Hollywood Heaven and Hell (Boy Wonder - James Robert Baker)

Member Name: edie

Product:	Boy Wonder - James Robert Baker
Date:	24/01/01 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: the funniest book ever written about Tinsel Town

Disadvantages: Not for those with sensitive sensibilities

Like most people who love this book I read it by accident really, picking it up in a seconds shop, thinking it was about something different. To say I was pleasantly surprised as I finished it 10 feverish hours later, would be an understatement. But it would take many readings to fully appreciate the many levels of irony, that Boy Wonder functions on.

A fictionalised biography of Shark Trager, a monstrous film producer, narrated in addictive chunks by his bizarre family, friends, lovers and enemies; it works as an original character study and laugh-out-loud assault on the movie biz. Basically the whole book is a series of wicked movie parodies as Trager's life mirrors the story of Hollywood in the 60s, 70s and 80s in all its excesses. (I thought this was OTT until I read Easy Riders and Raging Bulls and the Don Simpson biog and realised its a pretty accurate portrait of the era.)

Along with American Pyscho and The Talented Mr Ripley I think of Boy Wonder as an unholy trinity of great books about sociopaths. Like those novels it's studded with violent death and an inventive use of household implements (most unforgetably as Shark makes a slasher movie about his childhood friend/serial killer, employing the pyscho as "Creative Advisor") But it's a lot more fun, satirizing the banal horrors of corporate Hollywood. Everyone who stands in Shark's way gets totally destroyed but they do so in ways that are as hilariously unlikely as they as horrible.

As the story gets more and more outrageous and operatic, every time you think that Shark (and Baker) has surpassed himself, he manages to trash yet another of our few remaining taboos, right up to the incredible Oscar night finale and Shark's memorable death. (I'm not giving anything away: you know he's going to eventually self-destruct right from the first page.)

I often think this would make a great movie except no studio would touch it. This is n
ot an affectionate send-up but all-out attack on everything Hollywood (and America values.) Baker was a frustrated screenwriter and you can just feel his delicious anger directed at the men-in-suits. One of the more surprising things about Boy Wonder, is it's sub-plot about the movies' dilemma between art and commerce; as Shark's career veers between personal flops and bland block-busters and in the unanswered question: was Shark an irresponsible genius or "mediocre whore"? So don't hold your breath for the Jerry Bruckheimer version, instead trawl through the second hand shops to find a copy and decide for yourself.

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