Stars Screaming

September 29, 1997
Ray Burk, the hero of this melodramatic, trigger-happy first novel, is a CBS censor in Los Angeles who spends his time hating his job, pitying himself and dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. Then life intervenes in a series of improbable events: his wife Sandra has a miscarriage, loses her mind and ends up shooting a man in self-defense; his son Louie exhibits disturbing behavior at school; Ray falls in love with a stranger who tries to kill someone and gets shot dead in the process. Living through this turmoil, he finds the inspiration to write a successful screenplay about growing up in L.A. As self-obsessed Ray learns the downsides of being a writer in 1970s Hollywood (he is not allowed on the set, and is constantly being asked to change the script), he tries to escape the pressures of his personal life by driving around the city, passing the time in seedy bars. Kaye paints a familiar L.A.: a small town where everyone shares a past and the so-called six degrees of separation are cut down to about two. The coincidences are outlandish and unbelievable--just one symptom of the author's inability to decide how seriously to take his characters' over-eventful lives--but screenwriter Kaye has a feeling for quick-and-dirty drama and 1940s-'70s Southern California scenery that marks him as a veteran of the lots, or at least the cineplex.

August 1, 1997
This first novel by screenwriter John Kaye (American Hot Wax, Where the Buffalo Roam) is about first-time screenwriter Ray Burk, who takes to driving relentlessly around L.A. to escape the anxieties caused by his first film and his wife's illness by sorting through his memories. The result, though, is that Burk slowly begins to lose hold of his own life as past and present begin to blur. This is an extraordinary, imaginative work, pleasingly structured as a rondo of characters and time periods, all cogently detailed. Like most 1990s movies, the book goes a little soft at the end, but it's a real zinger, like a Six Degrees of Separation spanning three decades of Hollywood history and movie/pop culture.--David Bartholomew, NYPL

September 1, 1997
In his richly atmospheric first novel, screenwriter Kaye conjures a Hollywood peopled by emotionally damaged women and inebriated, over-the-hill actors. With a meandering, circuitous plot that eventually interlinks a host of small-time hustlers and big dreamers, Kaye tells the story of Ray Burk, who hates his job as a censor for a television network and is struggling to break into the big time as a screenwriter. His personal life is slowly unraveling as his wife suffers a mental breakdown and their five-year-old son exhibits ever more erratic behavior. As a form of therapy, Burk starts driving aimlessly around L.A. for hours at a stretch, stopping in seedy bars where he engages in tentative, halting conversations with aging B-movie actors and second-tier TV stars. Using cinematic vignettes, Kaye offers a dark, bittersweet portrait of Hollywood's bit players. ((Reviewed Sept. 1, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)