Actress, writer and director Illeana Douglas possesses an unbridled love and enthusiasm for motion pictures, and her chatty, endearing and upbeat memoir, I Blame Dennis Hopper, collects decades' worth of anecdotes from in front of and behind the camera. When she was a teenager, her grandfather Melvyn Douglas invited her to the set of the movie that would win him his second Academy Award. "Being There permanently shifted my view of movies from outsider to insider," she writes. "Now I was going behind the curtain, inside the movie looking out. I would never be the same."
"I have always loved film history, and I thought it was important to try to get stories from all of the greats of Hollywood so that those stories remain alive," Douglas continues. There is no bitterness or cynicism in the tales she spins. While working as a secretary, she slips her résumé to Martin Scorsese, who's editing The Last Temptation of Christ in the same building and is intrigued that she lists "Special skills: Great legs, blood-curdling screams." Soon, she's recording background voices for the film and beginning a decade-long romance with the director.
Among Douglas's best recollections: being seduced (on camera) by Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear; starving and freezing while filming Alive in the Canadian Rockies; and her 12-hour lunch with Marlon Brando. Hopefully, this is the first of many volumes from Douglas, who promises in her next book she'll tell how Elizabeth Taylor's nose got broken while visiting her. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant