Adventures Of A Suburban Boy

By his own estimation, Boorman was a pretty ordinary schoolboy in suburban London, dodging German bombs during World War II. What set him apart was the questing artistic vision with which he channeled those childhood experiences into one of his finest films, 1987’s ”Hope and Glory.” That childhood is the starting point for this engaging memoir, which begins with musings on lower-middle-class London life during the 1930s and ’40s. As he sheds the social commentary to recount his evolution as a filmmaker, Boorman hits his stride. He charts his progress from British television during its awkward infancy through a film career brimming with colorful incident: Apparently, James Dickey’s drunken bullying on the ”Deliverance” set was almost as harrowing as Lee Marvin’s binges while making ”Point Blank.”