In MIT OUT SOUND, film veteran Rick Lenz tackles identity, dysfunctional relationships, illusions, taboos, and more. Stories weave within stories, spectral scenes might be real flashbacks or internal thoughts, and broken promises of Hollywood play out through two of its most notable but troubled icons: John Wayne and James Dean. They advise, torture, and inhabit professional impersonators Tom (Wayne impersonator) and Jimmy (Dean impersonator)—whose livelihoods come with their own occupational hazards. When a flight attendant overhears Tom talking out loud to his mentor-ghost and assures him she talks to herself, too, Wayne calls after her, “He wasn’t talking to himself. He was trying to explain himself to an aging movie star.”
Bringing Tom and Jimmy together is Emily, their aspiring producer. Emily fights her own demons—among them “face blindness,” which leads her to see film celebrities in ordinary people’s faces—but she is determined to finish her project: a secret movie that the two box office giants had begun but left unfinished. For each in this trio, the film becomes a path to redemption paved by real-life men who sought redemption from their own demons.
The novel features industry color and often witty dialogue: “Let’s not throw Solange at him at the first meeting,” one character says to Emily before they meet with a potential funding source. “I’m afraid his balls might retract into their safe, dark place.”
Most interesting are the early stages of the film’s development, as readers learn about the legends and secrets of both the project itself and the people involved in it. The book’s prose bats around big ideas about acting, filmmaking, memory, self-esteem, existence, and identity.
Less successful are the playing out of these ideas, which read a bit like a manual for beginners. The writing also tends to tell readers its themes, rather than allow them to work things out for themselves. (One character tells Emily that her journey is about “displaced persons,” for example.) Even the meaning of the book’s title is defined like an encyclopedia entry rather than growing organically out of the narrative. One section’s rationalizations for Wayne’s historically problematic statements regarding race and gender come off as obligatory rather than part of the story.
Most problematic, though, is the over-packed narrative: too many prisms on identity, too many stories within stories, too many backstories to parse, and twists so layered with discoveries and misdirection that they grow exhausting.
Still, film buffs will enjoy the anecdotes and insider references of this homage to storytelling. Also, despite its density, MIT OUT SOUND offers moving portrayals of the human need for connection and identity.
Readers of MIT OUT SOUND by Rick Lenz will enjoy its author’s insider knowledge of Hollywood.
~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader