| By pure coincidence, when I
started to read David Ambrose's
latest book, Arnold Schwarzenegger
was in town and, in discussing
the latest power play in Hollywood,
he described it as a place "where
people aren't known for being
straightforward and honest". And the title of the Ambrose
book of seven short stories is
Hollywood Lies. He took it from
the great Orson Welles with whom
he once worked and who said: "Everything
you've ever heard about Hollywood
is true - including the lies".
David Ambrose, a one-time Hampstead
resident, is a film and television
writer who understands the place
where, as he says "almost
everyone wears sunglasses - either
to avoid being recognised or
to have an excuse if they weren't". What he has created is fiction
of course. But the first story,
Living Legend, sets the style
and the approach. Here is Marilyn
Monroe singing Happy Birthday
for her lover President John
Kennedy. But who is she really? David Ambrose has his heroine
speculate about the basic lie
of stardom: "People said
they loved you, but they were
never on your side. They'd pay
money to see you, but hoping
you'd screw up so they could
sneer and say you'd robbed them.
They'd tell you they wanted to
f*** you but nothing in your
life would ever give them as
big a hard-on as your death". What makes these stories about
Hollywood so riveting is the
sense they portray of the sham
behind the sham. In the title
story, one character explains
what it is all about. "Kid,
this is a phoney business," he
says. "The stars' teeth,
tits and hair are phoney. The
sets are phoney, The stories
are phoney. The happy endings
are double phoney. But let me
tell you one thing you have to
understand if you're going to
succeed in this business: you
can't fake phoney". Of the
seven short stories, I like particularly
The Fame that Dare not Speak
its Name, about two stars of
porn movies who actually fall
in love while pretending they
are involved in something else.
She says she is a sociology post-graduate
while he admits he is involved
in movie production - about marine
biology. But when they are finally
cast together, the mask is dropped
- and how are they then to proceed?
Can their fake love-making become
the real thing? Then there is The Scribbler,
about a top television scriptwriter
whose key character takes on
an apparently real life of her
own. Here, I suspect, is the
truth about the creation of a
hero who becomes, in the words
of the actor who has to play
him "so alive and living
in me and I can't get rid of
him". And neither can the
story's writer. What makes Hollywood lies so
acute is the understanding David
Ambrose displays of the town
where lies are basic to life
itself. "People said they
loved each other too often to
mean it. It was something to
do with the endless psycho-babble,
the constant but shallow self-analysis
in which they all lived. ‘I
love you' wound up as being the
plaster to stick on relationships
when you'd successfully scratched
the problems but didn't have
time to tell the truth". But what is truth? In Remember
Me, Elvis Presley finds himself
out of his own life and pronounced
officially dead. But he is still
alive and reduced to playing
Elvis look-alikes in two-bit
clubs. "I have entered more
Elvis look-alikes than you've
had hot dinners," he says, "and
I've never once come in better
than third. Can you believe that?".
When you read Hollywood Lies,
you almost can. Graham Greene used to say that
the best basis for a full-length
movie was the short story. I
wonder if Hollywood is prepared
to face up to its own lies and
film one of these? Or will it, in the title of
another book by a former top
studio executive, say to David
Ambrose "You'll never eat
lunch in this town again" ? |
