The screenwriter, Michael Tolkin, who adapted his own dark 1988 novel, puts a morally tainted and psychologically vulnerable antihero in the middle of Hollywood, and it works.

NEWYORKER: The Player

Hip novelist-screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Henry Bean must not have watched enough TV in the eighties to realize that the premise of their script an undercover cop gets sucked into big-time drug life has been done to death.

NEWYORKER: Deep Cover