The Fame Game : An Insider's Playbook for Earning Your 15 Minutes

Legendary Hollywood entertainment manager and publicist Ramon Hervey II shares insightful tales of his remarkable four-decade career plotting and overseeing fame, success, crisis and spinning for seminal talents at the top of their game, from Little Richard, Bette Midler, and the Bee Gees, to Aaliyah, Rick James, and Vanessa Williams—a juicy and addictive retrospective that also traces the origins of fame and how social media is changing the rules. Superstar manager and PR guru Ramon Hervey II has been playing the “fame game” for more than four decades, shaping, protecting, and sometimes rehabilitating the reputations of some of today’s biggest celebrities. Throughout his career, Hervey has mined, molded, and managed, mopped up messes, and mounted major celebrity comebacks. The Fame Game is his uncensored, behind-the-scenes look at rich and famous celebrities as they are rarely seen. Hervey shares the hilarious, the absurd, the disappointing, and the surprising as he recalls how he became a trusted confidant to a Who’s Who in music, comedy, film to A-listers including Richard Pryor, Bette Midler, Quincy Jones, Don Cornelius, the Bee Gees, Herb Alpert, Andrae Crouch, Vanessa Williams, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Luther Vandross, Rick James, Paul McCartney, Peter Frampton, Andrae Crouch, Nick Nolte, James Caan, and Muhammad Ali. Filled with never-before-told anecdotes, cameos, and unforgettable stories, moving from the legendary disco era of the '70s and post-civil rights era to Hollywood soundstages, and viewed through his acute and trained lens, The Fame Game is an enlightening historical view of the origins of fame, entertainment and media that examines our obsession with fame and the famous, and how social media is cultivating is own fame—an irresistible, addictive and utterly fascinating exploration of our insatiable obsession with celebrity culture.