Silent Extras

Ewald Broccoli and the exotic Elvira are three young friends on the run - from the horrifying possibility of living mundane lives. They all want just one thing - to be magnificent on screen or off it but ideally in front of thousands of people. So Broccoli self-styled svengali and 'President of the Society of Geniuses' begins Operation Brando an insanely ambitious plan to make them the biggest stars Hollywood has ever known.Sadly things don't quite follow this plan and their path to global obscurity is by turns hilarious absurd and tragic. Operation Brando begins badly and gets rapidly worse: Broccoli is only able to secure auditions for his disciples as extras in risible youth theatre productions and lousy commercials. He thinks Ewald would be perfect for the non-speaking role of a spotty kid for instance who has only to fall down stairs to get the part but even this stretches Ewald's talents a little too far. All three suffer badly from the burning need to be somebody else somebody none of them are quite able to be and this focus on the abyss separating desire and reality makes for a richly comic and ultimately moving novel by one of Europe's most exciting young authors.