Sex, Stupidity and Greed: Underbelly of the American Movie Industry (Paperback)

The similarities with high school do not end there. Like most high schhol term papers, Grey strives for too much and ends up with too little. The chapters show little, if any, cohesion and one must wonder who had bribed the proof-readers prior to their assignment on this book. When Grey does explore some interesting themes he is either a)uninformed (i.e. too lazy to do the research needed), b)too anxious to get on with the next boundary-breaking "insight" or c)both, as is most often the case.

The real horror-story (or comic relief depending on your frame of mind) of Grey's work is his "field-work", i.e. 7 hastily conducted interviews with less-interesting people where one in every four questions concern the "fascinating" breast-implant phenomenon of Hollywood. In between these 7 interviews, presented for some daft reason in original transcript form as if to say 'Look, I Really did do these interviews', Grey tacks on various stories of encounters with friends of stars or has-beens in and around Hollywood that one does best in avoiding.

Like a high-school student, Grey will mature in time, get a better perspective of things, develop his writing skills, find more interesting stories to write about and get some psychotherapy for all that 'anger'. Unless, of course, having this rubbish published gives him a big ego, in which case we'll have to brace ourselves for more incoherent ramblings from this 16-year old stuck in a grown man's body.

This book is really a collection of essays and interviews on similar subjects, and it's not just because of the lack of cohesion that they contradict each other. In one chapter he writes about the scandalously huge budgets movies get today, but the very next section is an interview with a Hollywood insider who reveals that movies' budgets are actually exaggerated by studios, and they aren't really too much. So what was the point of the first chapter? Grey could at least have written "Oh, I was mistaken," but he just moves on. Later there's a chapter on how actors and especially actresses must get surgery to look young and attractive so they can remain employed. That chapter is truthfully grim, but it's followed up by an interview with actress Julie Strain, and Grey almost seems to praise her for "remodelling" her body. ("Remodeled" sure sounds better than "They slit her open and shoved in implants," the kind of language he uses in the other chapter.)

Grey seems to think that Strain can do no wrong since she makes low-budget movies, which most would probably call B-Movies. Well, there really isn't an impartial "good" and "bad" when it comes to movies, but Grey assumes that anything without a big budget is better than any blockbuster hit and really, anything from a big studio. The truth is that low-budget does not equal objectively good. Grey cannot grasp this concept, and he sticks with it throughout the book.

As I wrote before, this book needed to be written. The evils of Hollywood should be revealed to the public, but it is impossible to read this book without loathing it. Grey wanted to get the message across, but he was defeated by his own contradictions, predjudice, and, ironically, stupidity.