I enjoyed this comedic look into the world of celebrity impersonators. The book dragged for me towards the end but over all I did find it to be an enjoyable little book. ( )

I received this book through the LibraryThing Member Giveaway program.

Writing was good, characters were fun but a little underdeveloped. I thought the storyline was very interesting. I enjoyed a glimpse into the world of celebrity impersonators. However, towards the middle of the book things started to fall flat...and they stayed there...and then towards the end everything took a turn for the incredibly uncomfortable worse. ( )

I couldn't get into this book. The premise sounded intriguing but the characters were flat and I never felt like I really understood why I was reading the story. Well, no, I was reading the story because the blurb sounded good - woman discovers an incomplete John Wayne and James Dean film... which is the equivalent of Hollywood's holy grail. Great premise. The only sad thing is that the book failed to make this the real center of the story. ( )

Actor and playwright Rick Lenz draws upon several decades of personal experience immersed in the culture of Hollywood in the writing of his novel "Impersonators Anonymous". The engaging idea of the story is the hypothetical question- what if John Wayne and James Dean had starred in the production of an incomplete Western epic film in 1955, a film cut short by Dean's untimely death and then kept secret for the next 20 years?

In this novel, all the characters are neurotic and at least two of them are apparently psychotic. Lenz may be suggesting that the American film industry, at least among actors, directors, producers and screen writers, is not conducive to mental health. The chief psychological problem troubling the characters is their unstable sense of identity. This is particularly true for the two actors who are assigned to complete the roles originally played by John Wayne and James Dean in "Showdown", which was about two thirds through production in 1955 when it was abruptly cancelled. Those two impersonators are chosen for their ability to assume the personas of Wayne and Dean and portray them convincingly on the screen, so that the "missing scenes' in "Showdown" can be filmed and the movie finally can be released, nearly 25 years after the original production.

But the impersonators who play Wayne and Dean are not simply imitating these film icons, they actually channel them, become them, as they impersonate them. The actor who impersonates John Wayne also has episodes in which he sees and talks with the "Duke". We readers can't be sure if he is hallucinatory or if something supernatural is happening. Likewise, the young actor who plays James Dean seems to slowly become possessed by the spirit of the dead rebel without a cause, until he (and the readers) can't be sure where his own personality ends and that of Dean starts. It seems that this sort of identity crisis is an occupational hazard among professional impersonators and so they have a support group for it- Impersonators Anonymous.

The novel generates a fog of mystery- why was "Showdown" such a closely guarded secret? Why does Richard Boone, the actor, reveal its existence after 20 years? How do they keep the news of the discovery and completion of "Showdown" from going public? Lenz doesn't answer these questions fully, as he is working to create a study in psychology and art rather than an account bound by facts and logic. ( )

Identity and impersonation flow through this novel by Ric Lenz. Emily Bennett has a facial recognition condition where she arbitrarily sees famous people in the faces of those around her. She has worked around Hollywood all her life and dreams of becoming a producer. Rumor of a lost, unfinished western called Showdown, starring John Wayne and James Dean, gives her the opportunity to enter that world and the world of celebrity impersonators. The life of these lookalikes carries this short novel and is certainly the most enjoyable. Who plays the role best, the actor or the impersonator who plays the actor playing the role? What can we believe? Do we become dulled to what is real?

I was less interested in the plot of the novel and the completion of the unfinished film, than I was with the lives of the characters, the questions about reality and artifice and how we deal, especially in the world today, with what is real and true. ( )