Mercury Pictures Presents

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The following is from Anthony Marra's Mercury Pictures Presents . Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena , winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award. Artie looked at Maria and across that long stare the musculature conjoining their intuitions flexed. Neatly illustrating all of these themes is Maria’s beloved: the third-generation American actor Eddie Lu, who can recite Shakespeare and Chekhov but is only ever allowed to play nefarious Asians with caricature accents, and who always wears his “I’m Chinese American” button in public to keep from getting beaten up. He is prevented by California law from marrying the woman he loves. Not only is Mercury Pictures Presents a fabulous story, it’s Anthony Marra’s intriguing style of writing and his unlikely descriptions that makes the novel so entertaining and thought provoking. New York Times reviewer Matthew Specter provides this example from the book: A rusted-out rowboat decaying on a bank is presented as “a visual index of local fungi and a nursery for deciduous saplings.” Both clever and artful, Marra’s writing aptly reflects the characters of the story.

Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony Dark days in Hollywood: Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony

They walked out to the lobby, past the miniature of the studio lot. Out on the street, the heat radiating from the asphalt painted sedans and roadsters in impressionist smudges. Due north, the mansion-heaped hillsides looked like a plutocratic favela. When they reached Artie’s Lincoln, he gave her a letter. “Do me a favor. Get this in today’s mail, will you?” Well that was freaking stupendous. I laughed, I cried, I marveled at the illustration of man's inhumanity to man. No really, no shade, all those things happened as I read this gorgeous book. And speaking of gorgeous, the prose! Brilliant line after brilliant line. Marra did an excellent job exploring the themes of exile and confinement. Several characters experience both emotional and physical exile, detached from their loved ones, the place they love, and/or the traditions and way of ... - JHSiess which gave me the little push I needed to make the decision to return this to my beloved library where some other deserving patron can snap it up. You look like Elmer Fudd’s dad,” Maria said, “and the Yankee Doodle Douchebag across the table won’t see who you really are.”Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese-American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. He soon has cause to question that vision as internment camps spring up across U.S. deserts, and as the Marias of America must begin registering as “enemy aliens” and be sentenced to their own confino, a five-mile radius encircling their homes. In a business where friendship had a high turnover rate, the Feldman brothers’ animosity was a stabilizing force. Artie would give Ned an organ, but wouldn’t lend him a five-spot, handkerchief, or kind word.”

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Maria Lagana, 28, is the underpaid, overworked associate producer at second-rate Hollywood studio Mercury Pictures in the early 1940s, the gal Friday to head of production Artie Feldman. She is also the daughter of Giuseppe Lagana, formerly Rome’s most successful defense attorney until he ran afoul of Mussolini’s fascist government and was sentenced to confino, deportment to the hinterlands of San Lorenzo, in the toe of Italy’s boot. With no way to support the family, 9-year-old Maria’s mother, Annunziata, takes the girl to Los Angeles to live with her three ancient, widowed aunts. All told, there are about twenty characters in the novel, each one connected in some way. An interesting figure is Anna Weber, who has emigrated from Berlin, Germany and is the studio's miniaturist. Anna purposely left Germany before the war started, due to its politics. This elicited a rare grin from Artie. As a master bullshitter, he encouraged his apprentice’s efforts. Despite her sex and ethnicity, he knew Maria was, at heart, a Feldman Brother through and through. “I pay them to lie,” Artie said, nodding in the direction of the accounting department. “I pay you to be honest.” “Honestly, you look like Elmer Fudd’s dad.” Artie winced. “I don’t pay you to be that honest.” “Then you should pay me more.”So, what of that antic voice that seems so non-Marra? Particularly early on, the narration is rife with extended, sardonic descriptions, no more so that when we’re spending time with Maria’s great aunts, who serve as a kind of comic chorus. Characters banter in sharpened one-liners, which is perhaps fitting in the Hollywood studio, but it’s there among the Old-World Italians, too. At times, it feels like we’ve stumbled into an Aaron Sorkin script. The Mercury Pictures movie studio is a second-tier Hollywood outfit struggling to get by in the years just before World War II. We open on an amazing cast of characters from the studio head to the actors and the crew– mostly recent immigrants from Europe. These people have left their homes behind, loved ones and stories of regret only ever-present memories.