Customer Reviews

Death by Hollywood: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This was a great read; unfortunately it only lasted two days because I couldn't put it down. I especially enjoyed the manner in which the storylines were interwoven, almost a story within a story, like the Arabian Nights. Due to the "grittiness" of the characters it would be easy to overlook important and interesting observations on the human condition; several passages made me stop and ponder about life, attitudes, etc.

There is just something about a book written by a Hollywood insider that grabs your attention. You pick it up at your local bookstore or buy it from Amazon.com (preferably as a discounted paperback), hoping it will live up to the promise of the words on the back cover. That they almost never do, that they are almost always trash, is a sad fact of life.

But sometimes you can be surprised. Sometimes those insiders really know their stuff and sometimes they can really churn out a story. And every now and then they tickle your fancy as you try and keep up with unforgetable characters who romp through a twisting and turning plot.

I found myself laughing aloud while I read along with Bochco's fictional agent Eddie Jelko as he narrated this book about kinky and kooky characters who people the Hollywood scene.

Jelko tells us about his client, screenwriter Bobby Newman, whose career is on a fast track to nowhere. One fateful night he's busy checking out his neighbors with a high powered telescope when he spies a couple in the throws of passion, however when the love makeing is finished, they fight and murder is done.

Even a normal, telescope-looking, peeping tom pervert would go to the cops, but not our quirky hero, because he sees opportunitiy knocking. Here is potential for a screenplay that will put Bobby back on the top of his game. He gets as close to the lady killer as one can possibly get and he gets involved with the detective investigating the case, all in the name of research for his screenplay.

This five star book gives us, actors and agents, screenwriters and their unfaithful wives, cops and killers, and it delivers them all to us Hollywood style.

I don't exactly know how to describe the way Bochco writes, other than to say that if you could cross breed the styles of Carl Hiaasen, Joseph Wambaugh and Elmore Leonord, you'd come close to Bochco's tone of voice. If you want to get a glimpse into a glimmering, glitzy, sometimes tawdry world and laugh while the author takes you along for his ride, I would highly recommend, "Death by Hollywood."

There was an episode of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN that made a joke about the "Steven Bochco Hall of Failures," and this book sounds like it'll have an alcove in such a museum. It reads like a catharsis for Bochco about the shark-eat-shark nature of the entertainment industry, told second-person from the POV of a screenwriting agent, with far too much Mamet Dammit-level profanity to be considered hardboiled. You'd think he would have picked something up from the NYPD BLUE technical advisors about law enforcement, but Bochco seems to be more focused on venting about the hand that feeds him.

OK,disappointment is the 1st thing that comes to mind. Bochco has developed some of my fav TV programs; innovative, provocative...I expected the same. What I think Mr. Bochco didn't understand is that a novel requires more detailed info than a screen play & that's 1 of the problems. These characters are flat. Yeah, they have 'in your face..[love scences]', but it's not sensual or arrousing. It's just poking and proding. The author, aka narrator, is TELLING the story, not SHOWING the reader. The twists of plot were very good. The tidey ending was clever. And maybe this is a view of inside Hollywood. If so, what a horrible place to be addicted to. The read was fast & easy, but I think I'd wait for the paperback & a vacation on the beach.

I thought that DEATH BY HOLLYWOOD was mediocre and it moved very quickly, so quick in fact that I didn't even realize when I was done.
Written in first person, DEATH BY HOLLYWOOD speaks heavily about the "glamourous" life of Hollywood actors, screenwriters, and their agents. We follow Bobby, a writer who is down on his luck. He catches his wife in action cheating on him, his agent fires him, and he witnesses a murder all in the same day.
He uses this murder to his advantage in hopes that he can make it into a killer screenplay. From then he plots himself into his own misfortune.
Although this wasn't one of the best books I've read, the twists and surprises the book took on at the end really had me going. And for that I give it 3 stars.

Being always willing to give an industry oriented book a shot, I picked up this entertaining page turner with no preconcieved notions in my head. It was penned by Steven Bochco- the creative force behind TV shows like Hill St. Blues, NYPD Blue, and L.A. Law- and spins a windy tale about a blocked screenwriter, sexual escapades, money, and murder. While the writing is a bit predictable and sluggish at times, and the attempt to come across blunt and gritty just feels forced, its still a fun and entertaining read with a nice touch of dark humor. The narrative is engaging and the twists will make your brain smile. It reads like a decent movie script in need of an editor: fun and full of potential.

