Force Majeure
Force Majeure was called a “smashing debut novel” by the Kirkus Reviews upon its original publication in 1991. A sardonic and absurdly dark, yet hilarious take on the “business as usual” of Hollywood’s twisted class system that proved Bruce Wagner was not just an author, but a cultural anthropologist.
The perpetually up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter, Bud Wiggins, drifts aimlessly in and out of the lives of others and from one script idea to another. Moonlighting as a limo driver to pay his bills, he finds himself immersed in a world of vanity and degradation.
Wagner infuses his novel with the familiar archetypical characters of Hollywood—a nihilistic producer, an aging film star, an obnoxious mogul—and exposes the madness that drives them all.
Bruce Wagner has written twelve novels and bestsellers, including the famous “Cellphone Trilogy,” I’m Losing You (PEN USA finalist), I’ll Let You Go and Still Holding), Dead Stars, The Empty Chair, and the PEN/Faulkner-finalist Chrysanthemum Palace. He wrote the screenplay for David Cronenberg’s film Maps to the Stars, for which Julianne Moore won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. In 1993, Wagner wrote and created the visionary mini-series Wild Palms for producer Oliver Stone and co-wrote (with Ullman) three seasons the acclaimed Tracey Ullman’sState of the Union. He has written essays and articles for the New York Times, Artforum and the New Yorker.
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