Literary Loophole
They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, which is definitely the case when you look at “Kim Basinger: Longer than Forever (The True Story of Our Strange Marriage)” - it’s not strictly speaking a personal book written by her ex-husband, Ron Britton. You wouldn’t be able to gauge the truth from the dust jacket alone when the right flap references him turning his hand to writing as a vocation. I don’t mean that his 1998 book is one of those “As told to…” publications. Hell, it may not have been his idea to write the book. While he is one of the authors, the so-called memoir is actually an indirect biography written by a pair of journalists who would go on to write two more biographies together - “The Outrageous Jerry Springer” and “Nicolas Cage: The Man Behind Captain Corelli (The Unauthorised Biography)” - published in 1999 and 2001 respectively. All three books were published by a British publisher named Blake Publishing.
The journalists, Ian Markham-Smith and Liz Hodgson, already had a history of a working partnership. They are both from Durham and worked for the same publications: Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post along with several Hong Kong magazines. Ian and Liz have homes in Los Angeles and France. The official story is that the man formerly known as Ron Snyder wanted to come clean about his marriage to Kim Basinger, but the “Acknowledgements” section of the book states that it would never have been told without the “help and understanding of a small group of friends, some of whom asked not to be identified” and a particular library (i.e. the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills). As for the people who were okay with being identified, these include a tax consultant, an American attorney, a British solicitor, Ron’s sister and a Western photographer who worked in Hong Kong among others.
As a long-time fan of Hong Kong cinema, I find it to be peculiar that the two Brits behind the book never went through with collaborating together on a book about one or more assets of the jade screen. Another peculiarity is that the Basinger book was only published after her career bounced back in top form with L.A. Confidential - a 1997 film where she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. From a cynical perspective, the book could easily have been published in the mid-nineties after Kim Basinger filed for bankruptcy in 1993. Also, no films of hers had come out in 1995 and 1996. As such, she couldn’t afford to sue anyone. It’s hard to imagine that any publisher would turn down a proposal to publish a book about her. Her marriage to Alec Baldwin, which began three months after she went bankrupt, kept her in the public eye. For example, she gave birth to Ireland Baldwin in late 1995.
It’s never been revealed as to when Ian Markham-Smith and Liz Hodgson had approached Ron Britton to write his exposé. On the surface, it’s easy for the average reader to think that the authors were only involved in the prologue (where they establish Kim’s career) and the appendix (which contains Kim’s filmography). However, there are tell-tale signs throughout the book when you realize that no doting husband would be so discerning as to the minutiae of pop culture interest. The film critic quotes are a giveaway. Another giveaway is the use of British slang term: “mates” as in friends and “dole” as in unemployment welfare. It should be noted that the epilogue references Kim’s Oscar win, which had allowed the book to be considered a priority and be allocated a decent marketing budget. More importantly, advertising it as a memoir provided a legal backbone akin to Betty Ting Pei’s 1976 film, Bruce Lee and I.
The magic trick is ruined with chapters 3 and 4 in that they feel like chapters of a biography with a superficial personal touch by utilizing Ron’s voice with the occasional refrain of what Kim “said” to him. By the time that we get to chapter 5 on page 55, it feels like we’re going back to what the book should have been: a memoir about his experiences with his ex-wife. The illusion through the looking glass is shattered once more in chapter 8 when Ron doesn’t disclose what transpired between Kim and director Irvin Kirshner during the making of Never Say Never Again, especially since the couple were supposed to be in close proximity to each other throughout the entire filming. It’s especially weird since Ron was an old friend of the producer’s wife: Talia Shire - an actress who suggested Kim for the role. Speaking of women, Ron’s sister (Sherry Snyder) was Kim’s female moral support during the making of 9½ Weeks.
After the divorce, calling the book a memoir is generous. Chapter 15 starts off as autobiographical but becomes completely devoid of self-identified pronouns. At this point, it’s less to do with Ron Britton than research on Kim Basinger. Chapter 16, which is about Kim meeting Alec Baldwin, is the same. When Ron’s voice re-emerges, it feels like an attempt to personalize the research but it doesn’t work. Part of the problem is that the formatting of the book consists of 42 lines per page. The final page is 294, so everything after chapter 14 feels like padding. Had the number of lines per page been reduced to the standard number (32), the book would have been sufficiently long enough to be published. Chapter 17 is gratuitous, as it details the legal troubles that Kim had for dropping out of Boxing Helena. It feels like an attempt for Ron to get back at Kim when he compares the Christmas of 1993 to the Christmas of 1988.
Compare that with Unsettled Matters - another nineties book but one that was written by the ex-husband of Bruce Lee’s widow. Ron’s book may have been better perceived had he wrote it as a biography instead of a memoir. Chapters 18 to 22 of Ron’s book are only worth reading if you’re a fan of Kim Basinger since it feels oddly impersonal to read a book that goes from being a memoir to another celebrity biography. Linda Lee’s book about her dead husband, The Man Only I Knew, was actually ghost-written but the ghost-writer was smart enough for the book to end more or less after Bruce died. Once the relationship ends, that’s it. Less detail went into the legal matters surrounding Bruce’s death than Ron’s divorce. This actually makes Linda seem more callous since no self-respecting widow would be careless about investigating the mysterious death of their spouse, but then Linda has more to hide than Ron.
