Hollywood Lies By David Ambrose

Another from the 1996/97 period, back when the late Bruce Arnold, then Literary Editor, used to give me books to review for the Irish Independent on Saturday, with a word length limit of 200 words. This one is hardly worth reproducing, given the slightness of the subject matter - but we must be strictly alphabetical. 

Hollywood Lies

By David Ambrose

(Macmillan, £15.99)

Hollywood Lies is a collection of seven short stories by screenwriter and novelist David Ambrose, who began his career working for Orson Welles. Welles provides the epigraph: ‘Everything you’ve ever heard about Hollywood is true - including the lies.’ The stories are unified by all being set in or around Tinseltown. There is a Tales Of The Unexpected quality to them, and each one ends with a Machiavellian twist.

    ‘Living Legend’ has people paying to play a pivotal part in a virtual reality experience of Marilyn Monroe; the title story features a washed up producer who starts to get lots of breaks when associates think he has an incurable terminal disease, but whose good luck plummets when it is discovered that his hospital records have been mixed up and he is in fact well; ‘Remember Me’ has a journalist being buttonholed by an Elvis impersonator who believes he is, and might just be, the real thing; in ‘Scribbler’ a screenwriter is, rather romantically, terrorised by a character he has created, a force that refuses to die either on screen or off; ‘The Fame That Dare Not Speak Its Name’ is interesting psychologically in looking at how a loving relationship may develop between two hard-core porn flick stars; ‘The Ghost Of Me Sings’ may or may not be a satire at Michael Jackson’s expense; and in ‘Hollywood Royalty’ a failed actress avenges herself on one of the town’s dynastic families, in what is also the greatest performance of her life.

    These stories are clever and entertaining, but sometimes stretch credulity with their endless twists and turns, and make it difficult for one to maintain one’s willing suspension of disbelief. But as the hero of the title story says, ‘You can’t fake phoney’.     

First published in the Irish Independent