David Rensin has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is Where Did I Go Right?.
Where Did I Go Right?
Summary
Where Did I Go Right? is Bernie Brillstein's street-smart, funny, and thoroughly human account of his life in show business. With a trademark wit and candor, Bernie speaks out about a number of celebrities and agents. Among his accounts are those of his feud with Mike Ovitz, his feelings to no longer be the king after passing on the leadership of his company to his partner, Brad Grey, his close relationship with Jim Belushi and Jim Henson, and stories of Gilda Radner and Lorne Michaels during the early days of Saturday Night Live.
©1999 Bernie Brillstein (P)2016 Phoenix Books
All for a Few Perfect Waves
Summary
For 20 years, Miki "Da Cat" Dora was the king of Malibu surfers - a dashing, enigmatic rebel who dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and who still inspires the fantasies of wannabes to this day. And yet, Dora railed against surfing's sudden post-Gidget popularity and the overcrowding of his once empty waves, even after this avid sportsman, iconoclast, and scammer of wide repute ran afoul of the law and led the FBI on a remarkable seven-year chase around the globe in 1974. The New York Times named him "[T]he most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce", and Vanity Fair called him "[A] dark prince of the beach". To fully capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing hundreds of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and fellow surfers to uncover the untold truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery.
©2008 David Rensin (P)2020 Tantor
The Mailroom
Summary
It's like something out of a Hollywood potboiler: Start out in the mailroom, end up a mogul. Only for dozens of Hollywood's brightest, it happens to be true. Some of the biggest names in entertainment - including David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Mike Ovitz - began as trainees in musty talent agency mailrooms. Now, in this fascinating new book, veteran Hollywood writer David Rensin travels behind the scenes and through 65 years of show business history to tell the real stories of the marvelous careers that began - and in some cases ended - in the mailroom. Based on more than 200 interviews, Rensin unfolds the never-before-told history of an American institution - in the voices of the people who lived it. Through seven decades of glamour and humiliation, lousy pay and incredible perks, killer egos and a kill-or-be-killed ethos, you'll go where the trainees go, do what they must do to get ahead, and hear the best insider stories from the Hollywood everyone knows about but no one really knows. The kids in The Mailroom have done it all: from hanging out with Elvis to delivering a senior agent's urine sample to the doctor; from pouring drinks for Sinatra to sending ice to Johnny Carson on the Nile; from crashing the Academy Awards ceremony to hoping to deliver more than just the mail to sexy actresses' homes. The Mailroom reveals why Harvard MBAs fight, turning down secure six-digit corporate salaries, to start work at a major agency for less than $400 a week; what it takes to appease impossible bosses, outsmart the competition, and "agent" the agents; and how a hungry, star-struck kid can become the next Geffen or Diller by sorting mail, eavesdropping on crucial conversations, and trying anything to get noticed. Full of revealing stories and delicious dish, The Mailroom is not only a nonstop, engrossing listen, but a crash course, taught by the experts, on how to succeed in Hollywood through hard work, shrewd manipulation, and a hell of a lot of nerve. The Mailroom is classic Hollywood - a vibrant and complex tapestry of dreams, desire, exploitation, power, and genuine talent. If you want to know who rules Hollywood and how they got their power, if you want to know how to start with nothing and get ahead in any business, this is the audiobook you must listen to.
©2003 David Rensin (P)2018 Tantor
Promises I Made My Mother
Summary
The promises Sam Haskell made to his mother guide him from a small-town Mississippi boyhood, through the cutthroat world of Hollywood as Worldwide Head of Television at the William Morris Agency, to a life of philanthropy, in this inspirational, moving, and heartwarming memoir.When he was growing up in small-town Mississippi, Sam Haskell saw a TV commercial promising that "The Cheer Man" was visiting homes across America, distributing $10 checks to anyone who could produce a box of Cheer detergent. Sam was convinced "The Cheer Man" would come to his house. Nearly a year later, to everyone's surprise, "The Cheer Man" arrived and young Sam was ready for him.In this powerful and inspiring book, "The Cheer Man" becomes a parable for Haskell's extraordinary life and a metaphor for the way he's lived it: believing in dreams, especially the unattainable ones, and making them come true. Haskell's core beliefs - humility, integrity, character, honesty, and confidence - were taught to him by his beloved mother, Mary. Each chapter focuses on a promise Sam made to his mother to adopt those values and shows how they led him to a fulfilling and successful life: as a precocious boy, a student at Ole Miss, and a young man in Hollywood with no money or connections, who rose from the William Morris mailroom to become the Agency's Worldwide Head of Television.In this heartfelt book, Haskell shows us how, even in the cutthroat, shark-infested waters of Hollywood, you can get ahead by being true to yourself.Foreward written and read by Ray Romano.
©2009 Sam Haskell (P)2009 Random House
Devil at My Heels
Summary
The best-selling autobiography of the legendary Louis Zamperini, hero of the blockbuster Unbroken. "A modern classic by an American legend, Devil at My Heels is the riveting and deeply personal memoir by US Olympian, World War II bombardier, and POW survivor Louis Zamperini. His inspiring story of courage, resilience, and faith has captivated readers and audiences of Unbroken, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. In Devil at My Heels, his official autobiography (co-written with longtime collaborator David Rensin), Zamperini shares his own first-hand account of extraordinary journey - hailed as “one of the most incredible American lives of the past century.” (People) A youthful troublemaker, a world-class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller life than most. But on May 27, 1943, it all changed in an instant when his B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Louis and two other survivors drifting on a raft for 47 days and 2,000 miles, waiting in vain to be rescued. And the worst was yet to come when they finally reached land, only to be captured by the Japanese. Louis spent the next two years as a prisoner of war - tortured and humiliated, routinely beaten, starved, and forced into slave labor - while the Army Air Corps declared him dead and sent official condolences to his family. On his return home, memories of the war haunted him and nearly destroyed his marriage until a spiritual rebirth transformed him and led him to dedicate the rest of his long and happy life to helping at-risk youth. Told in Zamperini’s own voice, Devil at My Heels is an unforgettable memoir from one of the greatest of the “Greatest Generation”, a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of faith.
©2009 David Rensin, Louis Zamperini (P)2021 Johnson Harwell