Uncouth Reflections

Paleo Retiree writes:

Yesterday I raved about Brian Kellow’s new book about the legendary Hollywood agent Sue Mengers. It’s a smart and fun biography, an informative joyride through the life of a colorful and fascinating character who peaked during the 1970s, one of Hollywood’s mythical eras. Today Uncouth Reflections is pleased to present a special treat to our visitors: part one of a two-part interview with Brian.

Brian joined Blowhard, Esq. and me for lunch at Greenwich Village’s superfine Cornelia Street Cafe, and the three of us gabbed happily for a couple of hours about Sue Mengers, Hollywood, the ’70s, Pauline Kael, divas and the art of biography. Brian’s a big, good-humored, ebullient man with a sly sense of humor, and our conversation was punctuated with regular bursts of laughter.

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Brian Kellow at Cornelia Street Cafe

Paleo Retiree: The thing that struck me the most about your new book was the similarity between Sue Mengers and Pauline Kael, the subject of your last biography. Did you go into the project knowing in advance that there’d be similarities between them?

Brian Kellow: Not at all. I didn’t know anything about Sue. I really didn’t. Just what I’d read in newspapers and magazines ‘way back. I knew about her husband directing “All Night Long,” and that marking the end of her relationship with Barbra Streisand. But I didn’t know anything of a personal nature, or what the profile of her personality was like at all. Except that she was tough. She was a tough dame. So I thought, Maybe this is the latest in my cycle of tough dames. “The Broad’s Biographer.” (Laughs.)

Blowhard, Esq: What were the similarities between Pauline and Sue that struck you most?

Brian Kellow: Coming to their fields with the feeling of being an outsider, definitely. That’s a big one. Thinking that by telling the unvarnished truth to everyone around them they were doing them all a world of good, and not understanding when people got upset by it — that was a strong point of similarity between them too. And a certain lack of introspection. As brilliant as they both were, they were not inner-directed people to any great degree at all. In fact, I think Sue was a little more introspective than Pauline, because she was in analysis. I don’t think it did her much good, though.

PR: What were some of their more striking differences?

Brian Kellow: I think Pauline had an unlimited appetite for anything artistic or intellectual. Well, not completely unlimited but definitely broad and wide-ranging. And Sue did not. Sue thought a lot of what was being offered up was bullshit, and she had no interest in it. I only learned late in the game that her friend Gore Vidal got her reading the great books of the world and broadening her horizons. And she did read like a fiend, but she tended to do professionally-directed reading. She would read the hot novel that might make a good movie. She would read the newspapers forward and backwards because she wanted to be informed at her next dinner party.

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