By ROSE McGOWAN (HarperCollins; 2018)
In recent years Rose McGowan has gone from being a semi-famous actress, in films like THE DOOM GENERATION, JAWBREAKER and GRINDHOUSE, to a passionate feminist crusader. Recently she became one of the focal points of the Me Too movement, although her increasingly unhinged behavior (such as the already infamous Barnes & Noble altercation with a transgender activist that took place while she was promoting this book) has put that status in jeopardy. BRAVE, at least, provides an explanation for her disordered mental state.
Victimhood is the “in” thing among women in today’s Hollywood, with sexual assault stories a de rigueur interview subject. It’s no surprise that in such an atmosphere Rose McGowan has become an icon, as her life story, as related here, is one of non-stop victimization.
It all began, we learn, in her childhood, spent in the Italy-based Children of God cult, in which poor Rose was subjected to all manner of abuse–including being fed her beloved pet lamb for dinner! With the help of her father Rose escaped to America, where she was shuttled back and forth between her divorced parents, and endured more abuse at the hands of two asshole stepfathers and her increasingly unstable biological pop. Her first film role was as a featured extra in CLASS OF 1999 (1990), during the filming of which she was molested by a pedophile crewmember.
Yet more abuse followed after Rose emancipated herself from her parents and moved to Hollywood (the absolute last place a traumatized young woman should be!). There she commenced an ill-advised relationship with a spoiled “Beverly Hills mama’s boy” who turned out to be a jealous loon. Things didn’t improve much after she was cast as the female lead in the 1999 independent film THE DOOM GENERATION, which ushered her into the scummy world of Hollyweird.
Wes Craven, who directed Rose in SCREAM, gets props for his gentlemanly demeanor, but those are the only props she gives. Rose’s onetime squeeze Marilyn Manson, Quentin Tarantino and her ex-BF Robert Rodriguez (identified only as “RR”) are all bashed especially hard, as is the unnamed “Pig Monster” (Harvey Weinstein) who she claims raped her in a Jacuzzi—a crime related in especially lurid present-tense detail (“through my tears I see his semen floating on top of the bubbles”). Rose quit Hollywood after the awful experience of working with Rodriguez and Tarantino on GRINDHOUSE while simultaneously appearing in the TV show CHARMED, and later found solace by ranting on Twitter.
In the final chapters Rose gets to lecturing, demanding her readers disengage themselves from societal conditioning and come around to her way of thinking. She claims that “I’m electing to try and change societal norms, so it occurred to me that I’m a politician of sorts.” Hence her self-created “#RoseArmy” of like-minded non-conformists that she promotes at length, which doesn’t stop Rose from plugging her various moneymaking endeavors, including a music album (“an experience that will take you on a trip through time and space”), a photographic exhibition and a skincare line that “challenges what the beauty industry tells you you need.”
Certainly there’s a lot to admire about Rose McGowan. She, for instance, was one of the first (and only) people to call out the vacuous Hollywood celebrities patting themselves on the back for “courageously” wearing black to the Golden Globes, but after reading this book my main thought is one that has been voiced recently by quite a few other folks on and off the net: she needs help.