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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
little known pacific coast hardboiled realist great!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Turnaround (Hardcover)
Maybe the best of all Hollywood novels...by maybe the best unknown writer...and maybe the only one that explores the world on the street of broken dreams, where people of talent and heart must find something to live on other than reflections in the eyes of others.See also his classic Hard Rain Falling...a delinquent in Seattle in the early 40s goes to jail and becomes a criminal. Carpenter also wrote the original script of the first feature produced by Fantasy Films (producer, Ralph Gleason), Payday, starring Rip Torn.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Hollywood Novel,
By
This review is from: Turnaround (Hardcover)
It's been more than 10 years since Don Carpenter put a bullet in his head... because he had reached a state where he could not do what he wanted to do in life, especially writing, which he did every day. He was not discouraged by lack of readership, because he was a special favorite of other writers, many more known to the world than he, who admired his work and sought out his cantankerous company.
The title comes from H.D. Thoreau's inscription to Walden, something like, "A man has but to get turned around once in this world, to find himself lost." The word "turnaround" is also a phrase applied to scripts once in development which are not going to be made but which could be "turned around" to another studio or producer...i.e., one willing to reimburse all development costs. To say a script's "in turnaround" usually means it's dead. This is not to suggest the novel is bitter, since it regards the making of good movies as a wondrous process, despite the casualties... and traces the development of a family of high-level performers covering 3 generations. In another part of the book, Carpenter recounts the struggles of a screenwriter whose status does not match the quality of his inspiration, and how he drains himself each day to get each word right, and lives so entirely on the edge of failure that he must drink himself to sleep at night. His companions...most of whom live nearby in run-down motels near the Strip... are an assortment of supporting actors and technical people, that band of workers,far more numerous than stars, without whom stars or movies would not exist, and who must always, at all costs, maintain their professional good cheer. It is Carpenter's feeling for these kind of characters, who are driven to the kind of work (or crime) that can produce stomach-dropping ups & downs, that gives this book and most of his other work its special feeling. His prose is remorselessly accurate and hard-boiled, almost never sentimental. One reads, one believes, and one cares tremendously what happens to these people.
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