The Comedy Writer

Hooray for Hollywood? Maybe not. At least not if Peter Farrelly's searingly funny novel is even remotely accurate. Farrelly is a screenwriter and director himself, so the story of aspiring movie scribe Henry Halloran has a scarily authentic feel. When he gives up his job as a salesman in Boston and heads out west to polish and peddle the script he based on a recent breakup, Henry tumbles into a world of bizarre quasi celebrities, breathtakingly unprincipled producers, surgically enhanced starlets, and plain ordinary lunatics. The result is basically an unrelenting nightmare, guest-starring his uninvited roommate, the sister of a woman whose suicide he failed to prevent.