Artistic Differences

By Charlie Hauck

Book Overview

When the disarmingly charming and ruthlessly domineering Geneva Holloway lets her star temperament get out of hand, Jimmy Hoy, a writer for the Geneva Hollaway Show, joins with the show's other... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688121527
• ISBN13: 9780688121525
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 1.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Completely, Unfortunately, Hilariously True

One of only a handful of books I've read more than twice, sitcom vet Charlie Hauck's only novel (so far) mirrors with uncanny precision my experience running comedies with difficult stars in the period in which the book was written, the early 1990s. My director on one show brought galleys of this book to the offices (he'd been invited to blurb it), where the staff writers sat around saying things like "That happened to me!" and "God, he heard about that and put it in the book?" One reviewer here calls this novel "hyperbolic," perhaps thinking mainly of the eventual fate of Geneve Holloway, but on the contrary, I have, over the years, sought out at least a dozen copies and given them to friends who want to know exactly what it's like running a half-hour comedy. It really is this strange, the powerful really are this corrupt and (above all) this blithely stupid. Hauck's writing is a joy; it's effortlessly witty and eminently quotable. I created, wrote for, or staffed over a hundred sitcoms: this is what my days were like, with only the wit of my fellow writers buffering me from the insanity. Hauck's description of why running a sitcom is like Chapter Thirty-Seven of Moby Dick is alone worth the price of the book and is, I'm sure, applicable to many industries in which the efforts of the idealistic and talented are supervised and circumscribed daily by the cupidity and foolishness of the people they naively hoped they'd seen the last of in high school.

totally enjoyable

I love this book. I read it twice. I'll read it again. It's one of my favorite novels. It's just fun. It's funny and sad in parts, but it's a totally enjoyable book. Highest recommendation. I read that they were thinking of making a movie or TV movie of the book. I think that would be outstanding. Thank you Mr. Hauck.