The Deal A Novel of Hollywood [Paperback]

Washed-up Hollywood producer Charlie Berns has mailed in his updated obit and is about to suck his Mercedes tailpipe and fade to black when a miracle materializes: his nephew, a wannabe screenwriter from New Jersey, has scripted the life story of Queen Victoria's prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, which Charlie manages to turn into a hot property that reinstates him as a player. But as the deal heats up, a few conceptual changes morph the project intoLev Disraeli: Freedom Fighter,an action thriller with a black Jewish superstar, a Yugoslavian location, a mad Polish director, and even a real-life kidnapping. Is Charlie Berns being eaten alive by the system? Or is he giving the Hollywood hotshots a run for their money? Peter Lefcourt's hilarious satire proves the old adage that in Hollywood you're never quite as dead as people give you credit for.Chapter One

One of the downside risks of producing your own suicide is that you probably won't get the opportunity to reshoot. It's pretty much a one-take business. Barring, of course, a complete disaster, in which case you won't be in any frame of mind to consider the results with any objectivity. You may not, in fact, be in any frame of mind at all. You may be reduced to hanging in there out of pure reflex, your organism metabolizing in spite of your express wishes to the contrary.

This ugly thought occurred to Charlie Berns as he fed a rubber hose through a specially drilled hole in the doggie door that led out to the patio of his 5,400-square-foot house in the Beverly Hills Flats. If push came to shove, he would rather go through with the indignities of his present situation than wind up in vegetableville. Charlie shuddered at the prospect and resolved to be very careful.

The 560 SEL was parked as close to the house as he could manage, its rear wheels trampling the flower beds that his vindictive gardener had denuded months ago. José GarcÍa y GarcÍa and his brother-in-law Pl“K