HOWL AND THE PUSSY-KAT

This is a new take on Tinseltown that satirises most other Hollywood novels from the Jackie Collins/Harold Robbins bonkbusters to the ‘noir’ studies by Nathaniel West and Thomas Tryon.

The story encompasses the making of one movie, from conception to release, a movie that will bankrupt veteran studio head Isaac Hunt. His young stars, Jason Howl and Katharine Kane, are two of Hollywood’s Beautiful People, a latterday Burton and Taylor. The book charts their rise to fame (and their fall) as well as their sizzling onscreen/offscreen romance during the filming of a 2001 remake of the Bette Davis classic Now, Voyager.

Jason Howl is a California hunk (OK, not exactly Richard Burton) who comes into movies via TV ads and an ultra-naff Florida-set soap called Eldorado (no relation!) Kate ‘Pussy-Kat’ Kane is the teenage star of such porno classics as Pussy Power and American Pee; she has just gone semi-legit in Poor Nellie (filmed in England), a sex-romp version of the life of Nell Gwynne with Peter O'Toole and Stephen Fry. (Did I say Liz Taylor?).

Screenwriter Ben Burns and director Rodney Fire make radical changes updating Now, Voyager for today’s audience. When porn-king Al Kazman stumps up a $100 million bailout of Hunt Studios, Again, Voyager becomes a heady cocktail of noir hommage and skinflick.

Hollywood’s (and our) obsession with stretching the sexual frontier has given me room for some spicy humour and a sinister subtext, but I also take a serious look at how small talents develop into major careers. Several characters learn the high price of fame.

The setting is a ‘parallel-universe’ Hollywood. James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are still alive and working. Marilyn is married to Henry Kissinger, who is about to dub the Voice of God in an animated version of Noah’s Ark. There are lots of gags aimed at film-buffs, but the novel more broadly targets everyone who loves (or loathes) today’s remake-crazy Hollywood with its 15-seconds-of-fame stars.

DAVID GEE

Visit www.shaikh-down.com to read Extracts from my previous novel SHAIKH-DOWN, published in paperback. And visit my blog www.shaikh-down.blogspot.com to see my reviews of books, movies and television.