Mercury Pictures Presents

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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 This month, Anthony Marra will join our book club meeting to discuss his inspiration behind the story. To accommodate his schedule, we will be meeting on Thursday, February 16 at 7:00 pm EST.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra book review - The

Sweeping story that takes the reader from Italy to Hollywood in the 1940s, while exploring the many ways immigrants were penalized during WWII due to xenophobia. It begins in Italy where protagonist Maria Lagana is a young girl. Her father is a lawyer defending citizens against outlandish accusations brought by the fascist government. Due to Maria’s youthful error in judgment, her father is arrested and confined on an island. She and her mother emigrate to the US, where they live with her aunts. She gets a job with Mercury Pictures, a second-tier film studio, and eventually ends up in a production role working with Artie Feldman, the studio head. For years, Maria had devised strategies for smuggling the profane beneath the most sensitive censorial snouts. At her best, she passed more colorful bullshit than Babe the Blue Ox. The story develops slowly and there isn't a lot of plot but the author's wonderful descriptions bring this world to life. His characters are treated lovingly, they are flawed but caring – the villains are off-stage – and, despite conflicting emotions, try to help one another. Not everyone has a happy conclusion but alongside the sadness you are left with a connection to and understanding of these people. 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.”In response to pro-interventionist messages in recent movies, a group of isolationist senators accused Hollywood of plotting with Roosevelt “to make America punch drunk with propaganda to push her into war” against Germany and Italy. Congressional hearings were hastily arranged to investigate these charges and propose legislative remedies. And Artie Feldman, ever reliant on the free publicity of controversy to find an audience, wanted to both undermine the legitimacy of the investigation and capitalize on his newfound notoriety with Mercury’s next movie.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra: 9780451495211

It's been six years since publication of Anthony Marra's last book, and finally the wait is over. With Mercury Pictures Presents, he carries the themes and style he'd honed in his two earlier masterpieces, and has created another. I'd thought the WWII era had been so thoroughly milked that further reworking would be redundant, but Marra has breathed life into a story centered around the collection of emigres attracted to Los Angeles and their contribution not only to the movie industry, but to the cultural enhancement of the country as well. You look like Elmer Fudd’s dad,” Maria said, “and the Yankee Doodle Douchebag across the table won’t see who you really are.” I was misquoted. I never called him ‘great.’” Artie tossed the script on his desk and peeled off his hairpiece. His liver-spotted scalp resembled a slab of pimento loaf. Maria always found the sight of it oddly moving, a sign of the trust established over the ten years they had worked together. Artie allowed no one else at Mercury to see him in between toupees. He turned to her and said, “What do you think—any chance we can salvage this?” Here, I have an idea.” In the lower right corner, under the Produced By credit, Artie crossed out the John in John Doe and wrote Jane . “Jane Doe. No one, and I mean no one, will have any doubt who Jane Doe really is. Satisfied?” Maria might have been had she not noticed the one non-anonymized name on the poster. It appeared right above the title, in small but legible cursive: Art Feldman and Mercury Pictures Presents …Marra’s first novel , A Constellation of Vital Phenomena focuses on the Chechen War with Russia and perhaps is more relevant at this point in time as it is reminiscent of the horrific treatment that the people of Ukraine are experiencing now. However, this novel is a story about a different war, which also captures the effect of war on the people who live or sometimes die through the circumstances of that war. It’s also from the unique perspective of Hollywood, which I don’t remember encountering in all of the WWII novels I’ve read.

Mercury Pictures Presents - Sharon Virts | Author Mercury Pictures Presents - Sharon Virts | Author

So much old-time snappy wit that Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke.” —Ron Charles, TheWashington Post PDF / EPUB File Name: Mercury_Pictures_Presents_-_Anthony_Marra.pdf, Mercury_Pictures_Presents_-_Anthony_Marra.epub I can’t show a husband and wife faithfully married for fifty years sleeping in the same bed without that two-bit Torquemada Joe Breen farting brimstone on me. And yet the pope’s private chapel has more southern exposure than a ballpark bathroom at the bottom of the seventh.” Marra sneaks into his fiction usually unlikely and unexpected humor. In Mercury Pictures Presents, it’s the pure borscht belt repartee between Artie Feldman, the co-founder and director of production of Mercury Pictures, and Maria Lagana, his underpaid and exploited Girl Friday: ”’How’m I looking?’ [Artie asks Maria] The truth was that Artie exceeded his protégé’s talent for euphemism. ‘You don’t look a day over twenty-five,’ she said. 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.’ ‘Then you should pay me more.’”. Discussing Artie’s forthcoming testimony before a nativist congressional investigating committee, Maria volunteers: ”’Listen, how about I come with you to Washington?,’ she suggested. ‘We’ll prepare your opening statement on the flight in.’ ‘You really want to watch me get fed to the lions?’ ‘I’m from Rome. My people invented the sport’”We learn of her relationship with Chinese American actor Eddie Lu, friendship with an Italian immigrant with ties to her father, and a German emigree hired by the studio. Artie must travel to Washington DC to be questioned by the Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda. Themes include the abuses of authoritarianism, the biases introduced through propaganda (and how readily it is believed), and how innocent people are harmed in the process. It is about human connections, figuring out one’s path in the face of systemic discrimination, and the power of forgiveness. 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. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Maria has grown up to become an administrative assistant to Artie Feldman, co-owner of a movie production company called "Mercury Pictures". The studio makes B grade movies. As events of World War II gear up, the U.S. War Department contracts with Mercury Pictures to film propaganda movies promoting the nation's involvement in the war. The author's sense of humor lightens the heavy subject matter and makes the antics in Hollywood more fun to read about. Still, both Maria and Artie come across as 'cold fish'. A genuinely moving and life-affirming novel that’s a true joy to read.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere