70. Stories I Tell My Friends
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Rob Lowe
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Movies
320 pages, published April 26, 2011
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
Stories I Tell My Friends is Rob Lowe’s memoir in which he tells stories about his fascinating life. Lowe recounts the pain of his parents’ divorce as a child from the Midwest and tells how his life shifted when his mother moved to a counterculture Malibu of the mid-seventies where his neighbors and friends were Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Sean Penn. After he was cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders, Lowe soon became a teen idol and a member of the Brat Pack. Lowe went on to a movie career with lots of ups and downs, moving to television when was cast as speechwriter Sam Seaborn in the iconic series The West Wing.
Quotes
“So I came to the realization: Nothing in life is unfair. It’s just life.”
“Fake confidence on the outside often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.”
“The best part is not the biggest, it’s the one that’s most memorable.”
“They don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it’s hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most.”
“I’m thinking of how unexpected and yet oddly preordained life can be. Events are upon you in an instant, unforseen and without warning, and often times marked with disappointment and tragedy, but equally often leading to a better understanding of the bittersweet truth of life.”
“To be counter to the culture, you are by definition willfully and actively ignoring the culture, i.e., reality. And when you ignore reality for too long, you begin to feel immune to, or above, the gravitational pull that binds everyone else. You are courting disaster.”
My Take
I was very pleasantly surprised by Stories I Tell My Friends. First of all, I discovered that Rob Lowe is a good writer. He knows how to tell a story and keep the reader interested. Secondly, he has a lot of very interesting stories to tell. There is a little bit of the Zelig quality in this book as Lowe recounts how he was invited to the Star Wars special effects studio prior to the release of the movie by family relatives who were working on the film or how he flew with the 911 terrorists. He was romantically involved with Cary Grant’s daughter, Melissa Gilbert, Nastassja Kinski, Princess Stephanie of Monaco, and Demi Moore before settling down with make up artist Sheryl Berkoff, his wife of 22 years. I enjoyed Lowe as Chris Treager on Parks and Rec and Dean Sanderson on The Grinder, a very funny comedy you can catch on Netflix.
