Drowned in the Grenadine or How to Fail in Show Business by Really, Really Trying (Audible Audio Edition) Dan Gilvezan, Createspace Books
Download As PDF : Drowned in the Grenadine or How to Fail in Show Business by Really, Really Trying (Audible Audio Edition) Dan Gilvezan, Createspace Books
Fancy cars, a loving wife, a designer home in the Hollywood Hills. Nathan Lindeman had it all, lost it all, and now he's desperate to get it back. They say there are no second acts in show business, but they just may be wrong. There's a new TV sitcom being cast that's virtually guaranteed to go to series, and Nathan has a shot at snagging one of the lead roles. If, that is, he can survive the perils and pitfalls that threaten to derail him along the way.
Follow Nathan on his journey, and learn the way things really work behind the scenes of the Hollywood dream machine, as he deals with teenage casting directors, soulless network execs, egomaniacal fellow performers, hucksters and thieves - a cast of characters so bizarre and otherworldly they could only be based in reality.
By turns funny, sad, heartbreaking, and heartfelt, Drowned in the Grenadine explores America's fascination with celebrity, the nature of success, and what it means to be both a father and a son.
Drowned in the Grenadine or How to Fail in Show Business by Really, Really Trying (Audible Audio Edition) Dan Gilvezan, Createspace Books
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Drowned in the Grenadine or How to Fail in Show Business by Really, Really Trying (Audible Audio Edition) Dan Gilvezan, Createspace Books Reviews
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the inside scoop on the life of a journeyman actor. Or, for that matter, anyone with even a passing interest in popular culture and its creators. As an actor and director myself, I spent my career in the theater in NYC and never quite experienced the sort of thing that Nathan goes through; but I brushed up against it, and it is all too familiar. The principal reason that Gilvezan succeeds in this very funny, very poignant cautionary tale, is that he turns a rather intimate character study into a bona fide page turner. You care about this flawed man, this bright, talented actor and his struggles in an insane world; and you want him to succeed. But what defines success? Around every corner lurks the madness of money, the lure of fame and the Hollywood alchemists whose only job it is to turn art into commerce. I believe I understand that world better after having read this book than I ever did before; and that is quite an accomplishment. Gilvezan obviously lives in this world, and is perhaps so close to it that I am not sure he even intended to teach, what to me, is the central lesson. Here we have an actor who seems to have sought art at one time; but became so ensnared in the trap of simply making a living that he lost sight of what it was that made him an actor in the first place. No judgments here; we all have to make a living. But in the strange Harry Potter land of television and Hollywood wizards, the Dementors feed off the dreams of others and turn everything to despair. That is, if you let them. And it is Nathan's struggle against these forces that makes for such compelling reading. Gilvezan certainly is making the point that there are more important things in life than work, but the element of Nathan Lindeman,artist turned businessman, may not be exactly what he intended. It is one of this novel's strong points, though, in what is a very impressive first effort.
One of the best stories that I have read for a long time. The extreme highs and lows of the acting profession and their financial repercussions. The moral of the story could be valid for many of us. Happiness and sadness, the author knows how to extract a tear from his readers. A wonderful read.
Talk about a page-turner. This is that book you don't want to keep reading only because you don't want it to end. That book you think about even when you're NOT reading it, that you chuckle over when you remember a particularly funny passage (there are many) and get misty-eyed over when you remember a particularly poignant one. (There are many of those, too.) Dan Gilvesan is a professional actor with a true talent for writing, so the combination brings real authenticity to his tale of an actor's travails in Hollywood while at the same time transcending the rarified subject matter to accomplish a bona fide piece of literature that is a universally relevant and thoughtful commentary on modern life itself. Bravo, bravo, bravissimo and I hope he's busily writing the next one because I want to put my order in now. I want more.
The theme of an actor pursuing a show biz career at the expense of family and real friends is an oldie, but Gilvezan makes it work with a solid mix of humor, a hero who genuinely works hard at acting, solid pacing, and strong human touches throughout.
There's one disturbing issue raised in the story, the way that the child star's tutor encourages him to study, which is treated with less attention than the issue should raise in real life. How the reader will react depends on whether s/he sees it as part of the satire on how Hollywood works or as a joke.
They say "write what you know," and Dan Gilvezan seems to have set out to make a writing career doing just that. As a longtime screen and voice-over actor, he's spent decades in the lunatic business that is show business, and both of his books (so far) are chronicles of his years amid the circus of Hollywood and its various sideshows. His first book, Bumblebee & Me Life as a G1 Transformer, dealt primarily with his work on the original "Transformers" cartoon, and on the joys and agonies of working in the voice-actor business... and some of his memories, be they funny or miserable or bittersweet, of working on a silly kids' show that became a beloved classic. I enjoyed that book immensely, and so I was eager to read his second book and first novel "Drowned in the Grenadine," which was fiction but nonetheless supposedly inspired by his years in the business.
I enjoyed MOST of this book very much -- Gilvezan is a funny and talented writer, and I hope he writes more. But one scene in this book shocked me enough that it tainted my enjoyment of the rest of the book, and I wonder just why he felt its inclusion was necessary.
"Drowned in the Grenadine" follows the life of Nathan Lindemann, a divorced and down-on-his-luck actor who's struggling to find work. Once riding high as the ad spokesman for a tire company, he's now a fading has-been, bouncing from minor job to minor job and trying to make ends meet, while at the same time trying to be available for his son and checking in on his ailing father. When his agent manages to land him a role in what promises to be the next hit TV sitcom, he thinks he's got it made, and thinks that maybe his good luck has returned and he can be living the high life again. But life is never as easy as TV or the movies make it out to be, and when Nathan's life is shaken to its foundations, he has to sit down and re-evaluate what's most important in his life... and what the cost of success will be.
Gilvezan is an enormously funny writer, and the comedic voice that made "Bumblebee & Me" a fun read shines through in his fiction as well. Nathan is a hilarious narrator with a keen eye for detail, and the characters in his story are both larger than life and eerily true to life. The entire cast of characters, both major and minor, are a veritable circus of crazies and eccentrics, yet I get the feeling that Gilvezan has encountered stranger characters in his career. And the story itself is both hilarious and touching, giving real depth to the characters beyond the goofy exteriors. He doesn't shy away from the harsher side of having an acting career, and shows the sacrifices that are often made to get ahead in the cutthroat world of Tinseltown.
I have a couple issues with a few bits of the book, however, a couple minor and one major one. There are a few scenes in the book that seem to come straight out of nowhere -- encounters with mysterious characters who seem to know more than they should, and in one case said character is the spitting image of a long-deceased actor. There's no explanation for these encounters, and they're never mentioned again. Does Nathan have a guardian angel of some sort, or is he just going nuts?
My biggest complaint, however, is a scene near the two-thirds mark of the book... a scene of a sexual encounter between an adult woman and an underage child actor. The scene is NOT written graphically or with any intention of being erotic, and the main character (who walks in on said encounter) is patently shocked at said encounter, but at the same time the scene has no bearing on the plot and seems to be included solely for shock value. This seriously tainted my enjoyment of the book, enough for me to knock it down half a star. I know Hollywood is no stranger to sexual scandal -- even sexual scandal involving minors -- but this scene really didn't belong in the book, especially when it's never mentioned again and is brushed off as "no big deal" instead of treated seriously.
I really did enjoy this book, and I think Gilvezan could go far as a writer. Still, one scene can go a long way toward coloring one's view of a book, and as much as I loved the rest of the book I still think the book could have succeeded without the aforementioned sex scene. I will keep an eye out for future books by this author, though, and hope his game only improves from here.
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