SOURCE: A review of Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 16, 1987, p. 12.

In the review below, Champlin praises McMurtry for his analysis of the emerging problems with the American film industry.

Larry McMurtry, whose novels-into-films include Hud, The Last Picture Show, Leaving Cheyenne (filmed by Sidney Lumet as Lovin' Molly) and Terms of Endearment, knows his way around Hollywood and is not much enchanted by what he sees.

"With rare exceptions," he says in an introduction to Film Flam, "the pictures coming out of Hollywood today are the last resorts of the gutless. In my opinion, a little film flam is all such an industry deserves."

McMurtry contributed a column on movies and television to American Film magazine for a couple of years, then found that the prospect of going on was appalling—columinizing is "a perversion in which only the vain and...