Occasionally, I like to read memoirs by people I don't know very much about. That was the case with this one by Busy Phillips. I only knew the pencil outline version of her work - that she was on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson's Creek and Cougar Town and that she has a soon-to-end nighttime talk show, which I only watched once. I was more familiar with her red carpet appearances with best friend Michelle Williams above anything else.
Busy writes in a really conversational tone, as if you're her friend who she's dishing to over Cosmos on her couch. Her story starts right at the beginning, showing her independent streak when she takes off on her own for a walk around the block as a toddler. She then moves through her childhood and into her high school years, which was the point at which she decided that she wanted to be an actress. The difference between her and every other teenage girl with that very same ambition is that she actually made it happen. (And she got the satisfaction of throwing up a virtual middle finger to her teacher who told her that she wasn't going to be an actress and that being an actress was not a viable career.) She's extremely headstrong and determined; once she makes up her mind to do something, she goes for it and doesn't give up until she achieves it. Or if she doesn't quite achieve it, she has a cry (crying is a theme throughout), picks herself up and puts in one hundred percent effort to the next thing she's after.
This is one Hollywood celebrity who's not afraid to namedrop. Though I consider myself fairly up on pop culture references, I didn't recognize many of the names, though there were definitely enough that I did to make her anecdotes feel juicy. There was a purpose to it, though, and many times it was her way of standing up to the overriding boys' club/patriarchy/white male privilege that she put up with on so many occasions. It's her way of calling them out publicly for how they treated her or for their blatant hypocrisy. For someone who admittedly suffers from anxiety and depression, some of her writing felt like therapy. She was able to pour out her frustrations and worries onto the page. She never shies away from the truth and is really bold in the way she discusses her relationships from high school through to the present day. She's fully open about being raped as a teenager, the breakdown/reconciliation cycle of her current marriage and how she struggled with pregnancy and work obligations later in life.
This is still very much a Hollywood story. When she discusses money troubles and nannies not working out, as someone who's not anywhere near that upper echelon, it's definitely a little hard to relate, but that's just who she is and where she is because she put in all of the hard work to get there. Because Busy is so completely honest about all of the other aspects of her life, she doesn't try to sugarcoat anything to try to preserve her reputation. She puts it all out there and you can take it or leave it. She's already moving on to the next thing. Onwards and upwards.
Judge the cover: 4/5
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