cover image Exposure

Exposure

Kurt Wenzel. Little Brown and Company, $23.99 (262pp) ISBN 978-0-316-09397-2

A near future glutted with obnoxious animated billboards and digitized celebrities hawking commercial goods serves as the backdrop for this wan satire on Hollywood and media overexposure. Cynical screenwriter Marshall Reed struggles to help his best friend, Colt Reston, a film legend dying of a strange wasting disease that seems to intensify in direct proportion to the amount his image is broadcast. Meanwhile, a cult of technophobes are incited to acts of billboard destruction by The Black Book, an antimedia manifesto penned by an anonymous industry insider. Wenzel (Gotham Tragic) builds momentum up to the unmasking of ""Mr. Black"" and the revelation of how Colt's illness intertwines with the scheme of an entertainment agent to scrap live actors in favor of digitally manipulated dead screen icons. But every time Wenzel introduces a new character, the lengthy backstory slows things to a crawl. The Hollywood zaniness provokes a few laughs, but not enough to make this more than a routine ""what if.""