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david_agranoff's review
4.0
OK as a fellow horror writer it is easy to green with envy of any writer who has a blurb from Clive Barker, or Stephen King. You might be jealous if a writer has a blurb from director Frank Darabont (the walking dead, Shawshank Redemption) or maybe Richard C. Matheson. Yeah this book has blurbs from all those genre heavyweights. I was jaded about that because Mick Garris is a filmmaker, who has toiled in the B movie and Stephen King made for TV salt mines for years. I assumed his first novel would be ok with his friends returning favors with some kind blurbs.
The good news is that Mick Garris deserved the praise. As a director Garris has never really had the kind of budget to really let his imagination fly like some others in Hollywood, and with this novel you can see why titans of horror have trusted him with there work.
Development hell is a satire, not a yuck, yuck slapstick satire but a scathing insider look at Hollywood that is dragged through the horror gutter. Honestly though is true Hollywood often way more vile a detestable than our beloved horror genre.
Garris pulled a trick more than a few authors have done before taking what really feels like a short story collection and weaving it into a single novel. Skipp and Spector did this in Dead Lines. One thing that bothered me a little about the book is it is written entirely in first person and we don’t really know the name of the narrator.
We follow this character through a Hollywood career, each chapter follows different aspects of Hollywood horror. From making TV movies, to B-mvoies, to blockbuster movies that bomb it’s a insider’s look. I am a film nerd who read creative screenwriting magazines for years. I wonder if the average reader would get a lot of it, but you know it’s excellently written.
The novel takes a strange metaphysical turn towards the midway point but expands the setting in way, puts our main character into positions he couldn’t early on. It’s stranger and expertly told novel. I got to hand it to Garris I think he is a better writer of prose than film. I hope to read more in the future.
The good news is that Mick Garris deserved the praise. As a director Garris has never really had the kind of budget to really let his imagination fly like some others in Hollywood, and with this novel you can see why titans of horror have trusted him with there work.
Development hell is a satire, not a yuck, yuck slapstick satire but a scathing insider look at Hollywood that is dragged through the horror gutter. Honestly though is true Hollywood often way more vile a detestable than our beloved horror genre.
Garris pulled a trick more than a few authors have done before taking what really feels like a short story collection and weaving it into a single novel. Skipp and Spector did this in Dead Lines. One thing that bothered me a little about the book is it is written entirely in first person and we don’t really know the name of the narrator.
We follow this character through a Hollywood career, each chapter follows different aspects of Hollywood horror. From making TV movies, to B-mvoies, to blockbuster movies that bomb it’s a insider’s look. I am a film nerd who read creative screenwriting magazines for years. I wonder if the average reader would get a lot of it, but you know it’s excellently written.
The novel takes a strange metaphysical turn towards the midway point but expands the setting in way, puts our main character into positions he couldn’t early on. It’s stranger and expertly told novel. I got to hand it to Garris I think he is a better writer of prose than film. I hope to read more in the future.
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