AMANDA GOLDBERG AND RUTHANNA KHALIGHI HOPPER
CELEBUTANTES
by Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper
Who will be left standing with job, heart, and stilettos still in tact when the sun rises at the after-after Oscar party?
Just in time for Awards season, Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper, daughters of Hollywood Royalty, have culled their astute and witty insider’s purview to blast away the well-primped, air-brushed façade of everything you don’t see publicly during Oscar Week in their hilarious debut novel, CELEBUTANTES (St. Martin’s Press; February 5, 2008; $23.95).
In CELEBUTANTES, twenty-six-year-old Lola Santisi, daughter of an Academy Award-winning mega-director and a former cover model, is looking for more from life than her mother’s last season Chanel hand-me-downs and the daunting shadow of her father’s fame. She wants true love, a career, and a “Happy Hollywood Ending.” (And the new Louboutin thigh-high python boots in pink would be nice; Gwyneth’s twelfth on the waiting list). During the frenzy of Oscar Week, Lola attempts to wean herself off sex with actors and searches for her true calling in life, all with the help of her BFF’s. When she’s asked by her BGF (Best Gay Forever), unknown fashion designer Julian Tennant, to be his “Hollywood Ambassador” and get his gown onto one of the highly coveted bodies grazing the ultimate Red Carpet, will Lola finally conquer her Career Deficit Disorder?
During interviews for CELEBUTANTES, Goldberg and Hopper can discuss the following topics, among many others:
* How real-life celebutantes have changed our pop culture, especially in relation to fashion, music, entertainment, body image, and even the criminal justice system;
* At what point someone becomes a celebutante, or stops being one;
* What it was really like to grow up in the middle of the Hollywood machine;
* How real-life Tinseltown is stranger than fiction;
* How important to a designer’s career it is to have his or her creations seen on Hollywood’s A-list. Likewise, how important is it for an A-lister to be seen in the right dress on the Red Carpet; and
* The ultimate question: Does it take talent to be a real, gold-blooded celebutante, or are these It Girls truly only famous for being famous?
Told with heart and heartlessness, humor and grit, and more drama than could fit into a dozen quilted Chanel bags, CELEBUTANTES will catch you up in its whirlwind countdown to the Oscars where nothing is off limits.
Amanda Goldberg, daughter of legendary film and television producer Leonard Goldberg, has been called “One to Watch” by Vogue and has landed on Harper’s Bazaar’s “Best Dressed” List. After working with acclaimed designer Todd Oldham, Goldberg joined her father’s production company where she was the Associate Producer on the blockbuster film Charlie’s Angels. Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper is the daughter of Zabriskie Point’s Daria Halprin and Easy Rider’s Dennis Hopper. She started her career in production at Radical Media in New York City and went on to produce and co-star with her father in the critically acclaimed independent film Americano. Hopper was also a producer for the CineVegas Film Festival in Las Vegas. Goldberg and Hopper are contributors to the California-based, high-fashion publication C Magazine.
I look forward to working with you to transport your readers into the headline-grabbing Red Carpet drama of CELEBUTANTES. If you have any questions or need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.