I love the first line from Michael Tolkin’s Hollywood novel, the Player:  “Just as Griffin suspected, there was a meeting in Levison’’s office without him.”  I’m reading this book a second time.  The first time I read it may have been in grad school in the late eighties. Reading this novel in 2026,  I already know Griffin is a young hotshot film producer.  The first line tells me that he is hyper-aware of how things work on a Hollywood lot.  When he is not making the studio boatloads of money, he’s paranoid about losing his job.  It’s not like what have you done recently; it’s what you are doing next. For studio executive studs like Griffin, there’s like no time to breathe.  You have to keep your head on a swivel to see what’s going on around you.  You have one eye looking for new scripts, and you have the other looking over your shoulder. In this case, Griffin is looking up to the second-floor office window of his boss.  Throughout this novel, Griffin peeks through a lot of windows; he’s creepy in that way.  He will never find peace because he believes someone is out to get him. He’s also the narrator of the novel; at least, we see everything through his eyes.  Things get bleak for him, and in a hurry.  The first line reminds me of the beginning to George Orwells 1984: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”  I’m ten seconds into the novel, and  I’m thinking  things might get crazy.

I like the story behind the story for this novel.  Michael Tolkin came to Hollywood in the 1980s to make a career for himself in the movie business.  He may have been close to the same age I was when I finished grad school.  Everyday he walked the streets of Hollywood and came back to his apartment to type up something he saw or someone he met. When he wasn’t typing, he was networking.  He hung around the bars and restaurants that appealed to the studio executives.  He learned to pitch his ideas for screenplays in 25 words or less.  This sounds like a brutal existence,  like if you have chosen this career path, you are just begging for a daily dose of condescencion and/or rejection. From what I have read of the author, many if not most of his pitches fell on deaf ears.  No one ever called him back.  For six years, he struggled with his own confidence and self-esteem, until one day, something came to him at a stoplight on Hollywood Boulevard –  with his hands firmly on his driving wheel, he envisioned a desperate and/or deranged writer who began sending (anonymous) death threats to the studio executive that spurned him.  Like they say in French cinema, “VOILA!”  Michael had a novel  that practically wrote itself.  Many of the assholes he had encountered on his real-life job quest became major characters in The Player.

But wait!  Reading about assholes in the movie business isn’t anything new, so what possibly could make The Player an interesting read?  I think it’s the idea that we all have bumped into a Griffin Mill in our lives.  On the outside, Griffin exudes good taste and good manners.  He’s a great listener, by the way.  He knows how to perform his role.  That’s the key. Griffin is like a perfoming artist.  You might meet him and like him, but he’s full of shit.  If you are desperate and nervous, like most up-and-coming writers, you hear what you want to hear.  And he says as little as possible.  I can think of more than a few Griffins I know working on my college campuses.  They are not the people you think they are.  They shake your hand and smile in your face,  but inside they are telling you to Fuck Off. The Player, then, might be LESS a Hollywood fantasy, and MORE of a social commentary.

I don’t know how other people choose their books today, but way back when I began my serious reading – this was before the internet – I discovered Vintage Books.  Away from the school, I didn’t really know many people who read for pleasure.  I began leafing through Vintage Book samples in used books stores.  I liked the cover art. This is how I discovered Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, Thomas McGuane.   If you are reading this now, you  may not recognize these names, but back then, I’m not sure anyone else did either.  They were new and fresh voices on the shelves.  I knew they were going to be interesting because they were Vintage authors.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to get into reading each book, but I felt pretty cool when I would hand my money over to the cashier at the used book store. I still have maybe 20-25 Vintage Books scattered around the house here in Mexicali. I take them with me wherever I go.

The novel gets off to a fast start.  I can see a plot developing when Griffin begins receiving threatening postcards from a writer he once rejected.  Officially, I suppose, Griffin didn’t really reject him.  He just blew him off without a response.  This what pisses off the writer.  For all the work the screenwriter has invested in his art, he must feel he’s been tossed aside by the studio executive like a piece of chewed gum. The first card say, “You said you would get back to me,” and the cards keep coming.  Griffin has filled his studio desk drawer with them.  The last one says, “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.” 

