FROM BROADWAY TO BOOKSTORES
by Richard Horgan

Film Stew
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Nov 13 2008
CA

It started with the murder of a Hollywood A-list male actor, found in
the back of a limousine with his Best Supporting Actor Oscar rudely
re-deployed for his anal consideration. And it will soon continue with
the notion of paparazzi werewolves battling deeply embedded Tinseltown
bloodsuckers and the appearance of a naked (and walking dead version
of) Orson Welles, without clothes because he has just shape shifted
from the physical countenance of a rat back to human form.

Welcome to the wonderful new world of actress Adrienne Barbeau who,
after publishing her memoir in 2006, has moved on to this summer’s
saucy Hollywood mystery novel Vampyres of Hollywood and is currently
working on a sequel. Not bad for someone who just a few years ago
walked blind into an L.A. writing course that was also attended at the
time by actresses Mariette Hartley, Tess Harper and Michael Learned.

Barbeau’s success as a writer in her early 60’s is almost as
preposterous as the idea of her giving birth at age 51 to healthy twin
boys. But both have happened and the still busy actress, who spoke
last night to a small crowd at Burbank’s Buena Vista branch lirary,
looks none the worse for the wear. Quite the contrary in fact; the
now 63-year-old Sacramento native, of Armenian and French descent,
was positively radiant as she revealed that she has already received –
and turned down – a first offer for the movie rights to Vampyres. But
make no "mystake"; in this era of Twilight, True Blood and Let the
Right One In, a TV or big screen adaptation is inevitable.

On the acting front, Barbeau – who 40 years ago made her Broadway
debut in Fiddler on the Roof – just completed a short film in which
she plays, for the first time ever, a zombie. But this is no ordinary
zombie; rather, the movie features a protagonist who is very aware
of the transformation in progress and is trying to deal with it. Add
to this a recent guest star appearance on Cold Case and the Levar
Burton directed indie drama Reach for Me (in which Barbeau co-stars
alongside Seymour Cassel and Alfre Woodard), and you’ve got one
of the best current examples of a woman (way) over 40 leapfrogging
(or should that be leap-Fog-ing?) over Hollywood ageism. Bravo!