If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor

My Chin Can Kill is a delightfully irreverent, yet oddly touching, epic of ambition and disappointment, fame and anonymity, and lots of fake blood. Told in Bruce's wry, sarcastic voice, it is a "Hollywood from the bleacher seats" look at his experiences in film and TV and at his status as a cult horror and sci-fi movie god. This man with the face of a matinee idol and the heart of a Three Stooge first attracted what has grown into an enormous cult following as the star of Sam Raimi's legendary Evil Dead trilogy of thriller-comedies. With tireless good humor and biting wit, Bruce acted, produced, and directed his way through a baker's dozen of "B" horror films and space operas before finally enjoying mainstream stardom on prime-time TV. Deeply earnest and fiercely funny, this book tells the story of an unlikely star who continues to lead a unique double life as cult movie icon and regular Joe.

Biographies & Memoirs

CAMPBELL, Bruce

Arts & Literature

L.A. Weekly Books

The movie business may have been born on the East Coast, but it created Hollywood in its own image. LOST HOLLYWOOD is a rich trip back into a vanished place and time-25 chapters that use lost structures as a launching point to tell the history of the movie business in the last century. Many of the subjects Wallace covers will be unfamiliar to even the most knowledgeable film buffs: from Marian Davies' extraordinary playpen Ocean House, known as"Xanadu by the Sea" to the development of Whitley Heights and its now-iconic Mediterranean architecture. Other chapters include new and fascinating details on classic Hollywood institutions, like the Hollywood Canteen, the Garden of Allah, the Brown Derby, the Copacabana and the legendary Pickfair.

Lost Hollywood

Humor & Entertainment

Wallace, David

Movies

Los Angeles is the Peninsula Hotel, Spago Beverly Hills, and a beach place in Malibu. It's also...Barney's Beanery, Koo Koo Roo chicken, and 24-hour fitness centers. Not to mention the parents' place in the Valley with its wet bar and kidney-shaped pool. In Stephen Randall's hilarious novel of manners and mores in Los Angeles, twin brothers Perry and Tim Newman fight the ties that bind them to their pasts on the other side of Mulholland while trying to make their mark in the teeming competitive world spread out below the canyons. While Perry swaggers home with a new girlfriend on his arm and a development deal in his pocket, Tim toils in the decidedly temporary offices of a web site, Hollywood Today, and wonders if there will ever be a right moment to spring his sexuality on his parents. But Syd and Ann Newman's lives haven't stopped because the boys moved into town. Syd's life work, Newman's Super Honda, is under attack, and Ann's serial passions for therapy, activism, and real estate are beginning to take their toll. When Tim has a rare chance to be a hero, will he take it? Will the balance of fraternal power shift once and for all?

The Other Side of Mulholland: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Randall, Stephen

Humor & Satire

Spontaneous: A Novel

When Auntie Ned spontaneously combusts, she leaves behind a pair of smoking orthopedic shoes and a house that she wills to her best friend's daughters. Amy and Gwendolyn are sisters--closer than close--who move into Ned's bungalow and inherit her legacies: a closet full of housedresses, a freezer full of meat, and the passionate flames of unrequited desire. Amy's appetites--for meat, for sex, for getting her way--are ferocious, while Gwendolyn longs for a more normal existence but can't refuse her big sister anything at all. Not the intrusion of Dr. Minor, Professor of Pyrophenomena, who has come to investigate Auntie Ned's death. And not the presence in their bed of Roosevelt, a troubled carpenter whose steamy entanglement with the sisters will either save them all or create a situation that's bound to combust.

Wagman, Diana

United States

Jonathan Gold has eaten it all. Counter Intelligence collects over 200 of Gold's best restaurant discoveries--from inexpensive lunch counters you won't find on your own to the perfect undiscovered dish at a beaten-path establishment. He reveals the hidden kitchens where Los Angeles' ethnic communities feed their own, including the best of cuisine from Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Burma, Canton, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Middle East, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Vietnam and more. Not to mention the perfectly prepared hamburger and Los Angeles' quintessential hot dog.
Counter Intelligence is the richest and most complete guide to eating in Los Angeles. The listings include where to find it and how much you'll pay (in many cases, not very much) with appendices that cover food types and feeding by neighborhood.

Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles

Arts & Photography

Jonathan Gold

Photography & Video

The ultimate shopping guide for the stylish Angeleno life. INCLUDES Clothing for men and women Furniture and housewares Vintage/antique Many more things you never knew you just had to have With over 200 listings, The Serious Shopping Guide: Los Angeles is the ultimate hands-on manual to the L.A. retail grail. Rob Campbell has searched for the best and most interesting things to buy in a variety of categories, including housewares, clothing, vintage, antiques, baby wear, and gifts. The Serious Shopping Guide doesn't ignore L.A. standards like Barneys and Fred Segal, but you'll keep it in the glove compartment for its wealth of hidden shopping adventures all over the Los Angeles area. Campbell also turns shopping up a notch by laying out forty shopping districts from Melrose and Beverly Hills to Glendale and Palm Springs. The Serious Shopping Guide divulges secret haunts and tips you won't find elsewhere--like when the best vintage shops put out new shipments, and which flea markets yield treasures and which ones trash--along with many places that will become your new go-to destinations.

