Gettysburg

June 1, 2019
In a wry take on the male midlife crisis, a Hollywood lawyer spends a weekend reenacting the Battle of Gettysburg with a Playboy Playmate, to the consternation of family and friends. John Reynolds Stanhope, age 47, was named after the Civil War general instrumental at Gettysburg, grew up near the battlefield, and worked as a guide there. Now he's a successful Hollywood lawyer, agent, manager, and producer, but he's also flabby and has insomnia, and his pilot about sleep just got rejected by A&E. So he has secretly planned a weekend playing his namesake with Gettysburg reenactors at a sports field north of Malibu. Then stuff happens--and through it all, Morris (All Joe Knight, 2016, etc.), a Hollywood lawyer and producer himself, cracks wise on Tinseltown with an insider's glee. Reynolds gets drunk while discussing a reality TV project with a former Playmate and a one-time Miss Universe and decides to bring them to the battle. His wife, a top-notch movie producer, uses an app to discover he lied about his weekend golf plans and pursues him, eventually asking their daughter and her friend to meet her there. Reynolds' lunch companions invite their sons. The worried wife also asks for help from her husband's longtime client, a character based on Norman Lear, who brings along an actor suggesting Tom Cruise without Scientology. While the solo weekend gets as crowded as the Marx Brothers' stateroom scene, Reynolds navigates battlefield skirmishes, existential questions, and awkward interactions with his wife and daughter. Morris gives him some fine speeches about history and war. But amid all the comic material, the hero's quasi-crisis--a "feeling that nothing [is] worth half a try"--may just be the biggest shell among the hail of potshots at Hollywood culture. A well-written work that some readers may find entertains more than it engages.

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August 2, 2019

John Reynolds, scion of Gettysburg, PA, former battlefield tour guide, and successful Hollywood lawyer, is having a midlife crisis. Creatively unfulfilled and worn down by the phoniness of the movie business, he's made plans to get in touch with the deeper sense of self he felt when he was younger, which in his case means secretly signing up for a Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg, to be held on the ball fields of a small California town. But things go uproariously wrong just before he leaves for the reenactment when a drunken lunch with an ex-Playboy Playmate (and subject of his youthful fantasies) and her ex-Miss Universe friend leads him to bring them with him. They are soon joined by his suspicious and worried wife, Stella, and his daughter, Heather, who have tracked him to Enchino, along with an old friend and legendary television writer, Norm. VERDICT Though Reynolds's plans for renewal end up wildly off the mark, he ultimately finds something of value. While delightedly skewering the privileged entertainment industry lifestyle, Morris (All Joe Knight) uses Reynolds's travails and the divisions of the Civil War period to make larger points about the current state of America. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/19.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

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