The novel has intentional parallels to real-life people and events.

The novel has intentional parallels to real-life people and events.
By PAUL MOORE
BALTIMORE SUN
"Action: A Novel," by Robert Cort (Random House, $24.95)
Movie producer and longtime Hollywood insider Robert Cort, in his first novel, has created an engaging and authentic saga that encompasses the last 50 years of the film industry. Through three generations of Jastrows, a family whose dynamics resemble Shakespearean treachery mixed with Corleone allegiance, Cort chronicles the shift from the all-powerful studio system to today's all-powerful agent-, star-, profit-driven world.
The story
The novel begins in 1948, when the 12-year-old AJ Jastrow's father, Harry, an honest and underappreciated executive at Paramount, dies of a heart attack. AJ's desire to fulfill his father's unrealized dreams, and the legacy of his father's integrity, permeate the entire story.
Described in 10-year intervals, AJ's progress from adolescent to production chief to producer to creator of his own studio parallels the changing values of Hollywood. Important also is the book's depiction of how movies actually get made.
In his second decade, AJ breaks into Hollywood as an assistant to the legendary producer Mike Todd ("Around the World in 80 Days"). Cort seamlessly interweaves fictional characters and events with the real. Cort originally intended this as a work of nonfiction but later decided that the best way to convey truths about the film industry was to create fictional characters as well. In the course of the novel we encounter famous producers, agents and businessmen including Ray Stark, Mike Ovitz, Robert Evans, Charles Bluhdorn and David Begelman and stars including Bing Crosby, Richard Dreyfuss and Michael Douglas.
AJ befriends an unknown Steve McQueen and later becomes his agent and best friend, only to have McQueen betray him once the actor becomes a big star. AJ's affair with the Austrian actress Romy Schneider helps sink his marriage, and a falling out with his mother, who becomes one of the wealthiest women in Hollywood, eventually will undo most of his life's work.
In the 1970s, AJ writes and produces a film about a company of American soldiers in Vietnam. While filming in Thailand, the wild and crazy director -- who bears a resemblance to Francis Ford Coppola -- creates such an unstable set that AJ suffers a heart attack. Comparisons to "Apocalypse Now" are not unintentional.
In the 1980s, a deal with Japanese investors disintegrates, and as AJ scrambles to save his fledging studio the unlikely success of a slasher movie ("The Coney Island Maniac") comes to the rescue.
Moral compass
What separates AJ Jastrow from most of his contemporaries, and what makes him sympathetic, is his moral compass. He's no saint, but he has a sense of right and wrong that informs his decision-making.
The story's climax revolves around the third generation of Jastrows, son Richard and daughter Jessica. Richard is a rapacious corporate executive who, because of deep-seated resentment, seeks to ruin his father's enterprise. Jessica remains her father's devoted assistant and confidante throughout.
The novel's final passages are surprising. Cort's work transcends the conventional to become truly moving.