Steve Guttenberg is alive and well and 49 and doing (I presume) pretty well, but the fact that he’s cut a deal with Thomas Dunne Books to write a memoir about his early years in Hollywood (the late ’70s to mid ’80s) indicates he’s either got time on his hands or is looking to jump-start things.

It’s generally agreed that Guttenberg’s peak artistic period was between Barry Levinson‘s Diner (’82) and Curtis Hanson‘s The Bedroom Window (’87). His last bona fide hit was Three Men and a Little Lady (’90). I used to hate him before Diner. I remember being elated when his character got killed in Franklin J. Schaffner‘s The Boys From Brazil (’78). I also remember a New York critic writing about his performance in Nancy Walker‘s Can’t Stop The Music (’80) and observing that Guttenberg had “all the charm of a barking dog.”