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The Comedy Writer Peter Farrelly Doubleday When Bobby and Peter Farrelly went looking for darker material after writing and directing Dumb & Dumber, they came up with Kingpin. It seemed painfully obvious, when the movie finally made it to the screen, that the pair should stick to fart jokes and slapstick. A truly dark comedy seemed out of reach for the Farrelly brothers. Peter Farrelly's first novel, "The Comedy Writer," makes that conclusion seem a bit premature. "The Comedy Writer" proves brother Peter is capable of walking a line between bleak and hysterical, even if he stumbles here and there. This story of Henry Holloran, an East Coast guy trying to live a West Coast life, goes deeper than most scripts Farrelly and his brother are likely to direct soon. The story is bleak and funny, with no saccharine happy endings. Holloran moves from Boston and Irish barmaids to a dump in Los Angeles and an artificially buxom blonde with aspirations toward serious acting. His first memorable experience is unsuccessfully trying to talk a woman out of jumping to her death from a high building. In typical Hollywood style, Holloran turns tragedy into recognition, publishing a piece about the incident in the local paper. That throws him headlong into a slick jumble of light and shadow, through a funhouse of quirky, never-quite-right characters. Eventually, Holloran gets in touch with a cutthroat producer, makes friends with the only honest agent in town, and ends up rooming with Doheny, the suicide victim's sister, and Holloran's key foil throughout the book. He stumbles through the inept, image-conscious world of Hollywood movie-making, and the inept, image conscious world of personal relationships, as both conspire to bring him down. These definitely aren't new concepts, but Farrelly's story is good enough, and his main character strong enough, to make this book compelling at its worst, and pessimistically hysterical. There are a few scenes and gags that just don't work. Holloran's repeated doctor's visits wear thin after a while, belaboring the point, and sometimes Doheny can be as grating to the readers as she is to Henry. Also, some of Hollran's gripes about the business seem like they might sound more natural coming from Farrelly's mouth than Henry's. Still, Holloran always saves the book. You may not always root for him, but you'll always watch him to see what may happen next. He gets close to every hack's dream of seeing his script produced. He nearly has the successful, cute girlfriend. He does everything "nearly," but Farrelly resists the urge to turn the book into a fairy tale, like this summer's "There's Something About Mary." If anything, "The Comedy Writer" is the realistic side of that dream. If you're a loser, you lose. That's what defines you. But it doesn't have to beat you, which makes Farrelly's ending that much more satisfying. No one is likely to mistake Peter Farrelly for Mark Twain or Voltaire anytime soon, but "The Comedy Writer" proves there's more to his talent than flatulence. -Nick |
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