Thursday, August 12, 2010

PT's Book Report of Andrew Morton's "Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography"  

...or as I like to call it "That Ignorant Ass Piece of Shit Book About The Jolie Written By A Hack Who's A Former UK Tabloid Writer And Who Couldn't Find Any Information - AT ALL - To Either Refute Or Verify The 'Tom Cruise Is Gay Rumors'...And Doesn't Publish His Handiwork In His Home Country Because He Knows He'll Lose Any Libel Suit Brought Against Him". A little wordy? True...but it's also accurate.



PART 1


As I mentioned last week I stopped at B&N (followed by Wal-Mart) and read through some of Andrew Morton's woefully inaccurate "biography" of Angie. Let me just say that this book does not belong in the biography section. It belongs in the fiction section. As other reviews have mentioned, there's not one single footnote, headnote, ibid., et. al., superscript or subscript character in the entire book. And the thing is only about 300 pages - and about 20-25 pages of that is background material on other people and pictures. Another 25-30 pages is repetitive info and therefore filler to make up for the fact that all he did was read Angie's interviews, supposedly talk to a few old friends who ratted her out, anonymous natch, and then vilify her dead mother. Wherever Marcheline may be I hope she's enjoying watching Morton's book go down in flames like an X movie on opening weekend.

Something else that went out the window with the dirty dishwater is something that most biographers consider important - CHRONOLOGY. One sentence he's talking about something that happened in 1996 - the next sentence he's quoting something that was said in 2005 or even 2009. Unfortunately if you don't know Angie's history or are an idiot or a hen (is there a difference?) you won't know that. Therefore people are left with the impression that Morton has just struck gold when the reality is he's deliberately misleading the reader by using quotes out of chronological order and out of context - hence the total disregard of footnotes and references. The word "bibliography" is kryptonite for guys like Andrew Morton.

The other thing that strikes me about this book was the odd choice of cover photos. As you can see, it's a picture of Angie's back. At first I didn't understand why Morton or the editor chose this picture, but as I was getting ready to post this have of the review it hit me - "KNOW YOUR RIGHTS". Everyone assumed the photo was chosen to highlight Angie's love of tats, because of the prayer for Maddox or because of her involvement in humanitarian issues. But, I think it's more disingenous than that. They chose that photo because they "know they're rights", as in they know the libel laws in this country basically guarantee they'll be protected from Angelina taking any legal action to sue them for over their lies in this book. That's also why the book is NOT being published in the U.K. - because they know their rights there as well. In the U.K. the libel laws are firmly on Angie's side and she would end up owning St. Martin's Press and Andrew Morton's retirement accounts and the short and curlies where his shriveled up pencil dick used to be. If his book is so accurate and he stands by what he wrote - then why isn't the book being published in the UK? There's your first "DUH!" moment for this book. Believe me - there'll be plenty more to follow...

Before I go any further I'll be completely honest - I read maybe 2 or 3 of the early pages, saw it was ridiculous insinuations about Marcheline and jumped ahead to Angie's teen years. I skipped about 60 pages. The next 170 pages or so I skimmed enough to get the gist of his claims about the pre-Brad years. This report is broken into two parts. This part will cover up to Angie chucking JV out of her life. The second part covers everything after that point, ie, Brad. I started to say "Brad and The Lonely Emblem" but she's really not that prominently featured in the book. She and Billy Boob will probably want to get together and sue Morton for undervaluing their contribution to Angie and Brad's respective bad marriages.

Here's the basics of this repetitive book -

- Angelina: Abandonment issues due to her father leaving the family when she was a toddler, mitigated by her mother dumping her in an apartment for 2 years with a bunch of nannies and barely seeing Angie because Angie looked like JV. (No, he doesn't explain the dearth of early childhood photos floating around internet showing Angie with her mother.) This abandonment led to an inner conflict that caused depression, cutting, suicidal tendencies, sexual experimentation and drug usage. Claims Angie suffer(s)ed from anorexia - especially in her teens. This is despite the fact that Angie said one of the reason she quit modeling was that she couldn't stand the constant pressure to be thinner and she liked her steak too much to give it up. Frequently used people's reactions to her obvious sexuality to shock and manipulate people. I could be wrong (about the amount) but I think Madonna's made about $450 million doing this. As has Prince...Elvis Presley...Marilyn Monroe...even reality skags like Kim Kardashian and Playboy hos. One of Morton's biggest examples - claims Angie once deliberately took a set of pix of her and Shitzu making out in a carnival photo booth and showed them to JV without warning him first...did it to twist the knife because the woman he'd left Marcheline for (Stacy Pickren) left him 7 years later for a woman.