The Serious Shopping Guide: Los Angeles

Reference

Campbell, Rob

Consumer Guides

Eddie Little, author of the hit Another Day in Paradise and who The New York Times describes as "Reminiscent of Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs," is back with a new gripping crime novel. Little writes about the world he used to inhabit, a place filled with drugs, crime and danger at every turn. His electrifying prose brings to life the rough, raw, and seedy life of Boston's underworld where corruption lies at the heart of every deception. Bobbie is a young criminal prodigy. Living in Boston he's approached by a mysterious Greek on behalf of an anonymous shipping tycoon, who wants to commission a theft. The Fogg museum is the target; a collection of ancient Greek coins the score. Everything goes fine with the burglary, but with easy street just around the corner Bobbie's life takes an unexpected twist and his big score evaporates. With his life on the line, Bobbie must learn who he can trust when trusting anyone can make you lose everything. Steel Toes is as close to reality as fiction can get. Little draws you in with his knife sharp writing, his authentic and unflinching characters and plot as tight and strong as the hold of addiction.

Steel Toes: A Novel

Little, Eddie

When Auntie Ned spontaneously combusts, she leaves behind a pair of smoking orthopedic shoes and house that she will to her best friend's daughters. Amy and Gwendolyn are sisters-- closer than close--who move into the bungalow and inherit Ned's legacies: a closet full of housedresses, a freezer full of meat, and the passionate flames of unrequited desire.Amy's appetites--for meat, for sex, for getting her way--are ferocious, while Gwendolyn longs for a more normal existence but can't refuse her big sister anything at all. Wagman's plot is as combustible as Auntie Ned, adding a troubled carpenter whose steamy entanglement with the sisters will either save them all or set spark to a situation that's bound to explode.

Craig Chester’s witty and wry observations on his life and those who have occupied it come together to create this funny, sentimental, yet irreverent collection of essays. From the backroads of Texas to the boardrooms of Hollywood, Craig Chester is unabashedly honest about the pain and the unique rewards of remaining an outsider in an insider’s world. While his family prepares to watch the apocalypse from their rooftop with a bucket of KFC, Craig is trying to climb the social ladder at school by saving his neighbors from their sinful ways and speaking in tongues (with not-so-successful results). Along the way Craig experiences gender confusion at grade-school summer camp and has massive reconstructive surgery to correct his deformed teenage face, only to emerge and realize that Hollywood success isn’t always measured in externals, but also in the machinations of the heart and how much you don’t show. All along he expertly captures the feeling of what it’s like to not always fit in—and have that be okay—with a comic timing that’s tuned in to the heart and soul of trying to get by day to day. His tales of life, from growing up in the Bible Belt to starring in nine films, prove that the average American life is anything but normal.

Why the Long Face?: The Adventures of a Truly Independent Actor

Chester, Craig

Lloyd Kaufman, the writer/producer/director of such cult-classic films as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Tromeo and Juliet, offers a guide to movie-making unlike any other available anywhere. In 25 years, Kaufman, along with partner Michael Herz, has built Troma Studios up from a company struggling to find its voice in a field crowded with competitors to its current--and legendary--status as a lone survivor, a bastion of true cinematic independence, and the world's greatest collection of camp on film.
As entertaining and funny as it is informative and insightful, Make Your Own Damn Movie! places Kaufman's radically low-budget, independent-studio style of filmaking directly in the reader's hands. Thus we learn how to: develop and write a knock-out screenplay; raise funding; find locations and cast actors; hire a crew; obtain equipment, permits, and music rights (all for little or no money); make incredible special effects for $0.79 each; charm, schmooze, and network while on the film-festival circuit; and, finally, make a bad actor act so bad it's actually good.
From scriptwriting and directing to financing and marketing, this book is brimming with utterly off-the-wall, decidedly maverick, yet consistently proven advice on how to fully develop one's idea for an independent film.

Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director

KAUFMAN, Lloyd

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Books by L.A. Weekly Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the L.A. Weekly Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor

Lost Hollywood

The Other Side of Mulholland: A Novel

Spontaneous: A Novel

Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles

The Serious Shopping Guide: Los Angeles

Steel Toes: A Novel

Spontaneous: A Novel

Why the Long Face?: The Adventures of a Truly Independent Actor

Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director