Tattling On Tinseltown

By Michele Orecklin

Hollywood tends to do things in pairs. A few years ago, two movies about erupting volcanoes debuted within weeks of each other. The following year, the same thing happened with two films about flying space rocks. This month a pair of novels about the inner workings of Hollywood will hit bookstores within days of each other. Maneater (Simon & Schuster; 309 pages) by Gigi Levangie Grazer and Action! (Random House; 388 pages) by Robert Cort explore the less camera-ready aspects of the film industry, and the authors know whereof they speak. Grazer wrote the screenplay for Stepmom and is married to Brian Grazer, the Academy Award--winning producer of A Beautiful Mind. Cort's bio boasts that he has produced a whopping 52 films, including, alas, Three Men and a Baby and Jumanji. Despite their shared insider status, the two have very different takes on their hometown.

In the case of Maneater, it is safe--and even perhaps encouraged--to judge the book by its bubble-gum-pink cover. The funny, crude and knowing novel follows the antics of Clarissa Alpert, who is untroubled that she possesses no talents, job or interests but a little concerned that she has yet to acquire a husband. "Her timeline was clear: she would be 29 (32) in November; she and her lucky husband would have two children within four years; she'd be divorced by 40 and still hot (thanks to Dr. Drew Franklin of the Beverly Hills Triangle) and living the good life while the nannied, tutored, personal-trained kids attended out-of-state boarding schools." Clarissa sets her sights on Aaron Mason, an extravagantly wealthy Southerner new to the film industry, and books the wedding hall and florist before their first date.

Clarissa's world is narrow, existing within roughly 10 square blocks of West Los Angeles. Try as she might, she cannot remember the state in which her in-laws live (Georgia). She does not know what the NASDAQ is but understands the anthropological significance of floor seats at a Lakers game. Nevertheless, she proves to be a not only likable but also sympathetic character, particularly after her carefully planned march to the altar ends up throwing her for a financial loop.

Grazer, who has an obvious affection for Clarissa and the circles in which she travels--moviemakers and those who want to sleep with them--gently skewers rather than condemns. She spikes the narrative with apt metaphors: one character's face "dropped like a famous name at a West L.A. dinner party"; another is so disheveled, she "looked like Courtney Love in the early, pre-op, pre-Oscar party years"; and when Clarissa first speaks with Aaron, she notes that his accent "came out as flat as her mother's breasts (before the lift)."

While Grazer's book is an extreme close-up, Cort aims for a macro shot: the evolution of the film business over the past 50 years, told through three generations of one family. The protagonist is AJ Jastrow, whose utterly incorruptible father worked at the studios in the '40s but whose example AJ is unable to follow. Working as a talent agent, screenwriter and producer, he accumulates more power but also a slickness and drive that alienate his family and activate his competitors. Though Jastrow is fictional, he interacts, Zelig-like, with real characters (from Adolph Zukor to Debra Winger). This conceit can be jarring, such as when Cort has Steve McQueen starring in films that never existed or when Jastrow has kinky sex with the late actress Romy Schneider, who then begs him for more.

Unlike Grazer's cheekiness, Cort's tone is utterly earnest, almost scolding. He laments the industry's emphasis on profit and the people for whom "the film business was born with the release of Star Wars and the founding of CAA." This is hardly untrod ground. He also takes to task contemporary personalities like onetime superagent Mike Ovitz and Disney chief Michael Eisner; settling old scores may be fun, but it's not much of a novelistic device.

Despite their different feelings about their industry, there are a few areas on which both authors agree: in Hollywood, few things are as important as a good table at Morton's--or as peripheral as a conscience.