Still Holding : A Novel of Hollywood

by Bruce Wagner

• ISBN13: 9780743243377
• ISBN10: 0743243374
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-04
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

If there's an even darker side to Hollywood than the one America is familiar with, Bruce Wagner has found it. A twenty-first-century Nathanael West, he has been hailed for his powerful prose, his Swiftian satire, and the scalpel-sharp wit that has, in

Author Biography

Bruce Wagner is the author of Force Majeure, I'm Losing You, I'll Let You Go, and the television miniseries Wild Palms. Two films adapted from his books (I'm Losing You and Women in Film) have been shown at the Telluride, Toronto, Venice, and Sundance film festivals. He lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

The Three Jewels

The Three Poisons

The Three Mysteries

Ground Luminosity

Clear Light

CODA

Ordinary Mind

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

From Chapter 1: Her Drewness As a girl, Becca hadn't resembled Drew Barrymore at all. But now, at twenty-five, especially after gaining a few pounds, she had grown used to comments from bartenders and store clerks, and the half-startled looks from passersby.That was funny because her mom had always gotten the Sissy Spacek tag, even if Becca thought that was mostly because of a bad nose job. Still, Sissy and Drew were worlds apart, physically. It was a subjective thing; sometimes people could see the Sissy, sometimes they couldn't. But no one ever seemed to have trouble with Becca's "Drewness." Her boyfriend Sadge, who on a good day looked like a piss-poor Jack Black, got his kicks from playing it up -- like the time he booked a table at Crustacean under Drew's name. He made sure to get there first and had Becca come forty minutes later in huge sunglasses, head swathed in a knockoff Hermes scarf. They were high, and the maitre d' wasn't thrilled. (He must have been on to them from the beginning because Sadge had been ushered to the "civilian" zone.) A few diners turned their heads when Becca arrived, but she didn't have as much fun as she might have because Jordana Brewster was in the house, just on the other side of the glass partition, with a trim bald man Becca assumed to be her manager. Whenever Sadge laughed raucously or cued Becca to ham it up, the aspiring actress felt foolish, as she was certain Drew and Jordana knew each other. Jordana didn't look over once, and the whole thing kind of threw water on it for her. Suddenly Becca felt cheap, like a character in her friend Annie's favorite movie, Star 80.That was the week she saw Drew on a Jay Leno repeat. Her divorce from Tom Green had just been announced, but there she sat, surrealistically giddy about the marriage. She gushed that her husband had sent a dozen roses and a note saying good luck on the show, and the audience sighed. Jay volunteered that it was actually a statistic that comedians stayed married longer. Drew said how great was that. It was so horrible and depressing that Becca actually got nauseated then angry that someone in programming would have been so careless as to rerun that particular show. She thought it might have been deliberately perpetrated, like when those malicious video store clerks splice porn into animated classics. Jay Leno struck her as a good and decent man, and she told Sadge -- who'd laughed throughout the segment until Becca hit him -- it was the kind of thing that if it was brought to NBC's attention by Drew's management (she hoped), the talk-show host would definitely apologize to her personally. Becca actually considered being the "whistle-blower," but then her own career concerns overtook her."That was great," said Sharon. "I think you've got the potential to be quite a comedienne."She gave the word a Frenchified emphasis, and Becca was lost. Did she mean stand-up? She was too intimidated to ask for clarification. Maybe she meant Becca should be doing gigs at the Laugh Factory instead of wasting time trying to get movie and TV roles.She decided she didn't care what the woman meant. She would simply persevere, perseverance being the one quality all successful actors had in common. She'd just gotten her SAG card and had finally found a commercial agent but didn't yet have the all-important "theatrical." Still, she thought of herself as a winner because only a month or so after a general meeting with Sharon Belzmerz, one of the big casting directors on the Warners lot, she had been invited back to do a taped audition for a WB pilot. Sharon's friend, Becca's acting coach, made the initial contact. What you always heard was true -- it was all about personal connections."That was really fun!" said Becca. "Thank you so much for seeing me." She glanced at the video camera on the tripod opposite her. "Can I get a copy?"