Throughout the book Morton does his best to insinuate that Angie, at heart, is really happiest as a lesbian. That's why she was doing drugs during that time - cuz she was all happy about munching on Shitzu's carpet. Oh yeah, Morton also implies there were a lot of other female lovers (all nameless and none used as a source) and quotes yet another unnamed former female friend, but not a former lesbian flame, as saying that Angie was the only "true bisexual" she'd ever met, but that Angie only dates famous men in the spotlight (Prolly cuz that's who she works with and is the circle she travels in? That could just be me though.), but her true passion is women and she frequently falls for woman she's friends with. Now, here's the thing - she was friends with the men she fell in love with, married and/or committed to and had children with.

Yet, aside from Shitzu Morton doesn't name one other woman that Angie supposedly had an affair with - long-term or short - and only comes up with trips to strip clubs, which Shitzu took her to, and getting lap dances from the strippers. Now I have no experience with strippers myself, but it's my understanding that they earn a living by enticing people to give them M-O-N-E-Y in exchange for dancing raunchily, either on a stage with a pole or on a patron's lap. Someone correct me on that if I'm wrong. And even if Angie did have other female lovers - so what? Angie once said her biggest problem was that she "like it all - short, tall, fat, skinny. Doesn't matter. I just like it all...which is a problem when I'm walking down the street." Does that sound like a woman trying to hide anything? Nope. BUT...Morton still couldn't dig up any female lovers except Shitzu. Do they exist? Probably...but...I'm just saying...dude supposedly spent a year researching and all he come up with is Shitzu, which we already know about cuz Angie told the world about it?.

In other words - it's all the shit Angie's talked freely about her entire career. Most of it is taken directly from Angie's own interviews with Morton re-wording it to make it sound like a fresh insight into her life. It's not. At all. Morton obviously read all of her interviews, but can't be bothered to list names, dates, places, sources, references, etc., beyond what Angie herself has already mentioned.

- Marcheline: Bitter ex-wife of JV who supposedly carried her hatred of her ex to her deathbed last wish (yes, he went there), deliberately turned her children against their father, more interested in being her children's friend than their mother, passive aggressive but sneaky at the same time, lived vicariously through her daughter, enabled Angie's bad behavior by turning a blind eye to her drug usage, inflexible in  her ability to forgive and forget sleights from friends and family, fell out with her sister over a screw up with tickets to Jamie's college graduation and they never spoke again - even when she was on her death bed (doesn't this make her sister inflexible, too?), had a similar issue with her live-in boyfriend of 11 years, frequently stuck her head in the sand rather than deal with Angie's problems, encouraged Angie's supposed affair with Mick Jagger. Was also Angie's manager.

Morton claims Marcheline's resentment of JV ran so deep that once, when he was behind in his alimony & support payments, she found out his agent had just moved into a multi-million dollar house and that JV had  created a production company with a wealthy socialite friend and the agent was being sued by the socialite for misappropriating the funs (hence the multi-million dollar house) and Marcheline became convinced that JV was hiding money so she and her friend Lauren Taines (info below) and another friend hatched a plan to sue JV for the money by stealing his garbage off the curb and going through it looking for financial papers. The friends stole the trash in the middle of the night - then Marcheline, Taines, the other friend and Angie went through the garbage and found a few financial papers - but ended up not doing anything with them when Marcheline "chickened out". This was one of Morton's examples of how Marcheline turned the kids against JV. Thing is - Angie was 16 or 17 so I kinda think her opinion of her father was already set at that point.

- James: Not in the book very much. Described as shy, intelligent, passive personality, non-confrontation, wasn't close to Angie as a kids/teens (which is weird because they were close enough to grow up greeting each other with a kiss on the lips rather than the cheek - and no, even Morton doesn't stoop to Mr. IUC's incest claims. To hear him tell it James didn't have much time for Angie as a kid.), the "favored son," threw away his potential as a director because of his extreme shyness, typical older brother who couldn't be bothered with his younger sister, disappointed his father by giving up directing to become an actor, takes some pot shots at James' lack of talent as an actor, calls him a "shadow" of his sister's personality, says James was called in a few times to mind Angie after a drug binge and "babysit" her. Pretty much makes James sound like a useless tool.

