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Hollywood From Within
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13432 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1987 |
2,387 Words |
| Author
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Cynthia Grenier
Cynthia Grenier is contributing editor to the Arts section of
The World & I. |
FILM FLAM: ESSAYS ON HOLLYWOOD
Larry McMurtry
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987
159 pp., $16.95
Larry McMurtry is a man singularly well qualified to write about Hollywood and its inner workings. His first novel, back in the late fifties, was made - to his astonishment - into the motion picture, Hud, the Martin Ritt film starring Paul Newman. His third was The Last Picture Show, which by now is practically an American film classic. His sixth novel became Terms of Endearment, winning its share of Academy Awards.
McMurtry is doubly blessed as his novels have become in time successful in their own right. His most recent work, Texasville, is sitting high on the fiction best-seller list, while the preceding book, Lonesome Dove, is a best-selling paperback. The critics look on him with favor. He is taken seriously, is not considered a writer of schlock. And success and the very considerably monetary return on his work have made him neither pompous nor arrogant.
Comfortable with Hollywood
McMurtry's introduction to this collection of essays, seventeen of which originally appeared in American Film, is disarmingly engaging. Even the title, Film Flam, is an unassuming play on "flim flam," a gentle notice to the reader not to think he is being too serious about his subject. Calling novels "the marriages and great loves of one's imagination," McMurtry views these essays as literary "quick tricks and one-night stands, the offspring of opportunity rather than passion." Yet he finds to his surprise - and the reader will find to his delight - that these essays share, as he nicely phrases it, the "comfortable perspective of a screenwriter who has not caught any of the fevers that rage through the Hollywood flats and the Hollywood hills."
McMurtry, unlike a number of Hollywood writers before him - William Faulkner, Nathanael West, F. Scott Fitzgerald - is not embittered or cynical or self-loathing about his West Coast experiences. He is grateful to the good fortune Hollywood has brought him, and philosophical about its less congenial side. This set of mind infuses the book. The reader is grateful for his sanguine spirit. It's refreshing to have someone who made money in Hollywood not moaning or whimpering about selling
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