Kim Wozencraft

"He offered me the bottle and I sat down and took a swallow, enjoying the burn." "He brought us to his home in a red '56 Galaxy, bruising down Highway 10 like it was time to die, and we spilled dopesmoke and vodka all over a Sunday afternoon." "I tooted a couple of lines and picked up my pistol." "My blouse was sticking to me and I looked down at it. I was covered with blood. My own blood on my blouse, Jim's blood all over my jeans." Mike Hammer in drag? Get real, dude.

I don't know if I'd say, as the jacket copy of "The Catch" states, that "no one knows the seductive world of drugs and addiction better than Kim Wozencraft," but I would say she's got a pretty good grasp of the moral conundrum drugs pose to a person of conscience on either side of the law. Wozencraft, the author of the novel "Rush," later a movie, about undercover narcs who become seriously addicted to drugs, begins "The Catch" with a smuggling scene.

What we've got here is a failure to enunciate. Those are some pretty mean-looking galoots in the holding cells and they're growling like caged animals do when the zookeeper is late with lunch. The din gets even louder when the hall door clangs open, and two undercover narcotics officers, the very cops who nailed most of them in the first place, come strolling by, to check out the lock-up of yet another perpetrator. One tough customer shoves his arm right through the bars, and grabs the more fragile-looking of the pair, a blond woman who looks like a teen-ager.

A woman has been assigned to the psychiatric unit of a correctional institution, where the doctor in charge will determine whether she is competent to stand trial for murdering her husband. Meanwhile, she stacks canvas bags on the long table. These are mailbags.

Does The Times have anything to say about the character of a filmmaker who prefers to ignore the honorable officers who face grave dangers in the drug wars in favor of the real-life dishonored rogue officer Kim Wozencraft? Oh yes, Wozencraft was punished--18 months in prison before the million-dollar purchase of film rights to her book. Was the article an undisguised press release in behalf of the Zanuck Co.? Or was The Times practicing "toady journalism" in expectation of generous ad revenues from the same company?

GET SHORTY by Elmore Leonard (Dell: $5.99). Miami loan shark Chili Palmer's former occupational skills come in handy when he makes a career change to tinsel- town deal-maker. RUSH by Kim Wozencraft (Ivy: $5.95). Fictionalized account of the author, a former undercover narc agent, and her partner/boyfriend taking their work home with them. HAMMERHEADS by Dale Brown (Berkley: $5.95). Government disbands usual drug-enforcement agencies and relies on the tactics of an elite Prohibition squad.

By Beverly Hills standards, it's a ho-hum book party. See the author kiss actress Daryl Hannah. See the author hug actor Armand Assante. See the author pose with tycoon Marvin Davis. See the author look for a place to lock up her purse. "Doesn't it just say everything?" confides one of the party's organizers. "She still has that mentality." But that mentality is why, though the party may be ordinary, its guest of honor isn't.

I don't know if I'd say, as the jacket copy of "The Catch" states, that "no one knows the seductive world of drugs and addiction better than Kim Wozencraft," but I would say she's got a pretty good grasp of the moral conundrum drugs pose to a person of conscience on either side of the law. Wozencraft, the author of "Rush," a novel, later a movie, about undercover narcs who become seriously addicted to drugs, begins "The Catch" with a smuggling scene.

A woman has been assigned to the psychiatric unit of a correctional institution, where the doctor in charge will determine whether she is competent to stand trial for murdering her husband. Meanwhile, she stacks canvas bags on the long table. These are mailbags.

Zanuck to Direct "Rush": Lili Fini Zanuck will make her directing debut with "Rush," Kim Wozencraft's best-selling first novel about a female narcotics officer who becomes an addict. Jennifer Jason Leigh ("Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Miami Blues") has been cast in the role. Zanuck co-produced "Cocoon" I and II and the Oscar-winning "Driving Miss Daisy" with her husband Richard Zanuck, who will produce "Rush." Production is due to start in January with a script by novelist Pete Dexter.

GET SHORTY by Elmore Leonard (Dell: $5.99). Miami loan shark Chili Palmer's former occupational skills come in handy when he makes a career change to tinsel- town deal-maker. RUSH by Kim Wozencraft (Ivy: $5.95). Fictionalized account of the author, a former undercover narc agent, and her partner/boyfriend taking their work home with them. HAMMERHEADS by Dale Brown (Berkley: $5.95). Government disbands usual drug-enforcement agencies and relies on the tactics of an elite Prohibition squad.

Does The Times have anything to say about the character of a filmmaker who prefers to ignore the honorable officers who face grave dangers in the drug wars in favor of the real-life dishonored rogue officer Kim Wozencraft? Oh yes, Wozencraft was punished--18 months in prison before the million-dollar purchase of film rights to her book. Was the article an undisguised press release in behalf of the Zanuck Co.? Or was The Times practicing "toady journalism" in expectation of generous ad revenues from the same company?

What we've got here is a failure to enunciate. Those are some pretty mean-looking galoots in the holding cells and they're growling like caged animals do when the zookeeper is late with lunch. The din gets even louder when the hall door clangs open, and two undercover narcotics officers, the very cops who nailed most of them in the first place, come strolling by, to check out the lock-up of yet another perpetrator. One tough customer shoves his arm right through the bars, and grabs the more fragile-looking of the pair, a blond woman who looks like a teen-ager.

"He offered me the bottle and I sat down and took a swallow, enjoying the burn." "He brought us to his home in a red '56 Galaxy, bruising down Highway 10 like it was time to die, and we spilled dopesmoke and vodka all over a Sunday afternoon." "I tooted a couple of lines and picked up my pistol." "My blouse was sticking to me and I looked down at it. I was covered with blood. My own blood on my blouse, Jim's blood all over my jeans." Mike Hammer in drag? Get real, dude.

By Beverly Hills standards, it's a ho-hum book party. See the author kiss actress Daryl Hannah. See the author hug actor Armand Assante. See the author pose with tycoon Marvin Davis. See the author look for a place to lock up her purse. "Doesn't it just say everything?" confides one of the party's organizers. "She still has that mentality." But that mentality is why, though the party may be ordinary, its guest of honor isn't.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne is out, and novelist Pete Dexter is in, to write the adaptation of Kim Wozencraft's just-published cocaine-and-cops novel "Rush," which producers Richard and Lili Zanuck bought last year for $1 million. Dexter, the Sacramento Bee columnist who won the National Book Award in 1988 for his novel "Paris Trout," was hired because of Towne's lingering repair work on "Days of Thunder," the Tom Cruise movie now shooting in Florida.