"Producers are like feudal lords exercising droit du seigneur; they all want to have first crack at a promising virgin script. And like the poor young maiden, once a producer gets hold of a script, spreads its pages, and tosses it aside, it's never as valuable again." Speaking from experience is bruised, inveterate screenwriter Frankie Jordan, who spares nothing and no one in her razor-sharp vivisection of Hollywood -- a town with rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifices as strange as any savage culture. Not that the rest of Frankie's life is any less perilous. She's turning forty, her husband wants a divorce, men aren't noticing her anymore, and all she can think about is the script she can't finish.