THE CUTTING ROOM

The Cutting Room
by Laurence Klavan
288 pages
ISBN: 0-345-46274-2
Ballantine Books
February 2004
$23.95

Movie trivia! Yes, there are people who live for movie trivia and one of these is the character of Roy Milano in The Cutting Room. Roy finds himself in the mystery surrounding the original 1942 film of The Magnificent Ambersons. Since the original movie was cut from over two hours to eighty-eight minutes and reshot with a different ending, there has always been the mystery of whether any original versions still existed and who would have them.

Roy publishes his own movie trivia magazine as his career love and also works as a typesetter, in order to earn money to live. Roy receives a call from a fellow trivia enthusiast, who is the star of his own trivia show on cable, and competitor, about a surprise movie that he offers to show him. When Roy gets to Alan’s apartment, Alan is dead and the film is missing. So Roy anonymously calls the police and starts investigating the missing movie which was the original 148 minute version of The Magnificent Ambersons.

While dodging dead bodies and almost what seems to be a curse following this movie, Roy travels to Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Barcelona in trailing the film. It seems to follow a pattern of stealing the film and killing, or almost killing, the current possessor of the film. Fortunately along the way, much of Orson Welles life is relived and explained in an attempt of understanding this much misunderstood genius.

When a popular action-adventure actor is within this circle of acquiring this film, he plans to remake Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons starring, surprisingly, his wife and himself. Of course the actor manages to entangle himself with a granddaughter of Orson Welles and with every female assistant he has ever worked. Then also are the wonderful movie trivia couple whose son, Orson, (What else could it be?) is kidnapped.

The Cutting Room is a fast-paced mystery, slightly bordering on a little historical fiction, but well worth the price and definitely the time to read. This should be required reading for every film buff and I could easily visualize this as a stepping-stone to future books with Roy Milano or to the big screen.

Laurence Klavan has already won an Edgar Award for the Best Paperback Original in 1984 under the pseudonym Margaret Tracy and an Obie Award for being the librettist for the musical Bed and Sofa.