When The Actor Inspired Chaos and Bloodshed

An American actor attempts to survive a chaotic South American movie shoot in Litchfield’s novel.

Dominic Graves’ career in Hollywood is not going as he’d hoped. The actor is now in his 30s, and good roles are hardly rolling in. (His most recent job was an ad for a car dealership.) When his disreputable agent Bernie Finkelman offers him the lead in a Uruguayan thriller, Dominic has little choice but to say yes and fly off for the 10-week shoot in Montevideo. There, the problems begin almost immediately. By the time he makes it to his first day of shooting—hungover and several hours late—he’s already slept with his gorgeous coworker, Sofía Prodova, and insulted her enough for her to beat him unconscious with an ashtray. Dominic then has to survive long days under the whip of the demanding and volatile director Ignacio Martinez, who is happy to put his actors in danger if it results in a better shot. “Death on a film set often turns a decent performance into a legendary one,” he tells Dominic ominously. Ignacio has his own longstanding and explosive relationship with Sofía, one that Dominic will have to navigate if he wants to end up in the final cut of A Bullet for Silver Face. (That is, assuming Dominic doesn’t actually have to take any bullets to his face.) Litchfield writes with sardonic vigor, capturing Dominic’s general distaste for his situation: “Bullets, explosions and bare-knuckle fistfights were continual, disconcerting distractions, and trying to remember lines while worried about being blown to smithereens was an eternal challenge.” But the reader struggles to sympathize with Dominic, who pours whiskey into his morning coffee and surprises his one-night stands with unwanted sexual maneuvers that make him feel powerful. The fact that all three of the main characters are both charmless and irredeemable keeps the book from being as funny—or as suspenseful—as Litchfield might have intended.

A pulpy, imperfect sendup of moviemaking.