Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Hailey's Novel Diary – 2/6/18



Acting Like Adults comes out on Wednesday, with a full release of all formats on February 14. Everyone should buy a copy before the movie comes out and they change everything. Then, buy another copy to see all the differences. I would recommend buying multiple copies of each edition. Sometimes you lose a book or loan it out to a friend and they never give it back. Just to be safe, maybe buy a dozen or two. I have been out of work for a while.

Acting Like Adults is about a group of people in Los Angeles who follow their dreams and want to make it in the entertainment industry; movies, music, TV, theater. Most of the story is how they go about getting there. Some of the characters are more successful than others. Some have more experience. Some have less. People betray each other and their own principles. There is plenty of rivalry, competition and backstabbing. Relationships come and go. Friendships are made, strained, twisted and torn apart. All that good stuff.

Part of the story involves a Harvey Weinstein character. That is a coincidence. A coincidence with really great timing, but still a coincidence. I created the character right before the whole Weinstein thing exploded. He never crossed my mind when writing the character. I knew about some of the rumors, and was not at all surprised when everything came out, but I did not know any details when writing the character.

My Weinsteinish character is a movie producer who treats women deplorably. He could be based on any number of Hollywood power players over the years. Harry Cohn used to brag about bedding every ingénue on his payroll. Sexual harassment in corporate America is nothing new. The character only seems like Weinstein now because of current events. Had this book come out a year earlier, people would think the character was based on someone else.

I think it's a pretty good book. Obviously, I'm not an impartial observer. When you create fictional characters, it's easy to form an attachment to them that the general public might not see. But I have read the book several times and there are still parts that make me laugh, a line or two that makes me feel nostalgic and a couple of scenes that piss me off. With movies, you can have a preview and see if the audience laughs and cries in all the right places. With books, you never know how the reader feels. I hope someone out there reads it the way I do.

2 comments:

No hate, please. There's enough of that in the world already.