Bobby Newman, a Hollywood screenwriter with marital, personal and professional problems witnesses a murder from his back porch while spying on his neighbors with a telescope. Looking for a fresh idea for a script, he decides to go to the murdered man's house and investigate rather than call the cops. He finds a hidden video camera that recorded the murder, as well as, a black book that the man used to rate his lovers- including Newman's wife! Newman befriends the investigating detective, Dennis Farentino, in order to follow the investigation. However, things quickly begin to go awry as Newman begins a relationship with the murderer and tries to get back at his estranged wife by implicating her in the murder.
Steven Bochco, well known for creating several hit TV series, has written his first novel. He has won Emmys and Edgars for his screenplays but never has written a fictional narrative. It actually and unsurprisingly reads like a screenplay with a relatively brief length to match. This satire reads quite quickly. In a sense, Bochco has used this platform to expand on his views and, at times, condemnation of the Hollywood industry. We learn where the stars eat lunch, what goes through their minds and we get a general view of the shallowness of the society. Thoroughly entertaining and just the perfect length to sustain interest, DEATH BY HOLLYWOOD is an excellent debut novel by a veteran writer who truly writes about what he knows.

A fast entertaining story, written by one of Hollywoods power players, gives you a pretty good idea about the goings on in tinsel town.
This is one story that, perhaps, is perfect for unabridged audio. It's fast paced, easy to follow, and read with flair by Dennis Franz. I kinda liked the jokes too.

From inside:

"There used to be a writer by the name of Merle Miller, who wrote that people in Hollywood are always touching you - not because they like you, but because they want to see how soft you are before they eat you alive."

Recommended

Steven Bocchco is probably one of the better known producers in Hollywood, with Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue to his credit, among other things. So he's done so well there, he decided to become a novelist like his friend Stephen J. Cannell, who has now written a number of novels. The result is Death by Hollywood, a frothy entertainment with few redeeming features but no real flaws either.

The text alternates between first person narration and the points of view of many other characters, with the conceit that the narrator is telling you what he thinks happened when he wasn't there. The narrator is a Hollywood agent named Eddie Jelko, a guy with hundreds of stories and more jokes about the biz than Jay Leno. He represents the main character, Bobby Newman, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who has writer's block, a drinking problem, and an unfaithful wife who's just decided to leave him. Bobby witnesses a murder in the middle of this, and instead of reporting the killer to the police, as he should, he sees an opportunity to escape his writer's block. Much hilarity ensues, as the law of unforseen consequences boomerangs with a vengeance.

I enjoyed this book a good deal. Bocchco proves to be a pretty skilled writer, though the book shows signs of lengthening. There are many jokes and anecdotes that have nothing to do with the main plot, and the margins on the pages are wide, ditto the space between the lines of text. I bet they could have fit this into 180 pages if they'd tried. I suppose this is a result of Bocchco knowing how to write hour-long screenplays, most of the time, rather than longer books. It's a skill you learn, I guess. That being said, this is still a fun book, and I would recommend it.

Lately Screenwriter Bobby Newman's fingers spend more time wrapped around a bottle then they do tapping on a keyboard. He's got writer's block, but his eyes aren't blocked and they spend the evenings peeping through his high-powered telescope, spying on his neighbors. And one evening Bobby sees the wife of a Hollywood millionaire smack her Latin lover with an acting trophy, killing him.

He hustles over to the murder scene, finds the body. He also finds that the Latin Lover made videos of his sexual conquests and graded them A to F. And, to his shock, he sees that his wife Vee is a B+. He takes the tape, along with the tape of the murder.

He gets an idea to solve his little writer's block problem. He decides to do a screenplay about the murder. He gets close to both the murderer, and the detective in charge of the case n order to get inside the minds of the future protagonists of his screenplay.

The story is told by Bobby's cynical agent, Eddie Jelko who is recounting the story as Bobby has told it to him. This is a witty story told by a Hollywood insider about Hollywood, it's goings on real and imagined. The people may not exactly be the types you'd want to live next door to, but they are entertaining.