Development Hell

Development Hellby Mick GarrisHollywood, California: the Bermuda Triangle of art, sex, and commerce. Thebeautiful people make their daily deals with the devil on the sun-dappledpatio at the Ivy, not in a fiery underground cavern. Nobodies becomesomebodies in the blink of an eye, but the flash of heady success can befleeting. The rocket that shoots you into the atmosphere can be carryingweapons of mass destruction that can send you just as quickly andefficiently to Hell.And back to Heaven again.Development Hell is a wicked Hollywood satire, disguised as an extremeerotic horror novel. It is told knowingly from an inside perspective,tracking the career trajectory of a young film school hotshot into theannals of the Big Studio.This arrogant young director leads us through his own set of uniqueexperiences, starting with his explosive and disastrous first Hollywoodmovie; his discovery of a mutant baby in the arms of a Mexican news dealerin downtown Los Angeles that will be his ticket back to the top of the heap;into the arms of a re-animated glamorous star who died in the 1930s; andbody-hopping through the most glamorous sheaths of human flesh on theplanet.It is a side of Hollywood rarely seen from beneath its unvarnished,Botox-free, crinkling, wrinkling flesh, and features a supporting cast ofcharacters you will surely recognize.Development Hell welcomes you into a behind-the-scenes peek unlike any otheryou have witnessed before.

From Publishers Weekly

The nameless protagonist of Garris's unsubtle novel chronicling the all-consuming, soul-sucking nature of Hollywood grabs at a second chance after his first movie out of film school bombs. Alas, his second film, which exploits a mutant baby, is another dud. Our hero gradually builds a modest career, explores Old Hollywood via sex with a raised-from-the-dead Jean Harlow and hits bottom again before he resigns himself to writing for TV. Further tragedy inspires his next pitch: a reality TV show titled Suicide! with his on-screen death as the first episode. The now-deceased filmmaker spends the novel's second half as a disembodied spirit in search of bodies to inhabit. The author, a Hollywood veteran (he created Showtime's Masters of Horror series), explores a kinky love-hate relationship with "Lady Hollywood" in this disjointed debut, which offers a lot more sex and gore than Entertainment Tonight, but not much more insight. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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