- Jon Voight: Serial cheater, left family for another woman, overbearing dictator who tried to run his kids lives, but was fighting an uphill battle because Marcheline had indoctrinated them from childhood to hate him, written in an sympathetic way that suggest Marcheline turned the kids against JV "to get even" with him for his cheating, concerned and caring father who coached his kids' sports teams but saw them infrequently (once again, this is Marcheline's fault), foolish with his money and investments and tended to fall behind in his alimony and child support payments, was out of work a lot due to his pickiness with scripts, late this forced him to do a lot of movies he considered "beneath him" just to pay the bills, running them throughout is him trying to "save" Angie from herself.  Pat Obrien characterized JV's little performance on Inside Edition as being "profoundly moving...and disturbing" and that you could really see how distraught JV was and that when he heard about Angie's reaction to it he was perplexed and didn't understand how she could be so cold about her father's obvious distress. Meanwhile Marcheline saw it as JV again trying to manipulate Angie into doing what he wanted her to do. A bunch of shit in the book I'd read and go, "Well, duh! Angie said as much!"

- Geyer: I'm putting Geyer in the family section because he doesn't fit any other category - and he's like family to Angie. The gist of Morton's comments on Geyer were that when Angie met him he had a reputation of being an ambitious, arrogant and abrasive asshole of a playboy who was clawing his way to the top of the agent heap at William Morris. Morton says Angie hired Geyer in 1996 because she didn't like the roles she was being offered. Meanwhile Marcheline was Angie's manager - and she and Geyer circled each other like lions about to fight because they both wanted to control Angie's career. Morton says Marcheline couldn't stand Geyer and thought he was only using Angie to further his career because he knew she was going to be a huge star one day. Morton also claims that Angie and Geyer used to fight like cats and dogs and that they had a "love-hate" relationship that later turned to more of a father/daughter relationship. Morton claimed that JV used to call Geyer and yell at him to do something about Angie's drug problem and that Geyer didn't care about her and only cared about what she could do for his career. He took over as her manager after Marcheline got sick. Truthfully I don't know much about Angie's relationship with Geyer in the early years...yet somehow I doubt Morton got it right. Go figure.

One thing about basically regurgitating Angie's interviews and tabloid stories is that Morton retell's anecdotes that are part of the lore about Angie. He tells two about Geyer - one is true, the other is tabloid info. The true on is that Geyer was the one who thought BBT (who was a client at the time) and Angie would be good together. Morton can't just state the truth and  move on so he one-ups the truth by claiming Geyer also set Angie up with Leo (more below). The other story Morton tells comes from a tabloid - it's that after Angie and JV fell out Angie would avoid places she knew JV was going to be (true), but one particular evening she was obligated to attend an industry party, spotted JV across the room and circled the room avoiding him - until he finally saw her, came over to talk to her - and Geyer had to manhandle JV to keep him away from Angie. Rather - JV claimed Geyer manhandled him. Geyer said that JV was the one doing the manhandling - of Angie and she didn't want to talk to JV...so he got rid of him - forcibly.


At some point I whipped out pen and paper so that I could properly cite, unlike Morton, all the former friends and acquaintances who cooperated with this asshat and threw Angie and Marcheline under a bus. Since I didn't read the whole book I have no idea who some of these people are, but if I do know I'll include that info. They are as follows -

- Lauren Taines: Former "friend" of Marcheline's, referred to as Angie's "stage mother", frequently went with Angie on auditions and modeling assignments. One of the few named sources in this book. She either hates Angie's guts or has zero loyalty to her friends because she blabbed quite a bit about Marcheline.

- Joey Covington:  Another "friend" of Marcheline’s who taught Angie how to play the drums. Morton says "to impress" Tim Hutton, who was in a garage band, but then goes on to say that mostly she used them to real pent up energy after long days of filming. From what I can tell this guy is Lauren Taines's boyfriend. He used to be a member of Jefferson Airplane/Starship. At one point in Angie's early 20s he tried to commit suicide. Morton had mentioned Angie's obsession with death and funerals earlier in the book and skipped past it. Later he comes back to it when Covington attempted suicide and spends a few paragraphs talking Angie quizzing Covington as to what it was like to die and his chosen method, which Morton doesn't state, then quotes the guy as saying he told Angie it wasn't a good place or a good feeling and that she never wanted to go there.

