High On Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips
LIKED IT
This is another train wreck of a memoir. I think I read these to make myself feel better since I find myself saying that my life is not nearly as bad as it can seem sometimes. Of course, I skipped the pages of incest so the rest of this read was pretty enjoyable. It all comes down to the same formula of kid with famous messed up parents becomes a messed up child star and on to messed up adultness. I wonder what the book would have been like if Phillps could actually remember her life.
Product Description
Not long before her fiftieth birthday, Mackenzie Phillips walked into Los Angeles International Airport. She was on her way to a reunion for One Day at a Time, the hugely popular 70s sitcom on which she once starred as the lovable rebel Julie Cooper. Within minutes of entering the security checkpoint, Mackenzie was in handcuffs, arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin.
Born into rock and roll royalty, flying in Learjets to the Virgin Islands at five, making pot brownies with her father’s friends at eleven, Mackenzie grew up in an all-access kingdom of hippie freedom and heroin cool. It was a kingdom over which her father, the legendary John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, presided, often in absentia, as a spellbinding, visionary phantom.
When Mackenzie was a teenager, Hollywood and the world took notice of the charming, talented, precocious child actor after her star-making turn in American Graffiti. As a young woman she joinedthe nonstop party in the hedonistic pleasure dome her father created for himself and his fellow revelers, and a rapt TV audience watched as Julie Cooper wasted away before their eyes. By the time Mackenzie discovered how deep and dark her father’s trip was going, it was too late. And as an adult, she has paid dearly for a lifetime of excess, working tirelessly to reconcile a wonderful, terrible past in which she succumbed to the power of addiction and the pull of her magnetic father.
As her astounding, outrageous, and often tender life story unfolds, the actor-musician-mother shares her lifelong battle with personal demons and near-fatal addictions. She overcomes seemingly impossible obstacles again and again and journeys toward redemption and peace. By exposing the shadows and secrets of the past to the light of day, the star who turned up High on Arrival has finally come back down to earth — to stay.
About the Author
Mackenzie Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips and stepdaughter of Michelle Phillips, both lead singers of the 60s band The Mamas and The Papas. She starred as Julie Cooper Horvath on the sitcom One Day at a Time alongside Valerie Bertinelli.
Product Details
Hardcover: 292 pages
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment; First Edition edition (September 23, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 143915385X
ISBN-13: 978-1439153857
OBTAINED FROM: Public Library
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