Jeff Hiller has written a celebrity memoir to end all celebrity memoirs. Each of his twenty-four chapters is given the title of an actual celebrity memoir, and the age at which the author of that memoir became a celebrity – by which Hiller is expressing his envy and irritation. “It is exceptionally common in celebrity memoirs for an actor to describe their big break after ‘years’ of struggling,” he writes in the first chapter (“Girl Walks into a Bar by Rachel Dratch,” who was thirty-three years old when she was cast in Saturday Night Live.) “I feel no sympathy for the person describing how it was a ‘decade-long slog to success’ when the decade they’re talking about was from ages fifteen to twenty-five.” Hiller, you see, was 45 when he first performed the role of Joel, the Bridgett Everett character’s best friend in the HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” which gave him the clout to get his own celebrity memoir published, “Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success” (Simon & Schuster, 272 pages)
He knows celebrities commonly write about their big break in their memoirs because he’s read hundreds of them. (“I have read not one but two full-length memoirs by Candice Bergen….I’ve also conquered two volumes each from Anjelica Huston, Brooke Shields, and Alan Cumming. I listened to Barbra Streisand’s book – which is technically just one volume, but at forty-eight hours and fifteen minutes, it does a lot to illustrate my commitment to the genre.”)
HIller puts his familiarity to use, informing us of what celebrity memoir cliches he’ll employ, and which he’ll avoid, as he tells his own story, from a childhood as a bullied closeted church-going loner in Texas to his many years of small triumphs and big humiliations in mostly bit parts on TV, movies and commercials, as well as the stage: He got his Actors Equity card by being one of the mortified actors hired to add atmosphere at a Jekyll and Hyde restaurant; his first Off-Broadway show was the Awesome 80s Prom, which subjected him to much audience abuse; he learned his craft through many years doing improv for no pay at the Upright Citizens Brigade. He made his Broadway debut in “Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson” in 2010, thinking he had finally “made it” in New York. Believing that “stupid song” that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, “I went to LA…and then didn’t work for four years.”
The titles of the celebrity memoirs are cleverly chosen to correspond with the particular contents of each chapter. In “This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps,” (who was 20 when she became a celebrity), Hiller recounts his incompetence in several jobs shortly after college that wound up harming his clients, first as a volunteer social worker for homeless teens, and then as a public health worker doing outreach to the gay community, which includes a comically gruesome anecdote about his drawing blood from a client for tests. “Inside Out by Demi Moore,” (age 22) is the chapter in which he tells the stories of his coming-out to friends and family. “Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life” by Alan Cumming (33), describes his move to New York, and his disastrous if adventurous first years here, including a hard-to-believe tale of his having made his way through a literal pack of wild dogs, and a gunfight, to wait on the pre-dawn, impossibly long, sometimes communal but suddenly vicious line of theatergoers in Central Park to attend a free Shakespeare in the Park production starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.
Hiller’s approach makes for a not quite chronological book, which he calls “a collection of essays that sort of add up to a memoir.” But Hiller’s gift for finding the hilarious, as well as the heartfelt, in many embarrassing moments that most of the 24 celebrity titles he cites would probably judge too embarrassing to include, makes this sort-of-celebrity-memoir memorable.
