Michael Tolkin

Kim Jong Un decides to quit messing around and releases an airborne virus that is borne through the air, globally. Now, many humans are dead and those that are left over can't remember who they were, or how to do what they used to do. How would the city you live in survive? If you got sick and went to the hospital, could anyone remember what to do to save your life? Would the food run out? Would electricity keep going? Water? Sewage systems?

I loved this book, but what happened to the airplane?… (altro)

Wait a minute, Michael Tolkin! Am I reading a novel published as part of the 1980s Vintage Contemporaries series or a movie script in the form of a novel? Since this is a story of Griffin Mill, a bigtime studio power player within the Hollywood movie industry, it is hard to tell. I sense the best way to write a review is to let the glitz and glamour sparkle and do a top 10 Tinseltown countdown: Here goes:

10. The set. This is Hollywood with serious name dropping going down, Clint Eastwood, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eddie Murphy, Harrison Ford, and two stars, Robin Williams and Neil Diamond actually make cameo appearances. Everyone in the movie industry continually sees the big stars starring in their to-be-made blockbuster movies. At one point Griffin imagines Michael Douglas playing the leading role as Griffin Mill in the Hollywood-like drama Griffin is living through.

9. The menace. A unknown writer sends Griffin a series of postcards letting him know he didn’t appreciate how Griffin said he would be back to him and didn’t, so much so Griffin reads the writer’s words on one of these postcards: “I am going to kill you.” Just what the novel needs, since, according to Raymond Carver, when it comes to a story “a little menace is good for the circulation.”

8. The murder. Griffin is bigtime and he knows it. He can’t let a piddly little writer get away with such a threat. He has to strike out. Griffin looks up the number of one of the writers he didn’t get back to, an unknown writer by the name of Daivd Kahane. Could David be the postcard sender? Could be. That evening Griffin seeks David out, speaks with him, has dinner with him and afterwards, behind a movie theater next to David’s car, isolated and most likely unseen, strangles him. (Not a spoiler since the murder happens right in the beginning).

7. Life imitating the movies. As in Griffin’s reflections eating lunch at a Hollywood restaurant: “One of the woman at the bar watched him squirt a lemon wedge over the cocktail sauce. He tried not to let her know he could feel her stare, and eating the shrimp became a performance; he was now pretending to be Griffin Mill eating in the Polo Lounge. He wanted to stay in this mode forever, always at a short distance from himself, where he could admire the craftsmanship of his being, every gesture, every word, each shift of energy a calculation.” How many of you reading this have envisioned your life as a Hollywood movie? A powerful psychic magnet, most especially for Hollywood movie types like Griffin Mills. Darn, why does reality have to intrude? Why can’t all of my life be a movie?

6. Luxury rules. Mercedes, limousines, corporate credit cards, posh offices, power tables at key Hollywood restaurants, trips to the beaches of Puerto Vallaria and the ski slopes of Vail– Griffin and all the other Tinseltown players breathe luxury and big money.

5. Language is power. Griffin doesn’t just talk to people, he uses his words as tools for posturing in an unending power game against the likes of rival Larry Levy or Levison, his big shot boss. Even ordering salad rather than steak can give you a one-up in the game if you play your cards right.

4. Lady of his dreams. Not one of the many movie actresses Griffin has gone to bed with but, as it turns out, June Mercator, an ordinary gal working in the advertising department of a bank, a young woman Griffin really connects with and who, just so happens, was the girlfriend of David Kahane, the man he killed.

3. The detective. Darn those nagging police. The world should realize he’s a very busy, very important man. But there’s one detective who just refuses to let Griffin off the hook - meet young, good looking Police Lieutenant Susan Avery. Will Griffin get away with murder? Not if Susan can get a reliable witness who can identify Griffin in a police lineup. The plot thickens.

2. The luck. As Griffin tells the men and women he encounters who want to hit the jackpot, strike it rich in the movie industry, there comes a point when you just have to be lucky. In the right place at the right time. When it comes to the police or his movie career or his romance with June Mercator, will Griffin turn out to be one of the lucky ones? You will have to read for yourself to find out.

1. Novel as Hollywood film. The Player has enough juice and hype I can see Michael Tolkin’s novel being turned into a real blockbuster, directed by, say, Robert Altman and starring a big name like Tim Robbins.… (altro)