From Publishers Weekly

Inspirational author, journalist and ex-screenwriter Cameron, best known for her perennially bestselling creativity bible, The Artist's Way, delivers with exactitude on her title in the 18 nonnutritious stories that compose this frothy foray into Tinseltown. A star identified only as Our Heroine switches sexual preferences as expediency dictates; a studio head seeks approval from the inspirational and quite verbal ghost of Walt Disney; a director is willing to cover up a starlet's murder of her mobster boyfriend so the show can go on; a literary agent prefers to work for dead clients; a director and his memoir-writing wife do a "he said/she said" riff on why he's been exiled to the Roman Hills following allegations by a 14-year-old actress's stage motherAthese are a sampling of the situations that structure these heavily character-driven tales. In an author's note, Hollywood insider Cameron designates her stories as "'friction'Athe abrasion of reality against dream," and claims, "None of them is true, but all are accurate." Still, the chief fun in this acidic collection lies in trying to guess which real-life star each awful character might be modeled on. The shorter stories are mere teasing kernels and the longer ones are too empty and pat, given to such nonepiphanies as a magazine editor's awakening to the notion that Steven Spielberg has talent. While the arch writing can be diamond sharp, vacuous characters whining about the isolation of fame, coping with the inevitable substance-abuse problems and spouting egotistic bombast leave the reader jaded and cynical by the time the lights go up. Author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An insider’s view of the movie business. The dialogue sizzles, as they say in the trades. It manages to combine real darkness with a survivor’s light heart." -- John Nichols, author of The Sterile Cuckoo and The Milagro Beanfield War

"Julia Cameron is the real thing, a writer who writes from the heart, because she has to. The real thing is always good news. Pass it on." -- Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying and What Do Women Want?

"Julia Cameron...precisely locates the pain and pleasure in a gallery of highly sexed, drugged and overpaid characters of a movie-mad world." -- David Freeman, author of One of Us and A Hollywood Education

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