Newer cynical Hollywood choice

Read a nice sample of this novel here. Definitely worth checking out.

Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger

"Hollywood was not yet a dirty word in 1916. It was just a junction of dirt roads, a solitary "Mission-style" hotel, some claptrap bungalows scattered in the orange groves, and the startling apparation of a Babylon orgy in full swing in the sunshine, smack on Sunset Boulevard." -- Hollywood Babylon

One aspect of Hollywood cynicism is the sordidness of the rich and famous. For a taste of that, there's no better place to start than Anger's Hollywood Babylon. (It's also worth reading about both Anger and the book, go back and click) Here's a brief bit on Valentino from the book:

"While Rudy may have been maneuvered into matrimony with an assist from Alla, there is no doubt he sought women stronger than himself and was attracted to "butch" ladies. Valentino called Natacha "the Boss" and she lived up to the name so well -- constantly high-handing her husband's career at Paramount -- that Zukor resorted to a contract with a clause barring her from the set. She retaliated by ordering Rudy to leave Paramount. She then wrote a screenplay for Valentino, The Hooded Falcon, which proved "unproducible" after a considerable investment in time and money. One collaboration of Natacha and Rudy saw the light of day, a slim volume of verse entitled Daydreams, whose closing lines are:

Alas
At times
I find
Exquisite bitterness
In
Your Kiss.

Whatever his private accommodations with his virile wives may have been, the public slurs on his manhood caused him such bitterness that even as he lay dying, fighting stoically against terrible pain, he asked the physicians at his bedside: "And now, do I act like a pink powder puff?"

At the news of Valentino's death, two women attempted suicide in front of Polyclinic Hospital; in London a girl took poison before Rudy's inscribed photograph; an elevator boy of the Ritz in Paris was found dead on a bed covered with Valentino's photos.

While Valentino was lying in state at Campbell's Funeral Home, New York streets became the scene of a ghoulish carnival as a mob of over 100,000 fought for a last glimpse of the Great Lover. The body was flanked by phony Fascist Black Shirt guards at attention, with an equally phony wreath labeled "From Benito" nearby -- a press-agent stunt by Campbell's whose cosmeticians really made Rudy's corpse resemble a "pink powder puff".

Among those who won admittance to the candlelit bier were his ex-wife Jean Acker, whose display of grief at the coffin's edge might have been tempered had she known Rudy left her a solitary dollar in his will, and Pola Negri, who upstaged everybody by rushing in from Hollywood decked out in chic-est mourning weeds. She sobbed and fainted before the coffin ... and the photographers. Between sobs, Pola claimed she had promised her hand to Rudy. Another claim was immediately filed in the papers by Ziegfeld Girl Marion Kay Brenda, who stated Valentino had proposed to her in Texas Guinan's night club the evening before he was stricken.

As Rudy's body was shipped west for entombment in the Court of the Apostles of Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, a commemorative song was crooned by Rudy Vallee over the nation's radios: "There's a New Star in Heaven Tonight -- R-u-d-y V-a-l-e-n-t-i-n-o."

Valentino's demise at thirty-one left inconsolable paramours of both sexes, to judge by the tear-streaked testimonials. Aside from the "Lady in Black" bearing flowers annually to the mausoleum on the anniversary of his death, the memory of Rudy was cherished by Roman Navarro, who kept a black lead Art Deco dildo embellished with Valentino's silver signature in a bedroom shrine. A present from Rudy."

Courtesy of the Sheila Variations blog.

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Cynical Hollywood is just as well-represented in literary form. Here's one of the two most famous. There's a film version of Day of the Locust, but it's a short read -- You could read the whole novel on the plane flying here in January. This scene starts as fans arrive outside a big movie premiere:

"New groups, whole families, kept arriving. He could see a change come over them as soon as they had become part of the crowd. Until they reached the line, they looked diffident, almost furtive, but the moment they had become part of it, they turned arrogant and pugnacious. It was a mistake to think them harmless curiosity seekers. They were savage and bitter, especially the middle-aged and the old, and had been made so by boredom and disappointment.

All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?

Once there, they discover that sunshine isn't enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. They haven't the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a "holocaust of flame," as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.

Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing."

Longer exerpt here. Order the book here.

Cynical hollywood

I thought everyone should see or read at least one super cynical Hollywood industry tale prior to coming out. It's a major sub-genre, with plenty to choose from, so I'll be offering some fun choices.
For example, there's Swimming with Sharks, which will give you a nice idea what interning will be like. Have a look, then think about renting the movie over Thanksgiving.