Book review: Hollywood on Trial, by Dale Manolakas
“Thou shalt not pass”, the traditional words of the sturdy gatekeeper. Whether it’s outside a nightclub doorway, at a job interview, in a performance audition or nudging up against the gates of heaven, this imbalance of power between the supplicant and the master of the gilded door is something all of us will experience someday. In the case of the acting profession, this situation arises again and again with every single role. It’s often said that you can’t always get what you want — unless you’re a gatekeeper in the film industry, in which case go ahead, demand anything. Fill your bloated boots. It would seem that coveted positions in Hollywood don’t only pay in coin (unless this story is an exaggeration).
I can’t immediately think of any reality-based thriller I’ve read that’s better than this but I’m not going to flatter it particularly because the early version I downloaded has quite a few distracting mistakes*. I feel like I’ve just finished the uncorrected proof of a very gripping and well told tale.
I must say that it is a difficult trick to describe the book and capture the spirit of the story without giving away key aspects of the plot but I can reveal that it is socially topical and explores sexual exploitation culture in the film-making industry, how that has been normalised over the years and whether this outrageous hurdle to a new career can finally be broken.
Ok, so the theme is exploitation. I don’t think that even the most conceited newly-trained actor or actress believes they have a divine right to waltz up and claim a starring role in a film. Maybe they have the slinky body image but it’s unlikely they will have more experience than the couple of thousand other professionals who could also deliver the same role with competence. They perhaps sense that they will need to do something extra. If exploitation culture is endemic, word gets around that any star-struck hopeful with the right look can jump the job queue by riding the gatekeeper. It isn’t just a forgettable one night compromise they are agreeing to make though, is it? There’s a chain of command to bump your way up until you reach the pinnacle role of Director’s Girlfriend — can I get that stencilled on the back of a chair? They probably have such a chair at the VD clinic.
Some actors must surely draw the line at this obstacle but enough accept it that what develops is a transactional sexual culture where both adults agree to the act but the more powerful individual, usually a man, rolls like a pig in clover with young women who would be far out of his league under the normal rules of attraction. The gatekeeper can also fail to deliver their part of the bargain to the disempowered, but there’s pressure for emergent youth to take that risk if it is the only way to have a contract. Where are the acting unions in this? Well, they rely on work from the studios, so these tawdry happenings are swept under the industry’s luxurious hairpiece.
I have no first-hand knowledge of Hollywood, so this may all be paper fiction based on civic fiction, digging up the excesses of history, but if transactional relationship culture is still happening, no wonder older women find it very difficult to secure any film roles.
The storytelling pace is sustained admirably, from a beginning where you suspect the core of this to be eroticism to the move into a more mature social observation and eventual public reckoning. Like any decent thriller, this gradually increases in dramatic tension until there’s a sort of snowball effect as it powers through the court room and into the final scenes. There, the protagonist begins to sound less like a lawyer and more like a dim thug (although he was consistently a male chauvinist).
The author’s voice is often hard to interpret. I didn’t know whether they were building a story that might end with a brilliant defence of the protagonist and conviction of the guilty party or, instead, if they were taking a subtle line in criticising the immoral excesses that the protagonist (symbolic of his kind) had previously got away with. Essentially, the main man is a true pig who exploits actresses who are networking to snag top roles. He sees their submission to him as his privilege and convinces himself that his behaviour is justified, believing that a career in film is tantamount to giving consent.
We’ve all read stories that we hope were isolated incidents, like that of Donald Clarence Simpson, the producer of Top Gun, who insisted that desperate actresses (amounting to hundreds over time) get on his bed — and then he secretly filmed them. This novel suggests that the practice is/was common but no one complains because the film industry closes ranks and blacklists them.
Amazingly, my instinct about who did it was correct (wow, there’s always a first time for everything) and that wasn’t from clues in the book but more of a hunch around human motivation. It’s certainly a story where the dominant men think they’ve got all the power and monopoly on capability, but with that comes complacency too. The protagonist has a history of transgressions but something is changing here, a new spirit of the age breezing through, a new tipping point of tolerance, reflecting the #MeToo backlash after the Weinstein and Epstein scandals. The protagonist is a Jewish man, as were they, although you can find examples of people from any religious or ethnic extraction who have similarly abused their position in this way. It will never be exclusive to one community.
This is a disconcerting but powerful story with strong men and stronger-minded women circling behind them, always interesting and never really slacking in pace. The reader is in turn disgusted and enthralled, mostly wanting characters to pay for their sins, get their comeuppance, but also occasionally wrenched the other way to feel the human pain of a character struggling against what might be a false accusation. The Hollywood hierarchy is conveyed with a simple trick, where the actors and industry figures are called by their first names and the detectives and functionaries only get a surname. An industry figure who dies quickly transforms to a surname because they aren’t a player any longer. Then there’s the ‘star-crazed scavengers’ of the public, the press and dwellers of dilapidated housing downtown, who don’t warrant a name at all.
Taking this novel in is an experience, especially hearing how other people live and how they are self-assured enough to rationalise their immoral acts as being normal in this place, the rules are different even in marriage, so they should be dismissed as such in court. Life is different for Hollywood people and you need to accept that or those films you love won’t be made, OK? Hmm, not okay, I think. You’re repelled but enthralled, so have to read on. It’s not a book you want to put down and break the tension, in the same way that an alcoholic can’t pour away a drink. I had to stop a few times due to work pressures but I can honestly report that I felt annoyance at having to put down this book.
The narrative is excellent, a well-planned series of connected events that I’d be a fool not to recognise as 5 star entertainment — but I also have to throw mud at the shiny new glass as it still needs tidying up, so to follow is a selection of typos that represented bumps in the road and dropped me out of the otherwise engrossing story. If they could be removed from the ebook, I’m sure the effort would be repaid in reader appreciation.
*Some, not all, examples are: ‘Ms., O’Keefe’; a detached “ which occupies its own line; ‘had long since been put an end to that’; ‘Josh (missing word: ‘said’) immediately; ‘Anita had seen Sobel there for years’ (the meaning is unclear in context); ‘Greg regularly visited Josh three week days’ (missing a word?); ‘Sobel ’s trial’ (space before the apostrophe); ‘Guerra .’ (space before the full stop); ‘had long since been put an end to that’ (been?); Quote marks the wrong way around, e.g. “Objection; ‘transceipts’ (transcripts? receipts?); ‘No objections unless Brown absolutely necessary’; and ‘I heard her it’. There’s also that really annoying sentence form which is accepted in the US but sounds totally wrong in the other 198 countries of the world where a reporter might say “the President said Thursday…” Why would he announce the day of the week? In this book, that Americanism occurs twice, that I spotted, e.g. ‘Friday Sobel was working in his top floor office…’. This tells me that the character’s first name is Friday. It only takes a slight change to make this read clearly to the majority of the world, i.e. ‘On Friday, Sobel…’.
Important tip: As the philosopher said, you always become the thing you hate the most. That’s why I think it’s a good idea to target super-successful, rich, intelligent people who live in paradise.
That’s all I have to say. Seek out a copy if this subject appeals to you in any stimulating or righteous way, have a good read and see if this guy’s lifestyle gets your goat, or your envy. There’s a tricky dilemma to this whole controversy, but I think most people would agree that the jury got it right.
