It's All True: A Novel of Hollywood

By David Freeman

Book Overview

Henry Wearie is a man with a brilliant future behind him.

He arrived in Hollywood barely twenty-one, having escaped from a confusing family and New York University. He got hot fast, selling a big-money script. He was on his way up -- though not quite as far up as he had expected. Henry stalled in the middle, then fell from there. As he puts it, "I've been hotter and colder than my oven."

It's All True maps Henry's odyssey through a tantalizing Los Angeles that he loves and resents, a place where he always feels one phone call, one script, or one break away from the brass ring that circles in and out of his grasp.

He marries and divorces and never quite stops yearning for his ex-wife. He spends his days trying to resurrect the life that he let slip away. Then his faltering career gets an unexpected jolt from an old girlfriend who has been promoted into the upper reaches of a studio. She helps Henry, though she extracts a surprising price.

When the money had been flowing, Henry bought a Jaguar that has gone from gleaming to dented, a constant reminder of his own fallen state. His life has careened from the glamorous to the quotidian, from erotic adventures on location to slow mornings spent with out-of-work buddies at Hollywood's venerable Farmers Market.

His friends are a motley crew of wiseguy screenwriters, once-popular directors, obscure actors, and famous and highhanded producers and film stars identifiable to most everyone.

In creating Henry's saga, veteran novelist and screenwriter David Freeman has written an intimate history of Hollywood over the last twenty-five years, viewed from inside the soundstages, the bedrooms, the fashionable restaurants, and the studio meetings where fortunes can turn on a chance word.

This is a book studded with the delicious details of the folkways of the movie business and the romantic customs of its denizens. Enlivened by Freeman's corrosive wit, It's All True is hilarious and touching and, astonishingly, absolutely all true.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416577998
• ISBN13: 9781416577997
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Highly literate and amusing

This is a wonderfully amusing satire of life among Hollywood writers, directors, and aspirants of various sorts. The story amounts to little more than Henry Wearie, screenwriter of some repute, living his life among his egotistical and idiosyncratic peers, all of whom are hoping to make the next deal. The deal of course is what keeps them involved. Henry doesn't get many of his scripts turned into films, but in Hollywood, a script deal can produce money for various people all along the way, from idea, to final script, to rewrite, to realization on the screen or interment in a file cabinet, plus residuals. So Henry does all right most of the time. The first half of the book deals with Henry's present situation. The rest of the book consists of nested flashbacks explaining how he got to where we find him at the beginning. It takes a moment to catch on to what's happening.

The Real Hollywood

As a reader of Hollywood fiction and nonfiction this book fills the bill perfectly. The protagonist, writer Henry Wearie, has had minor success but is in a bad trough, both writing and personally. Through reattachment to a former relationship, Henry becomes "hot" or at least "lukewarm" again. The book proceeds to intertwine stories of Henry as it effects his writing, his friends and his love life as he plods his way through the Industry. My one complaint about the book is through the use of flashbacks the book can be confusing as to where you are in time from where the novel starts. This book is funny and sad. If you like to feel emotion in a novel, this will fill the bill. My only mild complaints would be that there are so many characters introduced for short interludes it's difficult to get extremely attached to the characters and the aforementioned confusion about time structure.

Hilarious and Authentic

As a fellow "recovering screenwriter," I can bear witness to the painful, hilarious authenticity of "It's All True". The passage of David Freeman's protagonist is the archetypal journey of the semi-serious writer turned serious Hollywood hack. It's a story that needed to be told and told well and Freeman has done it with style and heart.

Joins the (very) short list of great novels about Hollywood

Alternately poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, Freeman's story of a middle-aged screenwriter coming to terms with his life is brilliantly realized on many levels. The folks who run (extremely profitable) screenwriting seminars should give each student "It's All True" as a premium, albeit a cautionary one. This is a stunning achievement.