With a geography as diverse as the streets of Beverly Hills and the charnel grounds of India, a Mexican beach resort and the Russian Tea Room in New York City, this is a spare, eloquent, and deeply informed novel about the world of the movies. It is a profound and utterly convincing portrait of a man whose career and life has been devoted to the manipulation of images--on the screen and at the conference table, with actors and technicians--and the story of how, at the age of 71, he tries to divest himself of illusions and make peace with his demons and his past.

Rudolph Wurlitzer is the screenwriter of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Two-Lane Blacktop. He is also the author of the novels Flats, Nog, Quake, and The Drop Edge of Yonder, and the travel diary Hard Travel to Sacred Places. He lives in Hudson, New York.