by Robert Cort
Special thanks to the Random House team: Benjamin Dreyer, Bonnie Thompson, Carol Schneider, Todd Doughty, Dan Rembert, Ivan Held, Libby McGuire, and Howard Weill.
The fact that you’re reading these acknowledgments is in large measure the work of Lynn Goldberg, Grace McQuade, Paula Silver, Suzanne Wickham-Beaird, and Mimi Zora. They did an extraordinary job drum-beating the book to anyone interested in reading it and talking about it.
Film people are wonderful storytellers. I have benefited—as well as laughed my ass off—over the years listening to their tales of madness. Their experiences provided inspiration for many of the sequences in Action! In this regard, I owe a special debt to Peter Hyams, Jack Brodsky, Irv Ivers, Danny Melnick, Andy Fogelson, Joe Wizan, and Norman Levy.
My former partner, David Madden, my sister-in-law Carrie Cort, and my friends Paul Michael Glaser and Linda Hawkins read early drafts of the novel, and their insights helped shape the revisions.
I can’t even count the contributions of my wife, Rosalie Swedlin, not least of which was learning how to fall asleep while my computer screen glowed in the dark.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT W. CORT has produced fifty-two films, including Outrageous Fortune, Three Men and a Baby, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Mr. Holland’s Opus, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Runaway Bride, Jumanji, and Save the Last Dance. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and McKinsey & Company. He lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, Rosalie Swedlin, a manager of writers and directors.
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical and public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Robert Cort
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Henry Holt and Company, LLC, for permission to reprint an excerpt from “The Road Not Taken,” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1916, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1944 by Robert Frost.
Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cort, Robert W.
Action! / Robert Cort.
p. cm.
1. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction.
2. Motion picture industry—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.O6895 A27 2003 813’.54—dc21 2002026578
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-293-3
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