude in The Last Picture Show which is the only reason why I initially picked up the book along with stories about Peter Bogdanovich and worked her way down after that.
Part of the subtitle of the book is "Irrepressible Urge to Say What I Think, " Really, some of those she had sex with are given aliases, Many of the decisions Cybill made paints her a dumb gal who needs a serious reality check,
All in all, not much of value can be gleaned from Cybill Disobedience, Another book that's not my usual reading material, But I picked it up cheap, started to read and before I knew it finished it, . .
I was attracted in part because I remember the furore over the production of Moonlighting, but also the series in the's with some fondness.
It is therefore a little sobering to read what's in here now, especially with the recent sad news of Bruce Willis's health issues.
This is definitely an adultsonly kind of book, Ms Shepherd doesn't hold back on many details, which the Cybill Disobedience's subtitle summarises nicely, And whilst you are always aware that you are reading an account which is from one particular perspective, it is rather refreshing to read a ranty, gossipy account where details are not sanitised nor held back too much.
You have to commend the writer for her unflinching, wartsandall account of Hollywood in the's's.
Much of it is about how Cybill railed against the challenges Hollywood put in front of her and, let's be honest, those she put in front of herself.
I must admit that the more I read of Hollywood the more I am simultaneously mesmerised and repulsed.
Ms Shepherd knows her movies and is not afraid to point that out, She's also to be applauded for her stance on many issues, from women's rights to human rights issues, and shows us what it must have been like for a young woman in the film industry in thes and beyond.
In the end, an interesting read, if perhaps a salutary one, "How to make it in Hollywood" this provides both a lesson and perhaps one way not to do so.
I wouldn't call myself a HUGE Cybill Shepherd fan, but I did watch and enjoy Moonlighting, and I was mildly curious about her life.
Cybill's story is certainly interesting, and from the looks of it, she certainly didn't "play it safe" with this book.
She shares the good, the bad, and the ugly about herself, and everyone else, There are a few references to people that she doesn't give names to, but there are plenty that she does name: including Peter Bogdanovich, Bruce Willis, Christine Baranski, Orson Welles, and Elvis Presley to name a few.
She gives her whole story, from early childhood to present day, And she gives a LOT of explicit details, In fact, it was one of the most sexually explicit books I've read, In general, it was probably more than I ever wanted to know about her, but it did hold my attention, and it's likely to be a memoir I won't soon forget.
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