He has the power to make anyone's dream come true… except his own.

The novel centers on the life of film executive Monroe Stahr in Hollywood in the 1930’s. Stahr is modelled on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg, though only in ideas and ambitions, not in actual life events. Robert De Niro plays Monroe Starr in a cool and detached manner, and as Kazan pans around the Hollywood Dream Factory of the 1930s, Starr juggles several productions, deals with nervous actors and recalcitrant directors, stays afloat in the Hollywood corporate battlefields, and secretly carries on a love affair with an even cooler and more detached English girl, Kathleen Moore (Ingrid Boulting).