What the Movies Made Me Do

September 1, 1985
High-powered New York film exec Carol Young hits 40, ends a long-term love affair, scrambles desperately to salvage to the movie about Jesus she's always wanted to make, holds onto her job as the studio's first female creative vice president as it hangs by a thread, bails her surrogate-daughter secretary out of trouble with the law, and has a tender tryst with the sex symbol star she has a crush onall in about a week. She has brains and bravado, she cares more about the movies than the money she makes, and she finds that her life, at midpoint, is going along just fine. This book might have been as exhausting as Carol's life, if Braudy hadn't relieved the hardball politics of the film industry with scenes of emotion and some fine flashbacks, all in nicely spare prose that can be slick or sensitive. Pure pleasure. Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.