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Lights, camera, Oprah!
We know her on a first-name basis. Through her daily talk show and reports in the press -- including the dishy tabloids -- we've been privy to her battle of the bulge, her familial travails, even her love life. Upfront about her likes, dislikes, and beliefs, she squared off against the beef industry in a Texas courtroom and faced down members of the Ku Klux Klan on her show. No wonder Oprah Winfrey is so well-known -- and so influential. |
REVIEWS BY PAT H. BROESKE
By Toni Morrison Plume, $12.95 ISBN 0452264464
The making of the movie is the subject of Journey to Beloved. Featuring text by Winfrey and photographs by Ken Regan, it will doubtless send more readers to seek out Morrison's work.
Text by Oprah Winfrey Photographs by Ken Regan Hyperion, $40 ISBN 0786864583
Meanwhile, Winfrey is developing Morrison's latest novel, Paradise, which moves back and forth in time to tell the saga of an all-black (fictional) township in Oklahoma. Oprah has said that she was just 198 pages into Paradise when she called her lawyers and said, "Get this book, please!" (The talk show queen's mania for Morrison's works took a hilarious drubbing on MTV's idiosyncratic Celebrity Deathmatch -- where clay figures of celebrities duke it out -- when Winfrey's character whacked talk show rival Rosie O'Donnell with . . . a Morrison book!)
By Toni Morrison Alfred A. Knopf, $25 ISBN 0679433740
The woman who made her film acting debut in The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize winner, has also produced/starred in TV adaptations of books including Connie May Fowler's Before Women Had Wings and Dorothy West's The Wedding. And she is developing still other projects from books, including a remake of the 1962 film David and Lisa, about two emotionally disturbed teenagers. The new version will doubtless encourage readers to seek out the book (by Theodore Isaac Rubin) on which it's based. After all, it's a circle. Books inspire films; but films can also trigger interest in their original source material. No wonder the publishing world loves Oprah. Or that Wally Lamb, author of the best-selling I Know This Much Is True (an Oprah Book Club selection) has called Winfrey "the great communicator."
Insight from the World's Most Influential Voice By Janet C. Lowe John Wiley & Sons, $16.95 ISBN 0471298646
Pat H. Broeske writes about Hollywood for Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter.
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Lucky for book enthusiasts, Winfrey uses her TV show as a soapbox to promote her lifelong love of reading. So potent is the Oprah Book Club (which debuted in fall 1996) that books singled out for attention frequently soar to bestseller status -- sometimes years after their initial printing. And so potent is Winfrey the media mogul that she is producing film and TV adaptations of her favorite titles. Opening this month, Beloved -- in which Winfrey stars -- is based on the novel by Toni Morrison. Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for this challenging literary work in which the spirit of a deceased child returns to haunt its mother, a former slave who was forced to make a difficult decision. Memorable and mesmerizing, this is a tale of history, mother love, and the painful and lingering after-effects of slavery.
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The communicative Winfrey has even written her own books, including a fitness guide and a 1994 autobiography. And she is frequently written about. Curious about her favorite Bible passages? Views on prayer? Beauty? These topics and more are covered in Oprah Winfrey Speaks: Insight from the World's Most Influential Voice. Authored by Janet C. Lowe, this is a fast-reading compendium which has an inspirational ring. Much like the winning Oprah.