- Sean McCall: One of the photographers of the now famous photo shoots of Angie at 16. This guy said he didn't understand why Angie has down-played her modeling potential and that at 17 she was on the brink of being huge and was offered a contract to replace Cindy Crawford at the model of a swimsuit line, but that she'd decided to concentrate on acting instead. He said even though Angie was "kind of short for a supermodel" at 5'7", that Kate Moss was the same height and "believe me" Angie would have been way more successful than Kate Moss or as he put it, "Out-Kate Moss Kate Moss." What I found interesting about his comments was that 2 years ago when OuttaTouch first bought the "lost modeling photos" from him he didn't mention anything about Angie supposedly being on the cusp of supermodel supremacy. I just remember him saying that Angie was very self-possessed and self-aware, was a natural and a "can't miss".

- Don Peters

- Carl Durnavich

- Peter Borsari


- Bill Day:  Marcheline's former live-in boyfriend of 11 years; relationship ended badly, but I don't know why because I skipped this section and wasn't curious enough to go back and find out. Speaking of Bitter Bettys...he said Marcheline was too soft on her kids and that's why Angie turned so wild. Also said he didn't know Marcheline had cancer or had died until someone told him they heard it on the news. He said he couldn't believe neither Angie or James called to tell him and snarked that it was typical of Marcheline to let old differences keep her from reaching out to people she used to love and once you were on Marcheline's bad side there was no way to get back in favor. You can practically see the bus idling in this guy's driveway while he was talking to Morton...

- Ken Regan

- Karen Sheperd: photographer

- Sven Arnstein: photographer

- Ron Galella

and last but not least...

- Franklin Meyer: Angie's supposed NYC drug dealer and "friend". Chatty little fucker and has no doubt made a small fortune off selling out Angie over the last decade. This is the guy who made the tape of Angie talking in the drug "den" that The Sun posted a few years ago. He says Angie never bought a lot of drugs at once from him ($100 worth, tops). He also said Angie was interested in art and he had a friend who taught Angie how to sculpt and paint and claims the two of them once thought about starting up an artists’ colony in upstate NY.

The family dynamics aspect of Angie's life really only comprised a small portion of the book and its interspersed throughout. The bulk of this book is spent talking about Angie's lovers, not lovers and her drug use. Pretty much everything he says about Angie's drug use is suspect because the details involve Angie by herself or with 1 other person. The other person was unknown and didn't talk to Morton. For instance, at one point Morton describes a supposed heroin-smoking binge Angie was on at the Raffles L'Ermitage Hotel with a friend. He claims that JV found out where she was and tried to drag her home and make her stop doing drugs. Angie threw him out and JV would only agree to leave if Angie agreed to let James babysit her. Ummm...how'd Morton find out the details of a closed door family incident? Nobody involved told him about it and he doesn't even pretend that they did. He just tells the story, expects you to believe it and goes on to his next tale. This is why Morton  kept dragging in psychologists to give their uninformed opinions as to why Angie supposedly acted a certain way at a certain point - because he had ZERO real "inside" sources. One of Morton's biggest contentions is that Angie knew she exuded a potent sexuality and it's how she manipulated people into doing what she wanted or she used that to toy with them. Does he offer named sources, dates, locations and other empirical evidence? Don't be silly. That kind of nonsense is for people publishing in countries with narrower slander and libel laws than the U.S., like, say...his native UK. Where is book is NOT available and the folks at Amazon would like to thank him because this allows them to sell an extra 3 copies of his book that otherwise would be left to collect dust in their warehouse.

The drug use I'm not even going to waste time on because Angie pretty much covered it when she said she'd done every drug possible. Aside from naming Franklin Meyer as Angie's drug dealer Morton never says where Angie got all the drugs he says she did. Meyer said she never bought much from him, but Morton never once brings up the fact that Shitzu was a known drug dealer who used a friend, a fellow model, sometime lover who she knew was a smack addict, as a mule. Instead of delivering Shitzu's drugs she used a good portion of them and OD'ed. Shitzu then went underground, never went to the girl's funeral, pissed off all of their friends because she never acknowledged where the girl got the drugs from in the first place - and then resurfaced in LA and starting pursuing Angie again.

During the drug era Morton also said she was cutting, too. Another "duh" moment because Angie said the two were tied together in her mind. Enter the shrinks to say a lot of cutters also turn to tattooing as another way "to feel" and to get that release that they can't get in a sexual way. So naturally Morton added 2 plus 2, got 98 and claims Angie's obsession with tats are a substitute for the cutting and is part of the depression cycle. But, he later contradicts that by quoting Angie saying that all of the tats except 1 came at happy times in her life and that her tats commemorate good things in her life. The one bad tat was the dragon on her hip that she had covered with the black cross - which she got done the night before marrying JLM. Morton spends a lot of time trying to make Angie's drug usage sound as bad as possible.

