As for my own failure as a social creature, my mother did attempt to make me less openly critical of people's false faces. "Now, dear, try to be more popular," she told me. "Try not to make people so mad!" I would watch my mother, pretty and charming, as she laughed and made people feel clever and pleased with themselves, but I could not act that way. And so I have remained, in cruel pursuit of truth and excellence, an inhumane executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them.

Lulu in Hollywood is a valuable reflection on the machinery and gender politics of filmmaking that I expect is as relevant today as it was to the era of Brooks’ career. for someone who is famous for their acting career, Brooks has a startlingly clear authorial voice. she is dry and insightful. and she is SMART, the kind of smart that people hate in women. there are a few moments where she seems out of touch (comparing being a movie star in early Hollywood to enslavement is obviously tasteless) but otherwise her writing feels timeless and she is herself perilously easy to fall in love with.