Dream Factory: Hollywood Memoirs

I'm spinning. I can hardly see straight. I'm thinking director Todd Haynes may have been robbed of an Oscar back in 2003 by the man who was supposed to help him win it; that a 1970s pill-popping, coke-snorting, no-panty-wearing producer was the last honest person in Hollywood; and that when David Geffen told a female producer in a pitch meeting that she would benefit from collagen shots, he was actually being supportive. I'm spinning because I've been reading and rereading the great works of that dubious yet heart-pounding genre of seemingly selfless self-revelation: the behind-the-scenes Hollywood tell-all.

The latest entry in the pantheon is A Killer Life by Christine Vachon (she's Haynes's producer, and man, was she steamed about their Far From Heaven getting shut out of Best Picture nominations). She serves up a gritty, indie filmmaker's variation on some of my favorites of the genre; William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (Dyan Cannon taught her about the joys of going bare; the drugs she brought upon herself), Art Linson's What Just Happened?, and Lynda Obst's Hello, He Lied (she was the recipient of Geffen's advice). These books are different from, say, former premiere executive editor Peter Biskind's gossipy third-person tales of what goes on behind the silver screen, because these guys are writing about their own battles from the trenches. My question is, what stock can we put into what they have to say? After all, it only stands to reason that if one of the essential myth/truths perpetuated by these Hollywood tales is that everyone lies and everyone is engaging in tactical maneuvers, then that would include the authors themselves. More like, Hello, I Lied.

Even Vachon herself puts a big buyer-beware sign in front of me. "Anybody who works in the film business knows that you have to discount 90 percent of what anybody says about the film business, because it's all about jockeying for position and claiming credit for things," the producer says, sitting in her downtown New York City office while fielding a flurry of calls in the eleventh hour before she goes into production on Haynes's Bob Dylan drama, I'm Not There. "And so when I read a Hollywood memoir, I have that in mind."

 Vachon (Boys Don't Cry, One Hour Photo) tells a well-clipped and fact-packed story with A Killer Life (her production company's name is Killer Films), an account of the past five or so years of her experiences making movies: wrestling with bond companies, suffering the whims of A-list talent, and enduring professional disputes, including a falling out with an old friend and business partner, James Schamus.