So much for the drugs...now let's get to the sex. Aside from Mick Jagger Morton does not name one single person that Angie slept with that she herself didn't already talk about. I take that back - he claims her affair with Tim Hutton was common knowledge and quotes the director of Playing God as saying everyone on the set knew about it. Morton also accuses Angie of cheating on JLM with Tim Hutton. But the problem is - he'd previously said that Angie and JLM were already split up at the time she started filming Playing God in late summer 1996. And frankly - except for Brad, the men in this book come off sounding like a bunch of pussy hungry idiots getting schooled by a girl much too young for them in the first place. But...I got ahead of myself. Here's the boyfriend, husbands and lovers breakdown -

- Anton: High school boyfriend...Angie's told the tale herself so I skipped it this section. However, Morton says after dumping Anton at 16 Angie wasn't sexually active again until she met JLM because she was too busy with her career. And yes...Angie herself has already revealed that, too.

- Lenny Kravitz: US Lies Weakly included Kravitz in their list of people they said Morton said Angie had slept with. Y'all are gonna be shocked to find out that...well...US lied. Morton says Angie DID NOT sleep with Lenny Kravitz. In fact Morton says the exact opposite. He says Angie was hired to do a Kravitz video, he saw her on the set, instantly sprung a woody, was standing off-camera next to Lauren Taines (identified above), asked her who the girl was and Taines told him Angie was only 16 or 17 and he needed to stay away from her or she (Taines) would kick his ass.

- JLM: I have no idea if this guy has any personality at all but you certainly don't get any sense that he does from this book. Supposedly he was edgy and "challenging". They basically fell in love on the Hackers set. Had an affair. JLM went back to England...

- Shitzu: Angie's already documented this tale, too. Morton claims Angie cheated on JLM with Shitzu...but that's not accurate because Angie broke up with JLM when he went back to the UK after Hackers. She said a long distance relationship wasn't going to work and she was too busy concentrating on her career. And off he went back to the UK. Shitzu she met shooting Foxfire, had an affair, Shitzu got her into S&M, bondage, going to strip clubs, blah, blah, blah. Some unnamed "friend" claims that if a strap-on was involved Angie wanted to be the "man". Morton implies lesbian orgies and stuff like that, but he only cites one anonymous source and stuff Shitzu told the British press in 2005 when she sold Angie out for drug money. Apparently not even Shitzu would talk to him for this bio because she's never quoted directly unless it's from old interviews. Back when he's talking about the drugs Morton refers to a female friend that Angie was doing drugs with as a "girlfriend" but it's hard to tell if he means that in a sexual way because he at other times he's clearly talking about platonic female friends and calls them her "girlfriends," too. Shitzu disappeared from this book somewhere around the Pushing Tin shoot started. I wasn't reading everything, but I don't recall seeing mention of her after BBT. Shitzu claimed that she and Angie were lovers off and on for over 10 years...yet Morton has nothing about her during the time Angie lived in England after BBT. Shitzu's a pathological liar...but so is Morton, so pick your poison on that one.

- Now we're back to JLM: He came back to the States to work, but he also wanted to be with Angie. Morton at least gets this right - that Angie took him and Shitzu out to dinner and told them she cared for both of them, but she wasn't going to choose between them. JLM went along with this - as did Shitzu. Shitzu once claimed that Angie wanted to do threesomes with the two of them, but she didn't do men. I remember LMAO because Shitzu acted offended. Anyway - this went on for a while until eventually Angie chose JLM. Morton however claims that Angie chose JLM because his career was taking off and that could in turn help her career. Not true, but whattaya expect from this schmuck. JLM had to go back to the UK so Angie went with him and they ended up getting married. Once again, Most of this stuff Angie herself told in interviews so Morton didn't screw it up too badly. It didn't take long before Angie noticed people were only referring to her as JLM's wife and she ceased being a person in her own right - Angie says she lost herself, didn't like it and wanted to regain that, so she left JLM. She said years later they were just too young to get married and separated with the idea that maybe some day they could get back together and remarry. All of which Morton rewords but makes it sound as self-involved and self-serving as possible. Angie then went back to LA...got the Playing God gig...met Tim Hutton...

