"Scoundrels & Spitballers: The Writers and Hollywood in the 1930s" by Philippe Garnier; Foreword by Eddie Muller (Black Pool Productions)

 

Hollywood is fascinating, because I live near there, and two, it is full of fascinating characters. What makes it great is when a foreigner writes about Hollywood as a culture in itself. Philippe Garnier is French but lived in Los Angeles for over forty years. Still, he has a foreigner's insight and attraction to a landscape such as Hollywood.  

Hollywood is a physical place, but it is also a mythical location that covers Southern California. It's a state of mind and a site with a post office (zip code 90028). Hollywood's idea has always attracted me because it is built on dreams both in reality and fictional. There is an entire industry that is devoted to making dreams, which is unusual. Perhaps Las Vegas is a city that is dedicated to fantasy, but Hollywood has a soul. Sometimes an ugly or sad soul, but still, nevertheless, a soul. Garnier specializes in Hollywood history and noir novelists (such as the great David Goodis, Garnier's biography/study is a must-read). "Scoundrels & Spitballers" is about the screenwriters who ended up in Hollywood to do films. Most of them are novelists who write to make money. Therefore Hollywood comes calling, or it's a "Go West Young Man" situation. Garnier's book's general interest is the screenwriters that fell through the cracks of time and space. Here he gives proper attention to these artists/hacks in an intimate and acknowledgeable manner. 

The writing is very three-dimensional. You only don't get the screenwriter's personality and traits, but also the daily work grind of working for a studio, such as Warner Brothers. Garnier interviewed a lot of the writers or, at the very least, family members and friends. It's a vivid picture of people concerned with the craft of writing and the need to produce works in a factory-like environment. 

I know names such as Nathanael West, James M. Cain, A.I. Bezzerides, Horace McCoy (I knew him by his novels, but not aware he was a screenwriter as well), and W.R. Burnett. But there are many writers I never heard of, such as Sam Brown, Niven Busch, Marguerite Roberts, and others. All of them lead one to another, which makes it a fascinating history. Through Garnier's voice and eyes, one gets a mental picture of Los Angeles in the 1930s that is familiar as well as exotic. Hollywood is my type of town. Although Hollywood has changed and its film industry, there are traces of the old world through architecture that still exists as well as the films themselves. Some of the buildings may be difficult to find. Still, Garnier is an expert guide to the working class's dreamy world in its methods and procedures in a factory-like existence to produce products (art) and images.