Pacific Tremors

by Richard Stern

Ez Keneret and Wendell Spear are Hollywood veterans who have committed the only sin in the movie business: they’ve grown old. Having been cast aside by younger producers, directors, writers, reviewers, actors, and even their own families, the two friends must confront both their obsolescence and the harsh reality that the art they appreciate (and profit from) is really just a business powered by money and celebrity.

Spear, fading in the Malibu hills, is consoled and diverted by his granddaughter, Jennifer Abarbanel, a San Francisco lawyer. Keneret, given one more chance to make a film by his mercurial millionaire backer, centers it around Leet de Loor, a young Frenchwoman he’s discovered in Fiji. As the two brilliant veterans slide toward oblivion, the equally brilliant young women rise in the paradisal new world of the Pacific Rim, even as it trembles with terrestrial and human faults.

Richard Stern unleashes affectionate humor and his gift for nuance on a pair of insiders facing their decline with resilience and wit while fondly recalling the long-gone era of larger-than-life personalities and the fortunes to be made running Hollywood’s machine of dreams.

189 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 2001