FINAL CUT

Karl LaRosa lives a charmed life doing lunches and starlets as a top Hollywood publicist. But when temperamental (Hollywood-speak for rude and controlling) film director Cambridge Hill starts filming Pure and Uncut, a suspense film shot with a patented 3-D technology and coincidentally employing four of Karl’s ex-lovers, Karl’s charm seems to be coming undone. First, someone tries to run his vintage Jaguar off the freeway. Then someone leaves a creepy note in his bedroom. Next, the same sinister someone (whom Mosiman coyly calls “The Body”) ruins the color scheme of his office by adding gallons of blood. Robyn LaRosa, Karl’s ex-wife and producer of Hill’s film, notices an uncanny resemblance between the incidents in Karl’s life and the scenes in the movie: Someone seems to be turning her ex-husband’s life into a wannabe Brian DePalma flick. No one on the shoot except Hill and Robyn has seen the entire script, but since the ending is probably not a happy one for his double, Karl appeals to Robyn and the other three women on the film, who unaccountably still hold a torch for him. Then Marilyn Lori-Street violates her contract, tells him about the script, and loses her head, plus assorted other body parts. There’ll be lots more action before the—what else?—Hollywood ending.

Many quick cuts from chase scenes to sex scenes make Mosiman’s hardcover debut easy to stay with, but the shallowness of the victim and the cast makes it hard to care.