Elimination Night is a fictionalized account of one young producer’s experiences working at Project Icon — a behemoth singing competition that bears more than a passing resemblance to American Idol. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will only say that the book’s scribe has “intimate firsthand knowledge of the behind-the-scenes workings of a top TV talent show.”)
In the book, one judge issues a 78-page rider that demands a 4,000 square foot “dressing compound,” a $1 billion body insurance policy (“breasts/buttocks to be valued at one hundred million dollars each”), and that the show’s crew never make eye contact with her. Another has to undergo a “sanity check” — which he barely passes — before signing on to join Icon‘s panel. The innocent, apple-cheeked, country-singing winner of the fictional reality show is actually a promiscuous, closeted Don Juan who enjoyed encounters with “hotel workers, judges’ assistants, his fellow contestants, [and] even a couple of passing construction workers” during filming.
And those aren’t even the juiciest moments from the story! Check out the book’s craziest plot points below.
Have you ever noticed strains of Jeffersonian populism in Dirty Harry? Or Lincoln’s institutional confidence in Big? Jim Cullen has.
