The Picture Business

The Picture Business is a delicious collection of eight stories and a novella about the private lives of the people who make the movies, written in fine detail by a keen-eyed witness/participant in Hollywood's dream factory.

Elaine Kagan started in the Picture Business, as it was then known, in the late sixties, working as a secretary to John Cassavetes, a popular actor, writer, and director recognized as a pioneer of American independent cinema. Kagan began acting when serendipitously offered a part in Coming to America by director John Landis. Later, she would appear in such classic films as Goodfellas and Traffic, as well as many TV shows, from NYPD Blue to the recent High Potential. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Kagan has published five bestselling books of fiction.

In The Picture Business, we meet the key grip and the actress, starting a new production, rekindling a reckless love affair. Five retired stunt men caught in an unexpected stunt at breakfast in the San Fernando Valley. An unruly actor and the hilarious plot hatched by the crew to get him to work. Two best friends, female writers, involved in an accident that drastically changes their lives. And a superstar actor/writer/director/producer and the three women who love him-before, during, and after his extraordinary life and devastating demise. And more.

As Kagan writes in her Author's Note: "The stories are here. Just turn the page. The day-to-day intrigue, the dirt, the deals, the drama. It's the inside scoop, kiddo, written by someone who was there."