A screenwriter himself, Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry knows all about Hollywood. With successful movies and television mini-series made from several of his novels -- Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove, and Hud -- McMurtry writes with an outsider's ironic view of the industry and an insider's experience. In these essays, he illuminates the plight of the scriptwriter, a person Hollywood would like to get rid of, but can't figure out how to get by without; cuts a clean, often hilarious path through the excesses of film reviewing; and takes on some of the worst trends in the industry: the decline of the Western, the disappearance of love in the movies, and the stars themselves.

From recollections on the day Hollywood entered McMurtry's own life as he ate meatloaf in Fort Worth to the pleasures he found in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Film Flam is the best thing to come out of Hollywood since Garbo talked.