- Tim Hutton: Morton says he and David Duchovny both chased after Angie and it was like watching a cock fight. The director of the flick spoke to Morton, some guy named Andy Wilson who's got nothing but this movie and TV credits in the IMDB - in other words, he's nobody in the industry and his only claim to fame is that he directed a young Angie in a mediocre movie. I can't say if the quotes were given to Morton directly or if Morton lifted them from somewhere else and is using them out of context like he does throughout the book with quotes from Angie. Unfortunately for Morton wherever he got the quote they didn't also have the information that Duchovny was NOT dating Tea Leoni as he claims. Duchovny was dating Perry Reeves - who later dumped him because he couldn't keep his pants zipped, and whom the director of Playing God says he cheated on with some chick on the crew after Angie fell into bed with Tim Hutton instead of him. Morton wasted a couple of pages talking about the troubles of getting Playing God off the ground and how huge a star Duchovny was at the time. The book has all kinds of filler crap like that. Without it the book would only have been about 270 pages - max.

Hutton, like Duchovny, and Jagger after him, comes off like an randy old goat in love with his own sex appeal. Morton claims he has a rep as ladies man, which I laughed at because...well...it's Conrad from Ordinary People! Whatevs. If he was supposed to be some type of Lothario he'd apparently never come across a woman who did shit on her own terms. Morton has Hutton, Shitzu, and JLM, later joined by Jagger, shuffling in and out of Angie's bedroom and his tale at the speed of light. A couple of times I lost track of who Angie was supposedly sleeping with...but I didn't bother to go back and try to figure it out because they all came off like a pack of idiots who spent all their time trying to fuck Angie rather than working and building a career.  Based on Morton's non-sense - these people didn't work at all - unless you qualified chasing Angie as work.

- JLM...again...he comes (pun intended) in and out of this tale, but essentially he and Angie were separated, but together when he was in the US. The entire time I was reading through this book - and pretty much since I've been an Angie fan - I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is she saw in JLM. I'm bored even thinking about the man...

- Mick Jagger: If I were Mick and there was any possibility that the events in this book are true...I'd voluntarily return my Manho of the Century Plaque. This is also a part of the book that is truly offensive toward Marcheline. Morton basically accuses her of prostituting Angie. Morton claims the Stones were Marcheline's favorite band and when she got a request for Angie to appear in their video Has Anybody Seen My Baby she BEGGED Angie to do it - because she wanted Angie to get together with Mick Jagger - and that Marcheline didn't care that Mick was only 5 years younger than Angie's father or that he was married and Jerry Hall was preggers with his 4th kid. Morton says that Marcheline encouraged Angie to do to Jerry Hall what JV had done to her. Angie did the video, cussed like a sailor, tore her wig off at the end revealing her recently shaved head (for Gia) and went tottering off the set in extremely high heels - and Jagger was instantly smitten and proceeded to chase after Angie for the next 2 years.

Morton says Jagger invited her to one of their concerts, got her phone number and proceeded to call her night and day begging her to go out with him. This went on for weeks and weeks and when she didn't return his calls Jagger started leaving messages asking why she wasn't retuning his calls. This is where Mick starts to look like a stupid, horny old fool - Morton says it's because Angie didn't give Mick HER phone number...she gave him Marcheline's number and Marcheline had kept all the recordings of Mick begging Angie to see him. One message he left begged her to meet him in Miami after the Stones concert there. Morton says Marcheline begged Angie to go - so she did...but she refused to sleep with Mick...she told him she was on her period. Yes, Morton says Angie pulled the old, "Not tonight. I'm on my period." routine on Mick. Angie? LMAO. GMAFB. Angie probably said, "No. I'm not going to fuck you. Now leave me the fuck alone."

The invite to concerts/hit on her thing happens a few more times and then Morton obliquely implies that Angie eventually did sleep with Jagger...but here's the thing...he doesn't say when, where or how this came to happen. He doesn't even say how he knows about the calls. Presumably this Lauren Taines who sold Marcheline up the river is his source, but he never says and probably doesn't think anyone reading the book is going to want to notice that he never bothers to list any legit sources for these stories where only 1 or 2 people could possibly have known what happened - and neither would talk to him. Typical tabloid trickery.

Anydirtbag, Morton says Mick was in the middle of chasing Angie when he invited her to Brazil for some shows there...the week he got hit with a paternity suit from the Brazilian model who's baby he'd fathered...Angie didn't go to Brazil and all the while Jagger was calling Angie and asking why she hadn't come to Brazil like she'd promised. Morton says Angie never called him back...he called and called and called, she'd promise to do things with him but never showed up and that basically she'd dumped him and he was too stupid to realize it.

