AMOKbookslaid bare
	previous next	reviews purchase
	Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip John Gilmore   Acclaimed as a powerful chronicler of the American Nightmare through his gripping examinations of near-mythic Southern California murders (the Black Dahlia, Tate-LaBianca), author John Gilmore now draws upon his own reservoir of personal experiences to turn his sights on our morbid obsession with Celebrity and the ruinous price it exacts from those who would pursue it. Literally born and raised in Hollywood, offspring of an LAPD officer dad and a former starlet mom, John Gilmore has delved into the seamy underbelly of Fame in a plethora of guises: as child actor, stage and screen bit-player, screenwriter, journalist, pulp novelist, low-budget film director and true crime writer.   ISBN 1-878923-08-0 trade paper 250 pp., illustrated $16.95
amokbooks.com 2005
	Reviews:   "Beautifully written in a style somewhere between Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski ... This is an astonishing book." – Sight and Sound, U.K.   "John Gilmore deals with mythically familiar subjects, but not to turn them inside out. Instead he boils off the myth and shows you how things really were, and what things felt like to the people living what later became a myth. You will encounter no received ideas, no clichés, no deference to popular myths or opinions, and best of all, no lies. He's an amazing writer, and Laid Bare is his most astonishing book." – Gary Indiana   "Reads like a first-person Hollywood Babylon" – V. Vale, V/Search Publications   top of page