The Comedy Writer

Book excerpt: The Comedy Writer is a rude, raucous, straight-talking romp through the Hollywood Dream Factory from the co-creator of the hit movies Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary. Henry Holloran is an average guy, newly dumped by his girlfriend, who decides to quit a dead-end job in Boston and head for Los Angeles. His dream: to make it as a big-time comedy writer. His base: a shabby one-room apartment, from which he sallies forth to encounter fellow Tinseltown scavengers: nymphomaniac starlets, wiseacre agents, shyster producers. Henry hopes his first script - the wish-fulfilling, autobiographical 'How I Won Her Back' - will win him fortune and glory, but it's a non-fiction piece he writes for the LA Times - an eye-witness account of a suicide - that really changes his life, encouraging a perky borderline-psychopath called Colleen Driscoll to show up on his doorstep . . . For anyone who has ever hankered after Hollywood success, considered Los Angeles to be the sinkhole of civilization, or reached adulthood with their adolescence mercifully intact, The Comedy Writer tells it like it is.