Jagger came off looking like a dimwitted old fool, following his dick around and got played by a girly barely 22 year old. Meanwhile Morton turned Marcheline into her daughter's pimp and claimed Marcheline went as far as writing down notes for a wedding at a French chateau. Throughout this time Morton claims that Angie was "baby-shopping" for a Native American special needs baby to adopt because she was fascinated by Josephine Baker's "multicultural brood". Never mind the fact that Angie said she'd wanted to adopt since she was a little kid. Morton makes this sound like a hobby. He claims Angie used to tell Mick that she was adopting "an Indian kid" and naming him Mick Jagger. He said she was joking, but Mick Jagger never realized that and though she was serious about naming her adopted baby after him.

- JLM, Shitzu, Tim Hutton: All supposedly still in the picture while Angie was playing cat and mouse games with an unsuspecting Mick Jagger. Somewhere along the line he says Angie and JLM decided to make the divorce official - at her mother's urging. Morton says Marcheline as being passive aggressive but he paints her as a pushy mother trying to run her kid's life, not just her career, - oh yeah, and being in denial about her drug problem.

- Nicolas Cage: Another guy who would have sold his left nut to get Angie to give him the time of day. Morton says Angie didn't sleep with Cage and he got that right. She wouldn't even give him the time of day. He pursued her pretty much the entire GI6S shoot. Morton claims NC tried to woo Angie with expensive gifts and was always showing up on the set in expensive cars, wearing flashy jewelry and stuff like that. He claims that one day Angie went to lunch with NC - and afterwards made him stop at dollar-type store. Supposedly it was her way of reminding NC that not everyone lived as flashily as he did. Personally I think Morton made up this little homily in an attempt to make Angie look sanctimonious.

- BBT: This is where Tim Hutton & Shitzu, JLM - and the drugs - dropped out of the narrative. The pix that the Star had the story about a few weeks ago is were taken during this time. Angie was supposedly still seeing Tim Hutton, fell for BBT during shooting of Pushing Tin and had his name inscribed "below her bikini line" - by a friend who was a tattoo artist and that's what the pictures were. She was only smoking ciggies and no drugs were involved. The friend seemingly talked to Morton on the record, but it's hard to tell how old quotes are and you can't trust that this clown is being honest about when and where the quote was acquired. The woman's name was - and I kid you not - Friday Jones. Sounds like a Bond ho, don't it? Well, she claims Angie was just goofing around with the dog collar and black tape while she was doing the tat and Angie put it on her nipples as a joke. So the Star implying that there was some kind of kinky S&M session going on was bogus, natch, because if there had been the pix would have been sold long ago.

I think most people know the story of Angie and BBT - met on Pushing Tin, nothing happened during the shoot, it was after the premiere in 1999 when they hooked up. Morton claims Angie used Tim Hutton to make BBT jealous. BBT claimed and Snora Dern were already history, but that's debatable because he hooked up with Angie after Snora went off to a movie shoot in Chicago. He says he broke it off...she says he didn't. Either way, Morton claims Dern was caught off guard, when she found out she was in Chicago and she had her friend Courteney Cox and Sheryl Crow make a raid on BBT's house while he was out of town, too, and get all of her stuff.

Morton then gets off topic - again, for about half a page and, he gets a few Brownie Points for this, tells the tale of Snora Dern going after Ben Harper almost as soon as she returned to LA. According to Morton Snora was in a music store, saw Harper's latest CD and decided he was the right man for her, consulted her psychic, then had her manager call his record company and ask to meet him. Now this sounds like a clear case of "man stealing" to me! Apparently Snora didn't give two shits that he was married, the wife preggo and a toddler at home. She went after her tooth and nail and got him. The sad thing is - Morton got most of the story right. I'd never heard the bit about the psychic before, but hell, it's Hollywood. There were no fewer than 4 people with regular psychics in this book - Marcheline, Snora, BBT and X...and a few months back Lies & Shit talked to Brad's psychic. WTF is with these people? BTW, BBT's psychic claims Angie made a pass at her - in BBT's presence. Then again, Morton also claims that BBT used to go to hotels and troll the bars looking for women interested in a threesome with him and Angie - he swears Angie put him up it and that announcing all of their wild sexual escapades was also Angie's idea - even though she said it made Billy feel like a man, so she did it to please him. As with every other husband or lover (except Mick) Morton paints Angie as the aggressor and the poor guy as just going along with it because it's what she wanted.

