The Comedy Writer - Softcover

Farrelly, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571205011 ISBN 13: 9780571205011

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2001

Synopsis

The Comedy Writer is a rude, raucous, straight-talking romp through the Hollywood Dream Factory from the co-creator of the hit movies Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary.

Henry Holloran is an average guy, newly dumped by his girlfriend, who decides to quit a dead-end job in Boston and head for Los Angeles. His dream: to make it as a big-time comedy writer. His base: a shabby one-room apartment, from which he sallies forth to encounter fellow Tinseltown scavengers: nymphomaniac starlets, wiseacre agents, shyster producers. Henry hopes his first script - the wish-fulfilling, autobiographical 'How I Won Her Back' - will win him fortune and glory, but it's a non-fiction piece he writes for the LA Times - an eye-witness account of a suicide - that really changes his life, encouraging a perky borderline-psychopath called Colleen Driscoll to show up on his doorstep . . .

For anyone who has ever hankered after Hollywood success, considered Los Angeles to be the sinkhole of civilization, or reached adulthood with their adolescence mercifully intact, The Comedy Writer tells it like it is.

About this title

Review:

Broken-hearted Henry Halloran, The Comedy Writer moves to L.A, to flip burgers and become a screenwriter. After failing to prevent a girl's suicide, he sells the story to the newspapers. Because unlike most California dreamers, Henry has talent--and he quickly finds an agent. The American Dream seems to be coming true when Colleen, the gawky--and psychotic-- sister of the suicide lands on his doorstep. In a town where little was normal to start with, Henry has to fight to save his sanity, his freedom and his apartment.

Farrelly's tale is ripe with insights into the ghoulish hinterland of Hollywood wannabes. But far from over-loading on the shock factor, he has created a tender-hearted hero. Witty and jaded--Henry describes one of his dates as having "skin like luggage"--he inhabits a world of bachelor depravity but neither loses his inner morals or forgets his roots. He fails, in hilarious fashion, to pick up women, he is fixated upon lingerie adverts--but his heart smarts from past wounds and he picks up litter to atone for his sins. If Henry is the obligatory "flawed hero" of the screenwriting text-books, his path to redemption beats most movies hands-down. For anyone who ever harboured an ambition, or has simply tried running away, this book is compulsory. --Matthew Baylis

Review:

"The Comedy Writer is a dark, funny, and tragically accurate portrayal of wannabe Hollywood--a modern day Day of the Locust. It made me laugh and gave me the willies."
--Christopher Moore, author of Island of the Sequined Love Nun

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0571205011
• ISBN 13: 9780571205011
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368