Everything I know about the movie business I learned from reading Entertainment Weekly and watching The Player, but I’m a sucker for a Tinseltown story. That said, I wasn’t sure what to think of this book as I read the back-cover blurb: how could a book about somebody in the “adult film” industry be any good? But debut author Isenberg has created a heroine who’s funny, honest, and sympathetic, and the tale of her struggle for solvency and acceptance is by turns hilarious and heartwarming.

Aspiring screenwriter Laura Taylor’s near the end of her rope: not only has her agent skipped town, but he also lied to her about a job. The only thing more broke than Laura is her car. Her mechanic tells her that it’ll cost $1200 to fix, but he’s willing to make a deal. His cousin is a movie producer who needs a screenwriter, and if Laura will talk to the cousin, the mechanic’s bill will drop to a mere thousand dollars. Laura’s all for the deal, until she learns that the cousin makes “adult films” – porn.

Laura’s astute enough to know that an association with porn will kill any hope she has of selling her legitimate script, and besides, she would just die if anybody she knows (especially her family!) ever learned she was involved in skin flicks, but she really, really needs the money. So she assumes a nom de plume and starts writing. Needless to say, this kind of movie-making is not exactly what Laura’s been dreaming about. Plus, being around copulating actors and thinking about sex all the time is beginning to take its toll on Laura’s own libido and worldview.

My sympathies were with Laura from page one, and they rarely wavered. She’s more than a survivor – she’s an adapter. Rather than just churn out run-of-the-mill smut, Laura writes as if she were producing scripts for the legitimate cinema – you know, with things like a plot and characterization. Life hands her X-rated lemons, and she makes erotic lemonade out of them. Along the way, she offers some funny observations on what she sees as the refreshing candor and honesty of adult film execs versus the hypocrisy of “real” Hollywood.

Parts of the book had me laughing out loud, while others had me squirming just a little bit. The pseudonym Laura chooses, and how she chooses it, are a real stitch. Her family includes a pair of loving but dim parents, a sister whose upcoming wedding hangs over everything, and a brother with one foot still in the closet. Her attempts to juggle them, as well as a rat-bastard ex-boyfriend and her business associates new and old – one of whom, the mysterious Mr. Colucci, holds business meetings in the back of his limousine – kept the story going at a steady clip. On the other hand, this is a story about sex films, and some of that side of things goes well beyond steamy. As Laura would put it, the action ranges from girl/boy to girl/girl and girl/boy/girl – and not just in the script, either. Oh, but it all made sense in the context of the story. And now I know what a fluff girl does.

The book’s told in the first-person point of view, and in the present tense, which normally doesn’t work for me. But here I didn’t mind it so much, because the story and the characters more than compensated for it – plus, I figured, how else would a screenwriter tell a story, except in the present tense? For the more open-minded reader looking for an interesting story and a few good laughs, I’d recommend this book. Something’s got me puzzled, though. Laura tells the reader at the end of the novel that she gave up movies and wrote a book about her experiences. Which just makes me wonder about Lynn Isenberg: what parts did she make up for this book, and what parts are her life uncovered?