There's not a whole lot of need to rehash the breakdown of the BBT marriage, but suffice it to say that Morton continues the "everything's Angie's fault" theme. BBT is painted as being a stepping stone in Angie's ongoing battle with herself to find a measure of self-worth and self respect. Morton contends that Angie imagined BBT was having affairs when he was on the road and that she put her career ahead of their marriage, but that when they were together she wanted all of his attention on her. BBT was in the middle of working on his music career and didn't want to jeopardize that and spent a lot of time on the road. Morton also pays short shrift to Angie's experiences in Cambodia. Morton claims that at the time Oliver Stone was attached to Beyond Borders with Angie and he was doing pre-production work and visiting refugee camps with the UNHCR - that's how Angie got interested in working with the UNHCR after Cambodia. According to Morton Angie was supposed to suppress the interest she had in the subject and be happy being BBT's sexpot wife or groupie. Bad Angie for wanting a career of her own and to be useful a useful member of society.

BTW - did I mention that Morton never really explains how Angie stopped doing drugs? That's cuz he don't know jack shit and didn't even bother to pretend he did. All he really says is that BBT helped her stop doing drugs. Which is really unusual because BBT had a raging coke habit at the time. Morton claims BBT hadn't had a drop to drink in years...which may have been true...but he neglects to mention all the drug rumors.

Once again Morton has bupkus. Except for painting BBT as the victim when he was a total asshole - there's nothing new here. Morton blathers on for a couple of pages before he finally gets to Maddox's adoption. The idiot claimed that BBT wanted to adopt, too, when he's already said that Angie wanted it really badly and he went along with it because it made her happy. And no, Morton doesn't lambaste BBT for expecting Angie to put him before the baby. Once again, it's Angie's fault for putting her 25 year-old's maternal instincts before 46 year-old BBT's ego. Morton claims BBT wanted to be a father to Maddox but put his music first...then later in the book when he's talking about BBT calling Angie to tell her about Connie Anglund being preggers Morton says it was BBT's way of showing Angie that he really did want more children. So why is just Angie who was being selfish? Shit makes no sense whatsoever.  What Morton doesn't say is that BBT really called Angie trying to get her to take him back. He bothered her for MONTHS after she left in 2002 and again in 2003 just before the divorce was final. Angie said "No way, Jose" every time. But, Morton doesn't bring this up because if he did, then he'd have to admit that BBT was no sait and he was just as at fault as Angie was. And the fact is - BBT even said it was his fault because he was a ball-less weenie and intimidated by not only Angie's looks, but her integrity and intelligence. In other words - his ego couldn't take it. BBT got another woman pregnant and would have dumped her had Angie wanted him back. Yet BBT thought we should be stunned that Angie has more integrity than BBT does? DUH!  Added to that Morton also claimed that before adopting Maddox Angie told an "Australian newspaper" (read tabloid) that she wanted to have babies with BBT. Uh, no, she didn't. BBT has even said Angie told him she only wanted to adopt. And since Morton likes to time travel and use quotes from later interviews - Angie said in that 2006 Elle interview that before Brad she'd only ever wanted to adopt, then repeated it to Reader's Digest in 2007. Yet Morton totally ignores these quotes in legit mags while repeating tabloid stories left and right.

After some more blathering on about the end of the marriage being Angie's fault and basically claiming that she used BBT as a stepping stone to the next chapter in her life Morton mercifully gets to the end of the BBT era. I'll backtrack for a second because Angie's interest in the UNHCR started during this time and say that from here on out Morton essentially dismisses Angie's UNHCR work as being her way of revamping her "wild child" image and as a convenient excuse to be absent when events of her making take place elsewhere. For instance - and this will come up again later - Morton  says Angie was on a UNHCR mission when Brad and X announced their split and she arranged it that way to keep the suspicion off her.  

The next few pages were dedicated to Angie's fall out with JV, but that's another oft-told tale that he managed to not screw up too terribly, but like everything else in this book it's skewed to make Angie look as bad as possible and make JV look like the victim.  And the thing is - this is how you know no one would talk to this putz, on or off the record - he doesn't state what JV wrote to Angie in the letter. Now, if you're writing a bio of someone who had a nearly 7 year rift with their only surviving parent, a parent who's absence you say shaped the bulk of this person's behavior as an adult, would you make an effort to discover the EXACT contents of this letter and expose it in your bio? Exactly. People have been wondering about the SPECIFIC content of that letter for over 8 years, yet Morton barely even mentions the letter responsible for the rift, but instead spends 2 or 3 pages telling us how distraught JV was to be cut out of Angie's life. Morton goes so far as to detail JV's convo with Pat O'Brien in which he boo-hooed and cried on Inside Edition, then says they went out to lunch afterward. Nothing says distraught quite like a juicy steak and big fat baked potato, does it?


End of Part 1...

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