Word: clef
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...limelight of fame casts its deepest shadow on those who stand next to it. That is Playwright Furth's proposition in this crackling light comedy. In a belated bid for personal visibility, Ellen (Hope Lange) has written an intimately detailed roman à clef profiling her Pulitzer-prize winning (Presidents and Precedents) novelist husband and a quartet of her best friends...
...list, in descending order of status, of the Los Angeles hotels favored by showfolk. He does it perfectly, beginning with the Bel-Air, ending with the Montecito. This may seem a small felicity, but it is precisely the sort of thing that writers of parboiled Hollywood romans à clef usually get wrong or skip altogether in their haste to get to the casting couch and the boudoir...
...tawdry roman à clef aspects aside, W.E.B. is not without its amusingly smarmy moments. This show's view of the industry is even more vicious than Network 's. According to Bolen, TV is run by sex-crazed, alcoholic, pill-popping men whose contempt for the public is exceeded only by their contempt for each other. "Television is a monster that never stops eating," explains one of them. True enough, but W.E.B. gives viewers that rare opportunity to watch television throw...
...does own an orchestra, in this case the 105-member Pittsburgh Symphony, which sits center stage and follows his every command. His lunacy determines even the title of the play: "Every good boy deserves favor" is a mnemonic phrase to help music students remember the notes on a treble clef staff...
...knack for livery yarning and his ability for introspection give the book its special quality: a fat, comercial novel with a lean, serious writer signaling wildly to get out. Insiders in Las Vegas and Hollywood may be doing some wild signaling themselves. The novel has an enticing roman à clef flavor even though Puzo dismisses the issue with a typically tough and ready remark: "How dare they think they are part of my creation?" Nevertheless, Pauline Kael will be flattered when she recognizes herself as the highly praised film critic Clara Ford. Certain agents, and some executives at Universal...