Starring Brian Linehan.

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

George Anthony’s boffo book about his long-time friend and iconic film folk interviewer, Brian Linehan, is a moving tribute and a thoroughly researched biography. Written in an anecdotal style, it doles out the facts and figures of Linehan’s life in a lively, at times humorous, at others emotionally wrenching manner, but is always as mesmerizing as one of Linehan’s own meticulously researched interviews.

From the incisive, suspense-filled first chapter announcing the death by suicide of Linehan’s male partner, Zane Wagman, and Linehan’s own confession of his cancer, through to the detailed index that reads like a who’s who of the film world, Anthony’s volume is jam-packed with info about Linehan, his Hamilton, Ontario, “lunch pail” family and five siblings, his friends, his critics and satirists, and those he hobnobbed with and interviewed over the years. Supplemented with more than two dozen black and white photos, candid and posed, a touching foreword by actress Joan Rivers, and Anthony’s “unabashedly personal” revelations of Linehan’s life, the book is a must-be-read, must-be-kept addition for any collection of North American film archives. For film fans it provides the titillating gossip of late-night parties, Linehan’s boozy confessions about the inadequacy of his sex life, and the confidential exchanges between Anthony and Linehan about any number of things. For scholars and academics, the book illustrates the genius of how Linehan revolutionized the television interview of feature film stars from 30-second clips to the half-hour, in-depth features that made appearances on his show the sought-after prize of the glitterati of the industry, and caused more than one interviewee to exclaim, “You know more about me than I do.”

Anthony has unearthed the nuggets of his 30-year friendship and entertainment industry rivalry with Linehan, and presented a captivating profile of a legendary figure who became a master of his craft despite his failings as an individual. It is a well-written, fair, and balanced accolade from one entertainment media guru to another, richly deserving of wide public readership.