Porndance

"Porndance" is the sequel-yet a stand-alone story-to the novel "Island of the Lost Souls." Picking up about six months after the conclusion of "Island," Daniel Quinn, self-described Irish-Mexican "mutt," Gen-X slacker, food service worker, movie geek, musician, and outspoken social commentator, finds himself leaving Tucson for Park City, Utah, after a slightly mysterious and extremely wealthy woman offers him an almost-too-good-to-be-true dream job of being the head chef at an upscale restaurant opening soon on Park City's famed Main Street. In the meantime, Daniel takes a job in another restaurant in town and quickly submerses himself in the microcosm known as Park City. He learns to ski, starts a new rock band and hangs out with the quirky locals. It is January and time for the Sundance Film Festival. Daniel's new best friend, Jimmy Carnes, a local celebrity and rabble-rouser, is sickened by how Sundance no longer seems to be about the celebration of film, having morphed into a schmooze-fest catering to big ego celebrities and rich people who take themselves way too seriously. In response, Jimmy creates Porndance, a film festival for lowbrow porno films taking place at the same time as Sundance. By hosting a festival of anti-intellectual, mostly tasteless movies that draws large crowds of rowdy fans, Jimmy gleefully thumbs his nose at the snobbery of the Sundance Film Festival. And during a film festival whose live music and parties are mostly closed to anyone who isn't rich or a Hollywood A-lister, Jimmy opens a temporary bar on Main Street called the Porndance Lounge that quickly becomes the hottest nightclub during Sundance and the rich and famous aren't allowed inside. Meanwhile, the editor of the Park Record, Park City's newspaper, begins receiving letters from a person calling themselves Movie Lover, who is also disgusted by what the Sundance Film Festival has become and believes that independent films-especially the pompous documentaries that are increasingly becoming a larger portion of the films shown every year at Sundance-are responsible for the slow death of big budget Hollywood movies, films that Movie Lover reveres. Movie Lover demands that documentaries be removed from the Sundance Film Festival, or he will start killing off the directors of especially pretentious documentaries being shown at the festival. As filmmakers start turning up dead in a variety of gruesome ways that seem to have one thing in common-Julia Roberts movies-it is up to Police Officer Lincoln Coulter to catch the killer and restore order to the normally peaceful town of Park City. In the midst of the party atmosphere of the Sundance Film Festival, where bad filmmakers start to drop like flies, Daniel begins to realize that Movie Lover might be someone he knows. "Porndance" is a comedy/mystery/pop culture rollercoaster that would appeal to fans of writers like Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, Bill Fitzhugh, Warren Ellis, Dave Barry and Christopher Buckley.