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The Hollywood Novel

Bruce Jay Friedman and Bruce Wagner in conversation with Ella Taylor
APRIL 22, 2007 3:00 PM
MACGOWAN LITTLE THEATER, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

Whether or not the Jews invented Hollywood, they have certainly spent a lot of time writing about it. From Budd Schulberg to Bruce Wagner, Nathanael West to Bruce Jay Friedman, Jewish writers have been instrumental in shaping our ideas of Hollywood, the place and the industry, with its hustlers and loners, the idolized and the forgotten. Bruce Jay Friedman and Bruce Wagner talk with Ella Taylor about their own Hollywood fictions, as well as the works of West, Schulberg, Daniel Fuchs, and others.

BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN is the author of eight novels and four story collections, as well as a half dozen plays and several screenplays, including Stir Crazy, Doctor Detroit, and Splash, which received an Academy Award nomination. His most recent book is Sexual Pensees, an erotic memoir. Seven Day Itch, a Farrelly Brothers film currently in production and starring Ben Stiller, is based on Friedman's story "Change of Plan."

BRUCE WAGNER'S novel The Chrysanthemum Palace was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award in 2006. Wagner has written for television and directed two movies, I'm Losing You and Women in Film, which were shown at the Telluride, Sundance, Toronto and Venice film festivals. His latest novel, Memorial, was a New York Times Book Review "editors' choice" and a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

ELLA TAYLOR is a film critic and staff writer for LA Weekly. Previously she wrote a film column for The Atlantic Monthly's Arts and Entertainment Supplement, and served as the television critic for the Seattle Weekly and Village Voice. She has been an adjunct professor in film criticism at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema.

Bruce Wagner photo © Laura Peterson