FINAL CUT

Murder casts a dark shadow over yet another Hollywood production—and particularly over its key costumer.

Despite his name, producer/director Marcus Pray is a predator who bullies his colleagues, does his best to surround himself with Victoria’s Secret models, and hits on every woman in sight. Joey Jessop, the “queen of made-to-order” at Left Coast Costumes, is a consummate pro, but part of her professionalism has been to turn a blind eye to Pray and his kind as he asserts his seigneurial rights. Pray’s new production is threatened with the worst kind of publicity and even a shutdown after Joey finds Courtney Lisle, the second assistant director, dead of undisclosed causes. Since Courtney was Pray’s semisecret lover, their lives are both held up to scrutiny. But it’s even worse for Joey, who left her own lover, first AD Eli Logan, over his uncontrollable coke habit a year ago only to see him pair up with Courtney. Popvibe reporter Maggie Fuller keeps hounding her for an interview; an anonymous source keeps texting her threats of vengeance; Det. Corinne Blankenship, of the LA County Sheriff’s Office, keeps expressing impatience with her protestations of innocence; and the production keeps being interrupted by an escalating series of accidents that seem like anything but. McCown steeps her workmanlike whodunit in a million sharply observed details that give you a painfully keen sense of what it’s like to work on a Hollywood production on which somebody else has all the power.

The perfect remedy that will keep star-struck wannabes down on the farm.