The Book of Deals

He's fat and she's pushy, and there the story begins. It's the picaresque 70s real estate boom in LA, and these two vultures want a piece of it for themselves. Along the way preposterous characters and situations intrude on their quest for wealth, status and prestige. They struggle with the locals in a swirl of scandal and swindle. Set in a world before cell phones, without the internet, when lives are shaped by interactions and punctuated by moments in front of tiny Sony television screens, Raymond and Philomena connive for the American Dream. They're helped along in this comedy of bad manners by corrupt realtors, desperate characters, a grey-suited flatfoot and a grungy Zen oligarch, set on a backdrop of excess in an arid land of emptiness.