A Hollywood Education: Tales of Movie Dreams and Easy Money

Subtitled Tales of Movie Dreams and Easy Money, this collection of short stories is narrated by a former journalist who, we learn in the first entry, was advised by a senior editor to test his fictionalizing talents in Hollywood instead of on a N.Y. daily. One by one, we meet the people he encounters, starting with a gathering of would-be celebrities in Schwab's and ending on location in a poverty-stricken section of the Ivory Coast that provides a vivid contrast to life and times in Tinseltown. In between are penetrating glances at some familiar types. Sheila is a production executive who proves she's heir to the drive as well as the name of her movie-mogul grandfather. Maury and Eugene are agents who grew up on the Grand Concourse and whose last project is auctioning the rights to Maury's death from his hospital room. The Senator begins an affair with a movie star while courting movie money, knowing he'll be paying dues in Hollywood forever. Sex, money and power, one character points out to him, are what Hollywood is about. They're all here in these fond, funny and touching stories that expose the human being behind every Hollywood stereotype. Screenwriter Freeman also wrote The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock. ( June 27)