by Roger Director
As The Player flambéed the film industry in the VSOP of its own pretensions, A Place to Fall jabs a sharp stick through the hot-dog egos of the small screen and roasts them till they burst. Director, 46, who has worked as a writer for Hill Street Blues and as a producer-writer of Moonlighting, has a fine satirical ear and eye and an imaginative flair for language. His hero, Billy Ziff, a talented but very earnest New York City freelance writer, is about to be canned by his epically boorish bosses on the award-winning series Above the Law unless he can deliver an acceptable script pronto. In desperation, Ziff invents a new character—a renegade priest who goes to any lengths to grant the dying wishes of the terminally ill. This profane, bottle-abusing cleric proves so astoundingly popular that Ziff, to his own amazement, soon finds himself the executive producer of a megahit spinoff series, Father Joey.
But all is not well in fat city. Tony Paris, the no-talent nobody who lucked into the title role, turns into a no-talent Narcissus and control freak, fraying Ziff's nerves and his marriage—already frazzled by the clockwork copulations and humiliating exams required to overcome the couple's infertility. Director sustains the humorous tone even when dealing realistically with the tribulations of infertility. He deftly sketches the workaday buzz and deadline pressure of TV series production. But his wit is his strong suit, and it's most wickedly satisfying when he trains it on his plumpest target, the philistine smugness and flip profanity of the tiny titans who populate prime time. (Villard, $22)
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