He arrived in Hollywood barely twenty-one, having escaped from a confusing family and New York University. He got hot fast, selling a big-money script. He was on his way up -- though not quite as far up as he had expected. Henry stalled in the middle, then fell from there. As he puts it, "I've been hotter and colder than my oven."

"It's All True" maps Henry's odyssey through a tantalizing Los Angeles that he loves and resents, a place where he always feels one phone call, one script, or one break away from the brass ring that circles in and out of his grasp.

He marries and divorces and never quite stops yearning for his ex-wife. He spends his days trying to resurrect the life that he let slip away. Then his faltering career gets an unexpected jolt from an old girlfriend who has been promoted into the upper reaches of a studio. She helps Henry, though she extracts a surprising price.

When the money had been flowing, Henry bought a Jaguar that has gone from gleaming to dented, a constant reminder of his own fallen state. His life has careened from the glamorous to the quotidian, from erotic adventures on location to slow mornings spent with out-of-work buddies at Hollywood's venerable Farmers Market.

His friends are a motley crew of wiseguy screenwriters, once-popular directors, obscure actors, and famous and highhanded producers and film stars identifiable to most everyone.

In creating Henry's saga, veteran novelist and screenwriter David Freeman has written an intimate history of Hollywood over the last twenty-five years, viewed from inside the soundstages, the bedrooms, the fashionable restaurants, and the studiomeetings where fortunes can turn on a chance word.

This is a book studded with the delicious details of the folkways of the movie business and the romantic customs of its denizens. Enlivened by Freeman's corrosive wit, "It's All True" is hilarious and touching and, astonishingly, absolutely all true.