Art by David Mack
"The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" is a short story by Neil Gaiman. It was inspired by his personal experiences in trying to write for Hollywood.
An unnamed author has sold a bestselling novel about Charles Manson's children. He soon gets the chance to write the script for a film version. The problem is that Hollywood has no stars, and the executives don't know what kind of story they want. As the author struggles to write a treatment for his book, he talks with a local groundskeeper about legends of Hollywood and magic tricks and hears how John Belushi may have died.
Tropes for this include:
- Author Avatar: The author is meant to be a stand-in for Neil, who did work on several adaptations of his films.
- Bittersweet Ending: The author never finishes the screenplay, and the groundskeeper dies on a random day. With that said, the author gains a better appreciation for the experience and leaves saddened but wiser for his home in England.
- Comically Missing the Point: One film executive says that they should remove the Charles Manson connection because it may be too controversial. The author snarkily replies his novel was all about Charles Manson and asks if she even read the book.
- Dying Alone: The groundskeeper answers this when the author asks him who was in the hotel room where John Belushi died. He says it doesn't matter which person was in the room since they didn't save Belushi, so he died alone.
- No Name Given: We never find out the author's name.
- "Rashomon"-Style: Each person that the author meets has a different guess for which actor was in the hotel room where Belushi overdosed. Except for the one that confuses him with his brother Jim Belushi.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Ultimately, the author never writes his treatment or script during the story. He gets too annoyed with how executive after executive vetoes his work and makes him do changes under protest, including changing the whole story to remove Charles Manson.
- Shown Their Work: While there wasn't a June Lincoln in real life, there was a June Storey who worked in silent film and was a remarkable actress. Storey also died in 1991, years before Sandman and Neverwhere would get greenlit.
- Tech Marches On: The author buys a book of old magic tricks. He said some of them were impressive for the time period but television made them obsolete.
- Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup: When you have too many Hollywood executives who think they know best, you end up spending weeks working on a treatment that may never get read. The author grows increasingly annoyed as his ideas get tossed out and revived.
