Chris Yarborough is a Midwesterner as green as the corn back home in Ohio. This former bookstore employee moves out to Los Angeles to pursue a profitable career in screenwriting.
Chris Yarborough is a Midwesterner as green as the corn back home in Ohio. This former bookstore employee moves out to Los Angeles to pursue a profitable career in screenwriting.
She finds an office job in a Century City-based tax and financial planning company. The business closes in six months and her career as a temp is launched.
Chris temps in various locations from East L.A. to downtown to Santa Monica and the Valley. Jobs in movie studios bring her in contact with famous actors. As a temp she's a nobody that's as disposable as toilet paper.
Searching for a literary agent and that elusive script sale, Chris encounters an array of unusual characters. A partying apartment manager, an important film director who can launch her career, a lawyer with an office furnished in kindergarten motif, and several household names. Sometimes working in the entertainment biz, including stints at Playboy, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros, to jobs in unrelated fields, the plucky screenwriter perseveres.
We’re shown the excesses of the 1990's as a nobody tries to become a somebody in Hollywood.
Excerpt
Wednesday, June 13, 1990
7:14 PM. Another weird day at Hickey, Orton & Evans ~ Tax & Financial Planning a/k/a HOE.
The Prez's Exec. Assistant, Marlene, was wearing a long suit jacket paired with a super short skirt. She had to sit outside his closed door and not let anyone in unless they had an appointment! Her props were a folding chair and a clipboard.
Tiffany was over the moon. That weekend she was going to Leo's Beverly Hills mansion. They talked last night. He called her from his brand new Vanden Plas Jaguar.
I was delegated to the lawyer's office that day. The new graduate was a lanky guy from Fullerton who had just gotten engaged. He had terrible headaches and drank bottled carrot juice. There were two desks facing each other, but he ignored me and talked on the phone and perused some heavy law books. There was no phone on the desk where I sat.
Later, Ms. Orton had me do some filing in her office. She was a firm believer in the color-coded filing system. I put tabs on each folder and alternated left, right and center tabs to form a pleasing, properly colored array of folders in her filing cabinets. She was a Capricorn from Minnesota and was really caught up in appearances as well as filing foibles. She told me that 'Dress for Success' was the best book she'd ever read.
"Gray suits signify authority," Ms. Orton stated. Indeed, it looked as though she only owned two--navy and gray. Civil war colors. That day she was a Confederate, tomorrow she'd be a blue-suited Yankee! I was wearing my Hawaiian camouflage outfit: long skirt and jacket in white, black, emerald green, azure and magenta. I liked bright colors and if she was hinting that I should become another clone, she had another guess coming. I was no Miss Evans who clocked in over 80 hours a week and lived for HOE.
In a post-coup America, an Illinois farm boy is drawn into the resistance by his brother's death. Captured, he is given a choice: betray his friends, or the girl he loves will be lobotomized.
