Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure

by Shirley MacLaine Narrated by Shirley MacLaine

Overview

A funny, fierce, imaginative memoir chronicling New York Times bestselling author and Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine's remarkable experiences filming Wild Oats in the Canary Islands and the extraordinary memories her time there brought forth of a past life on the lost continent of Atlantis.

Her agent advised her not to get on the plane. The male leads weren't even cast. The financing was shaky at best. The script had been rewritten countless times. And yet something about Wild Oats lured Shirley MacLaine to the film's location shoot in the far-off Canary Islands-and straight to the center of one of the most thrilling and paradigm-shifting adventures of her life.

The making of the film reads like a screwball comedy, as the cast and crew face unpredictable daily obstacles with ingenuity, grit, and personal sacrifice. Yet the chaos leads Shirley to a revelatory new understanding of the demise of one of history's most elusive yet endlessly intriguing places. Scholars have long theorized that Spain's Canary Islands are the remnants of the mighty lost continent of Atlantis. As the movie set descends into pandemonium, Shirley finds fascinating corollaries between the island's cataclysmic fate and our own dangerous trajectory. Can we learn the lessons the citizens of Atlantis failed to comprehend?

The answer is borne out of recovered memories from Shirley's past life on Atlantis and through a series of meditations that reveal the necessity of unfettered imagination when looking for bold new truths, rendering this evocative, irreverent, and honest memoir essential reading for anyone seeking a broader understanding of what it means to be human-both where we came from and where we are going.

Editorial Reviews

Booklist

Praise for What If...

“Fun and thoughtful by turns and told in MacLaine’s fiesty, funny voice, this should appeal to fans and doubters alike.

Parade

Praise for I'm Over All That

“The most revealing book of her career.

Vanity Fair

One-of-a-kind wit.

Beliefnet Editors

The legendary MacLaine will leave you laughing out loud while scratching your head with questions."

|Los Angeles Times

"Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure is MacLaine's funny new book about the near screwball comedy of errors making the film about a woman (MacLaine) who accidentally receives a life insurance check for $5 million instead of $50,000 and is persuaded by her friend (Lange) to keep the money and go to the Canary Islands...But Above the Line is about a lot more than filmmaking."

Booklist

Praise for What If...

“Fun and thoughtful by turns and told in MacLaine’s fiesty, funny voice, this should appeal to fans and doubters alike.

Los Angeles Times

"Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure is MacLaine's funny new book about the near screwball comedy of errors making the film about a woman (MacLaine) who accidentally receives a life insurance check for $5 million instead of $50,000 and is persuaded by her friend (Lange) to keep the money and go to the Canary Islands...But Above the Line is about a lot more than filmmaking."

Library Journal

03/01/2016
Award-winning actress MacLaine, most recently praised for her appearances in the television series Downton Abbey, has written ten books, mainly about otherworldly surrealistic speculations. This title includes those elements as she describes her involvement in a financially stressed, still unreleased film on a location in the Canary Islands, "remnants of the Lost Colony of Atlantis," playing an old lady owed a $900 check, who gets $900,000 instead, and takes off with a friend (played by Jessica Lange), to sow her wild oats in Las Vegas. In the title, "line" divides the filmmakers: management and cast above, crew below. Capricious surreal guru-toned speculation peppers the narrative and fills an extensive undocumented appendix of her "research." Two other voices also emerge: a crafty gossip publicizing the offscreen behaviors of cast, crew, and management, and a proud octogenarian celebrating her lifestyle: sharing her appearance-centered hair-and-makeup experiences, wise financial insights, buried-to-the-neck-in-sand dreams, and hang-by-the-neck-underwater ongoing therapy program with her current mentor. VERDICT For fans of MacLaine and behind-the-scenes Hollywood gossip.—Ann Fey, SUNY Rockland Community Coll., Suffern

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

This is an altogether convoluted recollection of an exceptional time in the recent past when actress MacLaine filmed WILD OATS in the Canary Islands. This independent film, which proceeded without clear-cut financing, is a jumping-off point for MacLaine’s reflections on distant past lives in this geographical region, which is generally believed to include the long-lost continent of Atlantis. MacLaine’s narration is a bit weak in volume, intonation, and organization, distinctly different from recent efforts. Additionally, the style of the writing could best be described as stream of consciousness. This is a disappointment because, despite fascinating insights into the financing of films today, MacLaine’s trademark sense of humor seems scarce, even absent. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2015-12-06
The award-winning actress reflects on her latest film and her previous life. MacLaine, a talented woman who believes in reincarnation, is getting a lot out of this life. She's acted in more than 50 films and written 14 books, including this one. At 81, she's acting in another film and writing a book about it. Wild Oats (2016), a screwball comedy about an elderly woman (MacLaine) who mistakenly receives a very large social security check and decides to take her friend (Jessica Lange) on a lavish vacation, was over five years in the making and $500,000 in debt before it even started shooting in the Canary Islands, which some believed "were the remnants of Atlantis." After the musical chairs of finalizing actors and director and with funding somewhat secured, the cast was flown to the island's opulent Lopesan resort, and her "adventure" began. She writes in a jaunty, casual, daily diary style, providing affectionate portraits of her fellow actors: Billy Connolly (in one scene, "he made me laugh so hard, I nearly developed a herniated disk), Lange ("beautiful, intense, and a brilliant dramatic actress"), Demi Moore (sweet…and nervous"), and Howard Hesseman ("adorably funny")." MacLaine was constantly anxious about the ongoing efforts to raise funds, calling it "amateur hour," and at one point worried, "Why am I here? Are we going to shoot a movie…or ourselves?" However, it ended well: "It had all been worth it to me for so many reasons." The author's insider's portrait of the moviemaking world sparkles, but it's dimmer when she engages in her nNew aAge ruminations ("I feel that I am in alignment with my soul's destiny"). MacLaine is wickedly honest about moviemaking, sincere and enthusiastic in describing her beliefs, and welcoming in the skepticism of others—it's all refreshing and fun.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170510030
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Above the Line
Whenever a new faculty is developed into being, an old one loses its force and precision.

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