What was the most challenging aspect of writing such an intricate narrative?
Trying to keep it to a manageable length. The material is so rich that I wanted to do more, particularly about Hollywood itself, but the book kept getting longer and you don’t want to try the reader’s patience. The front story—the crime and Ben’s solving it—inevitably takes up space at the expense of the backstory, which to me was a portrait of Hollywood just before it began to fall apart. The seeds of that fall are there but some aren’t covered as extensively as I originally intended. The all-important Justice Department consent decree (separating the studios and their theaters), which would hit the studios with a financial body blow, is referred to here—it’s the reason Minot’s been invited to Lasner’s party—but not in great detail. The internal politics of the labor unions were too complicated (and, frankly, dated) to develop, so I had to be content with some conversation and a strike action. Television appears only in one scene but at least that’s consistent with how little attentio
