Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Tabloid (5/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 88 minutes

Not for children.

Joyce McKinney was a beauty queen (Miss Wyoming) with an IQ of 168 who became involved with a man in Utah, Kirk Anderson, to the horror of his Mormon family in the '70s. When the Church sent him to England, she chased after him, kidnapped him, took him to a country cottage and chained him to a bed where she apparently proceeded to have sex with him for three days. When the kidnapping and sex were discovered she became notorious headlines in the tabloids and the subject of criminal charges, all of which are covered here.

Director Errol Morris has McKinney tell her story herself. Apparently she has been living with it as the apex of her life ever since. McKinney must have trusted Morris, but it was a mistake. He lets the camera roll as she tells her story freely, but he intersperses it with shots of tabloid headlines that shriek "Rape" and "Guilt" in huge headlines.

It's hard to tell whether this is a comedy or a tragedy, because as bizarre as McKinney and her story are, she believed it and lived it. That's pretty sad. While she's a smart woman and she cooperated, I question the morality of making the woman a laughingstock. On the other hand, the woman is so weird maybe she likes this and doesn't feel she was taken advantage of.

Anderson didn't participate, but there are two reporters from the rival tabloids, Peter Tory for the Daily Express, and Kent Gavin, a photographer from the Mirror, along with Troy Williams, a Salt Lake City Radio Host, who make comments along the way, none of which paint Ms. McKinney in a favorable light.

This is a film with meager production values about an odd woman told in sometimes black and white and sometimes color film by talking heads and archival photos of newspapers. It's not for everybody, but for some it might have a morbid fascination.