Breaking Hollywood Read Free

round. A woman running towards him, clutching a bag, pulling something from it.
    He froze.
    Neither car moved, yet there was an earth-trembling bang. a blinding flash. The ripping of metal. Screams. The world exploded.
    Then a deafening silence.
    In that devastating instant, one heart stopped beating.
    And then another.

1.
    Sirens
    LIVE REPORT BREAKING NEWS – LOS ANGELES
    ‘I’m Brianna Nicole, live here on CXY 5, as we bring you the horrific breaking news that there has been an explosion outside the Beverly Hills Heights
Hotel. The incident happened as the stars celebrated at the Lomax Oscars after-party. Details are sketchy right now, but I can tell you that there are reports of casualties, and police are looking
at the possibility of a terrorist attack, with claims that this could be the work of a suicide bomber.’

2.
    ‘Uptown Funk’ – Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars
    TWO MONTHS EARLIER
    Davie Johnston
    ‘OK, Davie, final soundcheck and then we’re ready to go.’
    The voice in his ear was female, warm and professional, right up until the moment it barked, ‘And stop fucking rearranging your balls. You did it twice in rehearsals. Middle America will
have a stroke if you do that live on air.’
    Davie grinned as he gave the camera in front of him the finger, eliciting a raucous chuckle in his earpiece.
    Mellie Santos was a notorious pain in the ass, brutally honest, toe-curlingly impolite and a self-proclaimed ill-tempered bitch, but she had been his first choice for producer and director of
the new show because she was the best.
    This was uncharted waters for him. After years of producing reality-TV hits, he was stepping in front of the camera again, but this time without a script.
    But the biggest twist? It was all going to be live.
    Fuck it, if he was going to do it, he might as well do it with a risk factor that made his aforementioned balls retreat into his body in fear.
    Live. It was crazy. Insane. The only other talk show that went out in real time was
The Brianna Nicole Show
, but that dealt with the risky unpredictability by sticking to the fluffy
stuff: stars plugging their own movies, or spinning a good news story aimed at winning hearts.
    That wasn’t what Davie was after.
    For the last decade he’d been the most successful producer of reality shows in the nation and now he had three in the top ten.
    The Dream Machine
was a sentimental slushfest that made ordinary people’s wishes come true and left the viewing nation sobbing into their Saturday-night pizzas.
    Then there was
Beauty and the Beats
, a fly-on-the-wall show following the lives of a crazy supermodel and an ageing rock god. A monster ratings hit, it was currently sitting right under
the bearded blokes of
Duck Dynasty.
Not a place he’d ever dreamed of being positioned.
    And, of course,
American Stars
was still number-one primetime gold, giving a smug V-sign of triumph to the runners-up,
The Voice
and
American Idol.
His production
company owned the rights, so it added several zeros to his bank balance every year. For the first few seasons, he’d hosted the show, but a blip of crap publicity last year had seen him
dropped from the screen. Giving the network the final say on who presented it probably hadn’t been his best move. At the first sign of trouble, they’d dumped him without hesitation.
That was then. After serious career rehabilitation, he was back on the current series as a judge. His own talk show and the most coveted judging seat in the world of TV talent shows. Oh yeah, baby,
he was on fire, and, man, he deserved it.
    In the last year, his marriage had imploded, he’d faced a landslide of negative press, and he’d had more rocky career moments than Sylvester Stallone.
    The fickle world of fame had given him a metaphorical kicking.
    Hollywood hadn’t quite forgiven him, of course, but he was well on the way to redemption. He had been booked to co-host the Oscars in two months’ time, and with careful PR planning