Hollywood, Ending by John Green
For rising young actors Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo, being cast in the buzzy biopic Andy Warhol Never Gets Old is the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. They’re on the verge of breaking out, and maybe even falling in love. Soon the movie is blowing up and so are their lives—in exciting but also terrifying ways.
John Green artfully blends a behind-the-scenes Hollywood love story with an unflinching examination of the insatiable attention economy. Told through dual points of view, the novel follows Kai and Juniper from their first days on location to the movie’s premiere, brilliantly juxtaposing their story with the on-screen study of Warhol’s life at the dawn of celebrity culture.
Hollywood, Ending is a deeply observed novel about the tension between a public and a private life, and finding your safe someone to hold onto. Tender, heartbreaking, and shrewdly funny, this is a story as only Green can tell it.
Review: Rising stars Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo have been cast in a movie about Andy Warhol. The combination of the movie's main star's fame, Juniper's online social media presence, and the chemistry between Juniper and Kai has the movie blowing up, along with their public lives.
This was an insightful and skillfully written behind-the-scenes look at the underbelly of Hollywood and the attention economy. There is a lot of tension in this between the reality of who Kai and Juniper are and the public perception of who they are. This is a pretty damning portrait of the way actors must sacrifice their privacy, their emotions, and parts of themselves to get ahead, as well as the manipulations the movie industry will make to get attention to boost ticket sales. In the case of Juniper and Kai, they must exploit their most private traumas over and over for the press even though they haven't fully processed or come to terms with their own feelings on the subject. There is also a lot of skillful manipulation of public perception and media events by the "industry" to garner attention for the actors and the film.
It truly felt like it wasn't until the last part of this book that I fully connected with the characters and their true motivations and feelings, but this is in large part because the characters themselves don't know their true feelings or wants. Juniper is at least dialed in enough to recognize this part of herself: "she didn't want to want what she wanted, but she wanted it anyway." And "I do not want to be loved by strangers, but I do not want to want most of what I want."
While there is a romance in this, it's more a book about two people who make a connection while they're still somewhat effed up by their past. While their affection for each other cannot fix the other, they find a way to be together while they both continue to work through their ordeals and maybe that's more realistic and grounded anyway. Ultimately, this is a book about the tension between who we are and who we are perceived to be and the difference between what we want and what we think we should want. An intellectually stimulating and complicated read about fully realized characters.
Favorite quotes:
"You exchange pieces of yourself for celebrity. Celebrity keeps you working, keeps you paid. Keeps me paid, too." "Except once I've traded those little pieces of myself, I can't get them back. They're not mine anymore."
"I think about how sometimes I used to work parties like this one for extra cash, used to carry around nibbles for people. Now I am the people."
"Sometimes," he said, "I think Hollywood is just actors paying other actors to drive to auditions. Today, I drive Uber and you take Uber. Tomorrow, maybe you drive Uber and I take Uber."
Stars: 4
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