With the 2021 Academy Awards celebration coming up on Sunday, April 25, check out one of these recent novels with insider views of the film industry.
Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little – Film editor Marissa Dahl experiences the world filtered through her encyclopedic knowledge of film. Struggling to find film editing work after a longtime partnership falls apart, Marissa accepts a job on a project already underway and shrouded in secrecy. Taken to an isolated island off the coast of Delaware, she discovers she’ll be working with an infamously demanding director on a film that recreates a long-ago true crime. Marissa joins a film shoot plagued by accidents and staff defections, and when a dead body is found that mimics the original crime, Marissa is pulled into investigating by two intrepid teenage girls making a podcast. Prior to reading this I didn’t know anything about the role a film editor plays in the final product, but Little incorporates a lot of interesting career and process detail into her murder mystery.
City of Flickering Light by Juliette Fay – In 1921 Irene, Millie and Henry jump off a moving train to escape an oppressive traveling burlesque show and head to Hollywood to pursue their silent film dreams. As they chase acting roles and work as extras, the three also look for love and experience heartbreak. Fay does a good job weaving in details of the time – the way Hollywood looked, where people stayed, how the studios worked, the process of filming silent films, what the competition was like, the glamour but also the grind – without ever getting bogged down by too many details. Through these three friends the reader gets a nicely full view of the burgeoning Hollywood film industry.
You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria – In this sexy romance novel, Jasmine Lin is making the jump from soap opera actor to a starring turn in a much-hyped bilingual telenovela from an influential streaming service. Her leading man is Ashton Suarez, a Puerto Rican actor trying to break into the English-language market. Struggling to contain their mutual attraction, explosive chemistry sets fire to their carefully laid plans. This is set on a TV show production, but I think it still gives some interesting insight into the behind-the-scenes of filming, particularly when the fictional show employs an intimacy coordinator to plan the sex scenes, a role that is becoming increasingly common in the entertainment industry.
~ posted by Andrea G.
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