It's a great idea for a novel anyway. Spencer Ludwig, the arty, ineffectual filmmaker son of a tough self-made businessman and Holocaust survivor, finally gets to feel stronger than his heroic father, who is dying. Snatching him from the care of a resented stepmother, Spencer takes his ailing dad on an impromptu road trip to Las Vegas, where Spencer is taking part in an obscure film festival that is actually screening his obscure films.
But it's not just the main thrust of the action that makes David Flusfeder's latest book, A Film By Spencer Ludwig, such a joy to read. Spencer's own justification of his life as a "real artist", and his reasons for despising mainstream cinema, are perfectly drawn. One constant bugbear is the debasement of Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin by the lesser directors who have bowdlerised the celebrated baby-bouncing-down-the-stairs-in-the-pram scene. Another is the turpitude of artists who allow their work to be sequestered for the flogging of cereal.
The most pleasing thing? That advert where the man saves the shopping trolley with the toddler in it from crashing down the stairs, only to grab, and cuddle, not the weeping infant but a packet of Crunchy Nut cornflakes . . . it hadn't even been screened when Flusfeder finished his book. Case rested.
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