“He had come west almost without thinking about it. And he had stayed. And here he was. Twenty-Five years gone by, a small fortune made, a family built. A wife for his best friend, many good people in his life, a daughter for whom his devotion towered.”
Hollywood. The town where all dreams come true. The place where movie magic happens. All that and more was the reason why John Reynolds left his hometown Gettysburg to become a part of the entertainment circus.
Now, twenty years later, he is successful with a beautiful home and a wife and daughter, but he feels like he did not accomplish much in his life. When he experiences a creative depression while producing his own movie, he spontaneously decides to go home to participate in a weekend-long reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Without telling his wife, he gets in the car happy to get a break from his life, but he does not get far when he meets an ex-Playmate Delaney Bedford which in his youth was his dream girl and now pitches a reality TV show idea to him which has potential. So, instead of cancelling his trip, he decided to take her and her friend Marisol, a former Miss Universe, with him to Gettysburg and simply multitask.
The American lawyer, producer, and writer Kevin Morris brings a contemporary satirical read about Hollywood and its negative sides how people have to survive in his new novel. As the founder of Morris Yorn Entertainment Law Firm, which represents stars like Matthew McConaughey, Ellen DeGeneres, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Rock, and Zoe Saldana, he does have a quite the knowledge on how the “glamorous Hollywood” can look from behind the scenes.
I am always up for a little peek behind the curtain when it comes to movie making since we know not everything is as it looks in real life. The book does give a look into that but rather gives you an honest character who has it all and still feels lost in what he is doing. Plus, the story also puts his family into the spotlight. As it seems, his marriage with Stella is not in a good place from judging that he did not tell her that he will be away for the weekend. Stella herself feels caged and struggles with the genius of a daughter, Bella, who sometimes gives her a hard time. Soon, John’s escape trip gets even more chaotic when Stella and Bella surprise him at the battlefield.
The interesting part about this book is the indirect storytelling about a person who feels stuck, suffers from depression, and therefore tries to find something exciting new to get his nose in.
“But Norman was on to how the game worked: how the agents carved pieces out of broadcast license fees for themselves, how the agents teamed with the television studios – Lorimar, Warner Brothers TV, Universal – to fuck with the networks and their own clients by using two different financial models for each how one that said the program would never made money and one that showed the program would never stop making money: and how, through a blend of selling and fixing, lots and lots of money ended up in the wrong hands.”
Overall, I really would have liked to read more about Bella and not about her research about famous people, but more like looking behind the genius mind of hers. I would have wished for a little bit more of what is going on in Hollywood and how it really works. For me, I would have enjoyed a little more flavour to the writing style and perhaps a little less detail in a few scenes that caused me to get lost for a second or two while reading.
Gettysburg is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of July 2nd 2019.
