"The Second Assistant: A Tale From the Bottom of the Hollywood Ladder," by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare

"The Second Assistant: A Tale From the Bottom of the Hollywood Ladder," by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare, (New York: Viking; 2004), 321 pages, ISBN 0-670-03307-03.

The Second Assistant is similar to The Devil Wears Prada: a bright young woman gets a glamorous and desirable job with a difficult boss and, after a year of employment with various ups and downs, emerges as a talented young worker in her industry. The industry (if you could call it that) is the movie making business known universally by its city-host's moniker as Hollywood. As you would expect in a story about the movie business, our bright, young and enthusiastic protagonist works for a drug-addicted movie producer of considerable ability. Our protagonist also has some ability, but first has to learn about the movie business in between getting the coffee and generally embarrassing herself both at work and in her private life. She eventually demonstrates her ability and initiative and brings a new client to her company, manages to keep her job during vicious office politics and the company's near implosion to keep the new client from deserting the company.

This is a work of fiction deeply rooted in the Hollywood work experiences of the two authors. It could be called "faction'" but that would be disingenuous to the authors' abilities to portray the movie business as full of drug addicted, narcissistic, philandering nutcases who somehow seem to find time between trips to the therapist, restaurant, drug dealer and each other's bed to actually do some movie making.

If a career in movie making interests you (as either a producer or agent - in the people or non technical side of the business), then you may benefit from this "thinly veiled" story to see just what it is that you are getting into.  The Second Assistant is not great literature: its self important and self indulgent, yet provokes curiosity in the reader in the same way that a car wreck piques the interest of a driver: we slow down, take a bit of a look and eventually move along to attend to our other things. Nonetheless it is a light and breezy book that is adequately entertaining - its perfect for a long trip on either bus, ferry or train.