BOOKS CULTURE
BYRON LANE
Author, Playwright, Screenwriter… and Princess Leia’s Assistant THE REAL LIFE OF BYRON LANE READS LIKE SOME FANTASTICAL,
hard to imagine book so it’s more than fitting that he pays homage to his own life with his debut novel A Star Is Bored, that could also have been titled A Reader is Never Bored. I read my advance copy in one sitting. Geared toward the same fans of The Devil Wears Prada and a prior generation’s Postcards from the Edge, this book is the perfect quarantine companion with delicious celebrity name dropping, stuck up personal assistants, self-realization, daddy issues, gay dating gone wrong, witty comebacks, and even cameos by Debbie Reynolds - I mean a classic Hollywood diva. At the center of it all is our protagonist, Charlie Beeson, who, after a completely absurd interview, lands a job working as a personal assistant for an eccentric, Sci-Fi Princess of yesterday with an addiction to coke – Coke Zero that is. Allegedly. What you get is a love story of sorts, between a writer and an actress, two lonely people obsessed with film life and obsessed with the need to be loved. It’s a story of friendship and despite the diva
14
JUNE/JULY 2020
METROSOURCE.COM
spin to it all, there is a lot of heart in this book. When you finish it, you feel a little sad, a little hopeful, and a little sassy. We also get to see the underbelly of the personal assistant world, fraught with depression, smoke and mirrors, and self-giving with a sense of worth and loyalty – you would do anything for your boss from getting them water from the highest mountain spring or bury a body in the backyard – without question. Lane worked for Carrie Fisher for several years and lovingly thanks her for the inspiration for this book as well as her friendship. I am a huge Carrie Fisher fan and an even bigger Debbie Reynolds aficionado, so it was almost impossible to read A Star Is Bored without thinking of anyone else but Fisher as the book’s galaxy princess Kathi Kannon. The Hollywood scene is merely a backdrop to tell the story of how these two people needed each other for this part of their life’s journey. This is not a tell-all though, it is fiction, and there are no dirty Hollywood secrets being exploited. The only deep dark secrets
THIS PAGE: PHOTO COURTESY OF BYRON LANE
BY ALEXANDER RODRIGUEZ
