Title: Self-Referential Junk!
Product review: Why is it that people in the movie business (as opposed to filmmakers, who are artists) think their lives are interesting and/or important? Cort's weaving of numerous real people into his story does not (contrary to Lesley Stahl's blub on the jacket) even come close to Doctorow's achievment in "Ragtime." On the contrary, it's not enriching, and it's pretentious and amoral in that he puts dialogue into the mouths of real people, many of whom are still alive (and a few of whom I happen to know). One has the sense that this writer is doing a lot of score-settling, and that his story is self-referential in the worst possible sense. The author is certainly an accomplished producer, but you won't learn anything about what the business is like except that to make it big in Hollywood you have to act like a monster. The big question a reader must ask himself after wading through this morass of superficial charcterizations: "Why on earth should anyone care?"
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