You are here: home > fiction
Review by
Cigarette Girl
Lady screenwriter lusts for Hollywood "bad boy" mogul as biological clock ticks
Cigarette Girl is a screenplay in prose. It’s about lady screenwriter. Elizabeth West who has reached the age when all of her friends are starting to get married and settle down to raise a family. "Before my twenty-eighth birthday hit, I was perfectly happy to live my single life," Elizabeth says. "Work. Work out. And sex."
She has reached the age when the biological clock begins to tick loudly for the young and restless who have consumed their youth as if it would last forever. "…Southern California is all about velocity and optimism, which has everything to do with its two most glaring characteristics: freeways and sunshine," Elizabeth declares. "You start believing that whatever ‘it’ is, will all work out. That is until you hit the zone. Then it doesn’t matter how fast you’re moving or how beautiful the day, you start believing that whatever ‘it’ is, it’ll never work out and you were crazy to believe in ‘it’ in the first place."
Elizabeth’s story begins as she’s just concluding a screenplay rewrite, the last writer in a long list on an action-adventure movie. She has been brought in by "Jake, the forty-year-old director of the movie and the guy who hired me or, more accurately forced me down the studio’s throat," she declares. "He was my boss. My mentor. My buddy. He was also for a long time a level-one crush."
Seemingly unaware of the crush, Jake sets Elizabeth up with LA-based architect, David, and the two start seeing one another. Curiously, as he begins his dalliance with Elizabeth, David is also involved with a "New York-trained actress." At the same time, Elizabeth secretly carries a torch for Jake. How these two lust and carry on their two separate relationships speaks volumes about the desire to experience the widest range of human emotions.
Elizabeth’s close girlfriends, Mimi—(Me-Me) her name aptly describes this engaging character, loves to shop and has a very straightforward outlook on life. "Mimi believes that if you walk out the door with two or more things wrong in your look, there’s no way you can have a good day," Elizabeth explains. "If it’s just a case of bad hair you can get by—finesse it. But if it’s bad hair and the wrong shoes, or the wrong shoes and a button missing from you jacket—forget it." Mimi also has a knack for managing her friends’ lives, when allowed. She is also Elizabeth’s only friends to be on the verge of marriage.
Two other characters form the core of Elizabeth’s close friends, Andrew and Julie, an entertainment reporter hoping to get back into "legitimate" television journalism. "Of the three of us, she (Julie) is the most likely to stay relaxed no matter what," Elizabeth declares. "This is especially true of men and dating, but then Julie is a seasoned player, having already been married once."
Of her platonic male friend Elizabeth says, "Andrew looks like he should be in a J. Crew catalog." He has his own art gallery at the ripe age of thirty-four. He’s the sort of male friend all women fantasize about. "‘Elizabeth, since you have no self-esteem today,’ Andrew says. ‘I’m going to have self-esteem for you.’ That’s a friend," Elizabeth states.
As the reader sees LA through the main character’s eyes, he or she gets an insider’s view of life in this land of dreams. The types of girls that go to a Lakers’ basketball game. The different types of women and the tools they employ to get their way—sex being the all-purpose wrench. The hangouts and the LA happenings—the market research for a pre-released movie, the premier and its associated party. Oscar night and the accompanying parties. All of this is the world of Elizabeth and her friends. In Cigarette Girl, the reader becomes a voyeur peering into this very hip world.
Carol Wolper is a screenwriter and she blends snatches of screen scripts into her narrative. The reader can easily visualize the work on the big screen: the settings, the characters, but especially the dialog. Wolper is a master of the perfect line in Hollywood scripts. In a verbal joust between Elizabeth and Jake, the latter asks the former, "‘what would you do if I slapped you right here?’ ‘I looked at him, looked down the table—at the other guests, at the complete lack of privacy—looked back at him, and said, ‘waste of a good slap.’"
This is a very fast read, you can finish it on a plane rid between the east and West Coast if you take your time and savor the good lines.
|
i