Word: greenfeld
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...unbeloved mother and sets out on a three-day debauch that ends in the psychosomatic equivalent of a heart attack. That is not, perhaps, the stuff of box-office comedy, and, as a portrait of Hollywood, it seems less satire than neorealism. Yet by the final fadeout, Josh Greenfeld's novel turns out to be both uproariously funny and bitter as wormwood...
...Josh Greenfeld...
...Greenfeld convincingly evokes the terrain where he has lived for more than a decade, winning an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of his novel Harry and Tonto and psychic bruises from the failures of unluckier projects. In the Freudian setting of a studio men's room, producers trade angst-drenched conversation about whose career is bigger. Aging men who cannot control their appetites go in search of one-night stands and "kosher diet tacos." A rabbi pronouncing a eulogy reaches his apogee with the solemn question, "And who of us does not love show business...
...there is more. Greenfeld's antihero, Larry Lazar, is not a conventionally Philistine tycoon, trampling on the souls of artists. He is an artist, an acclaimed creator of humanistic films who just happens to be, personally, a creep. He would rather betray a friend than lose a deal. When Lazar feels a charitable impulse and gives money to the less fortunate, he connives to get the studio to pay him back. And he is not merely greedy. He is, as a colleague remarks, "an aesthetic hustler" who looks upon every intimate-even his unlamented mother-as movie "material...
That is precisely where Hollywood is now, according to Scenarist Josh Greenfeld (Harry and Tonto): "The studio chiefs' idea of an idea is not an idea. Besides, a book shouldn't be a step in the development of a movie. You may get a good feature out of the deal, but you'll never end up with a good book...