A celebrity interviewer’s once-in-a-lifetime “get” threatens to guarantee that that lifetime will be brief.
This year’s Academy Award ceremony looks like a bust for fashion commentator Maxine Taylor, as star after star eludes her celebrity-wrangler Cindy Chow. Her daughter Drew, Max’s Glam-TV co-hostess, saves the day when she gets a text message from her old friend Halsey Hamilton, who’s been sprung from rehab for the show. Cindy grabs the 19-year-old superstar and pushes her in front of Max’s mike, where the fashionista is temporarily stumped, since Halsey’s wearing nothing but a bra and panties. As Max struggles to resume her patter, Halsey slumps dead at her feet. Max’s scoop opens doors all across Hollywood: the famed Vanity Fair after-party, an outdoor table at The Grill and requests for interviews from every network on the dial. But the only door she wants open is at Wonders, the clinic that didn’t quite rehab Halsey, where she goes to help clear Burke Norris, Drew’s no-good but still-beloved ex. With the help of “the third-best celebrity intervention counselor on the West Coast,” Max gets admitted to the posh facility. But the harder she probes, the more risk she takes, until Halsey’s killer decides that maybe she knows too much.
Although their best moments contribute least to the solution, Rivers (Men Are Stupid…and They Like Big Boobs: A Woman’s Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery, 2008, etc.) and Farmer (The Flaming Luau of Death, 2005, etc.) share a brisk, funny maiden trip down the red carpet that bodes well for the future.
