by Jim Newport

301 pp, 2009 Willat paperback

Available at Asia Books and leading book stores.

Hollywood is the motion picture capital of the world and people have been flocking there for a century to get into them, in front of or behind the cameras. Those who succeeded to a greater or lesser lesser degree, penned books about their experiences. Reviewers wrote critiques of their joint efforts. Magazines are filled with its revelations and gossip.

The public is interested, indeed fascinated, by the rise and fall of stars, the comings or goings of celebrities. They get off on scandals and are judgemental. With the demand insatiable, the scriveners are expected to fill it. Especially those living and working there for decades. Surely, they would have memories worth paying for.

With this in mind, the title Tinsel Town by veteran production designer Jim Newport is enough to sell the book. How many nuggets he must have mined during his decades on the job, in television too. That the title page identifies it as fiction is to be expected.

The protagonist is Joey Morton, who leaves New York for California in 1968 to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. And hopefully to become a filmmaker.

Unable to get into the union to gain the requisite experience, Joey is reduced to all but giving away his services in low or non-paying independents with miniscule budgets. And he willingly gets caught up in the sex-drug scene. He pals around with others from the Big Apple drawn like a magnet to the city of dreams.

The heavy of the story is Spike, a psychopath who deals drugs and human trafficking. He shoots customers who owe him money. His only good deed is to give Joey a Chinese girl he smuggled in. Not for free, however. He takes Joey's car and his furniture. Ching Ching, Joey's name for her, is much to be preferred to the American wife who dumped him.

Newport tells us the different effects of each drug, and how to get off them. The time-line of the plot is from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. In the 2009 Epilogue, he bemoans the death of David Carradine whom he knew.

The author is into music, particularly rock 'n' roll. One of his previous novels, Chasing Jimi, was about Jimi Hendrix.

My favourite part of Tinsel Town is Joey's growing up in Queens. As a fellow New Yorker, I can identify with that.

With all the partying going on, in and around Hollywood, it's a wonder that any movies get made.