Art and stardom have always been cousins, but in the 20th century, the glamour phenomenon has done much to confuse and conflate these two concepts. In a post-Warhol, cult-of-celebrities era, art does not catapult artists to stardom; rather, stardom and its trappings (boas, martinis, cigars) set about creating art.

Soon to Be a Motion Picture, a first novel by Warren Dunford, is fraught with the confusion of these two concepts. The hero and narrator, Mitchell Draper, a 29-year-old would-be screenwriter, divides his time between office temping, pseudonymous gay porn writing, and some desultory attempts at screenwriting. At the outset of the novel, Mitchell gets his big break: he is commissioned by Carmen Denver to write a thriller called “A Time for Revenge.” A first-time producer, Denver is the closest thing Mitchell has ever come to “one of those stereotypical Hollywood bitch heroines from a Jackie Collins novel.” (In true show biz style, Mitchell describes nearly every character through pop cultural references, stereotypes, and clichés.)

The other main characters are Mitchell’s two friends, Ingrid Iversen, a painter/café manager, and Ramir Martinez, a two-bit actor. Ramir wants fame. Ingrid starts out content to paint for herself, afraid that recognition will interfere with her work. Mitchell claims to vascillate between a desire for fame and art, but Dunford can’t quite convince his reader that Mitchell has any meaningful understanding of what art is.

As the plot of Mitchell’s screenplay progresses, the dividing line between Mitchell’s writing life and “real” life becomes blurred. Excerpts from the screenplay are interspersed throughout the narrative.

When Mitchell is asked whether he loves screenwriting, he replies, “I guess so, or I wouldn’t keep doing it.” At the novel’s close, after Dunford takes unbelievable, desperate measures to create a crisis, and to dispose of inconvenient characters, when Mitchell finally gets to write for himself, he has only this to say: “All those clichés felt real.”

“Do you think we’re really shallow?” Mitchell asks of Ramir at one point.

Well, yeah.