This is what I like about Griffin:  He’s not really what I expected.  He doesn’t drink or do drugs.  How suprising is that considering I’m reading a Hollywood novel.  He shows up to work every day, and good or bad, he takes 125 calls an listens to 125 pitches.  If this number falls below 100, he believes he’s not doing his job. He shows no signs of slowing down upon receiving the death threats.  I know, I know he makes a lot of money and sleeps with a lot of women, but I think his obsession with his job lies elsewhere.  He doesn’t even show a great love for the movies he watches or discusses.  To him, these movies are not art or history; they are bargaining chips.  The stories are like pawns he move around a chess board.    I’m a little bit embarrassed about the respect I show for this guy – he cheats, he lies, and he betrays the people close to him – but I like him just the same. He doesn’t seem to care for the fame and fortune.  He’s in it for the love of the game. 

No one reading this will ever recognize the name Ernie Banks, but he became a Baseball Hall-of-Famer, in part for his relentless passion for playing ball.  He’s famous for the phrase, “Let’s Play TWO,” meaning  for him, there was nowhere else he would want to be.  In this way, Griffen is a lot like Ernie.  When he is not working, he’s working it. This is the LIFE. He LOVES the GAME. He can’t imagine himself doing anything else.

Griffin’s own story, if he got someone to type it up,  is something he might buy for the studio.  It checks all the boxes:  an interesting protagonist, tension, conflict, suspense, sex, violence, and a happy ending. Not to deep into the novel, Griffin decides to pursue the source of the threatening postcards he has been receiving.  In all actuality, he needs to consider thousands of suspects;  that number represpesents thousands of desperate writers he has rejected or blown off.   But he is a studio executive, not a detective. He soon finds the countless crime thrillers he has seen  on the big screen does not provide him with much guidance or insight to interact with his own suspects.  On his first night of his investiagation, he accidentally kills an innocent writer in a back alleyway behind a movie theater.  I’m not sure, Griffin had any intent of a violent assault when he tracked his writer down.  I do know that he had no understanding whether he was confronting the right guy.  Griffin looks good in a suit.  He is quick-witted in coversations.  He’s good with women.  But, it’s clear from the get-go, he doesn’t know anything about doing his own dirty work.  The writer’s name in the alleyway was David Kahane.  What began as a conversation turned quickly into a physical confrontation. Out of fear or anger, Griffin strangled David with his own hands.  Shockingly, on the pavement lay a dead writer. Griffin rolled the dead body underneath a parked car and made a run for it.  Griffin would now become an escaped murder.  I don’t know when or if this thought ran through his head at the time:  “Someone should make a movie about this.”

Here is what I mean about George Orwell and 1984.   I remember Orwell writing something like Black is White; Up is Down; Two Plus Two is Five.   I suppose Orwell could have been writing about Hollywood.   Griffin is smart and powerful, but he is not above the law.  The cops know he is guilty.  The studio people he works with don’t really care. The day after the murder, he receives a call from the dead writer’s girlfriend. Her name is June.  She knows that Griffin must have been the last one to see her boyfriend alive. (Earlier, in a phone call, she told Griffin where he could find him.)  This when the clocks strike thirteen.  Immediately following the funeral, Griffin begins an intense sexual affair with June.   The cops suspend their investigation of Griffin when a witness fails to pick him out of a lineup.  The writer who has been threatening to kill Griffin all this time has left town. 

THIS IS NOT A SPOILER ALERT:  I mean, how can I spoil anything, when Griffin has told us over and over that every story needs a HAPPY ENDING.  Griffin keeps his job, marries the girl, and gets away with murder.   The Player is Griffin’s own story.   We’ve discussed the first line of the novel.  The last line of the novel describe Griffin and June driving into the sunset in the dead man’s car. This all happened once upon a time in Hollywood!