Inserts

Hollywood... 1930. Though the vast dream factory has shifted gears to keep abreast of the latest show-biz sensation - Talking Pictures - there is still one discarded genius at work exploring the cinematic poetry of the silent screen. He is the 'Boy Wonder' (Richard Dreyfuss), a once starry figure of an era when luscious starlets dripped from trees and Stuts Bearcats jammed the parking lots of Hollywood's most fashionable niteries. But hard times have befallen him. Where once he was the youthful toast of the town, he now receives a meagre stipend from Big Mac (Bob Hoskins), his bootlegger employer-turned-producer. Where once he worked alongside such Hollywood immortals as Von Stroheim, Pickford and Fairbanks, he is now reduced to directing an ex-starlet and a handsome opportunist in pornographic movies. Then one day he meets an aspiring actress called Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper) and falls hopelessly in love...