Word: show-biz
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...records about the light at the end of the tunnel of love. Forget all you have heard and read since Bruce Springsteen's two advance singles were released three weeks ago -- unless, of course, you listened to the songs, in which case you could ignore all the Charley Inside show-biz reporting about how radio stations were a little skeptical and record stores a little uncertain, and was Bruce, at 42, a family man with two kids, a little too settled and a little too wealthy and a little too out of touch to burn the house down...
Damn. Or hot damn, depending on your tolerance for show-biz artifice and nonspontaneous combustion. Brooks is a pretty fair songwriter and a hokey holy terror of a performer. He has a solid, pleasant voice -- short on character and totally short-changed on funk -- and he's possessed of a mean weather eye for the prevailing winds of showbiz. He went to Oklahoma State University on a partial athletic scholarship ("Athletics always kept me in school") and majored in advertising and marketing. That background, competitive and commercially calculated, gave him a cool edge when he was ready to make...
...sometimes because of costs that seem scandalous, sometimes because of controversies with pressure groups or the ratings board -- that it becomes difficult to evaluate them fairly when they appear. One looks so chic (and so inside) airily dismissing something like Ishtar or Hudson Hawk. What fun for critics and show-biz reporters. And so easy...
Strewn throughout this story are seemingly gratuitous nods to bits and pieces of popular culture: show-biz celebrities, movies, rock groups. Maynard suggests that her alienated characters suffer the modern ailment of media overload. Toward the end of the novel, the mother of the hired teenage killer speaks: "One minute you're sitting there, reading some article in a magazine all about Tom Selleck or someone, the next thing you know they're putting handcuffs on your son. . .It doesn't feel like your real life, you know? It feels like you're on a show too. Only there...
Both performers are brave in their willingness to dig into familiar show-biz types and critically, if often hilariously, deconstruct their belovedness. They are also resourceful in the ways they find to retain our affection. Good writing, in which strong satire never breaks faith with emotional reality, helps them. So do the easy stride of Mark Rydell's direction, covering a variety of ground without shortness of breath, and a lively supporting cast...