The hero is Marty Burns, who ranges from being a burned-out sitcom star to a washed-out private investigator. In Greed & Stuff we find him back in the TV business, but his show is rating poorly with the 18-34 year old males. Therefore the renewal of his series is now in jeopardy and he is awaiting the decision. His agent’s advice is that things “look good, but don’t buy anything expensive.”

At Marty’s weekly poker game, one of the players, Hall Emerson, draws him aside and asks for a favor. Hall’s father had written the script for an old movie The Devil on Sunday. Hall had been approached to rewrite the script since producer Kevin Ryan Paul is working on bringing it back. Hall’s problem is that he believes that a portion of the movie had been cut, and he doesn’t have the access to the film libraries that Marty has.

Enlisting Marty’s aid is not much of a problem since he seems to raise doing nothing to a new art form. His investigation finds nothing but what was released, but oddly he is approached by Paul to consider taking a part in the remake. Meanwhile Hall is having a hard time getting paid for his rewritten script from Paul and one night complains drunkenly and bitterly to Marty. Hall also reveals that his father had actually “bearded” (ghost-written) the script for a blacklisted writer. (Remember the McCarthy era?)

An even greater revelation is that Connie Clare, the actress in the movie, was Hall’s mother. Her murder near the set during the original filming had caused quite a stir at the time.

Soon after, Hall is dead from an apparent suicide. The suicide doesn’t feel right to Marty or Hall’s friends and an old acquaintance in the persona of Lt. Khan from the detective division shows up investigating as well, primarily disturbed because there is no suicide note.

Greed & Stuff would have been more enjoyable if the characters were more likeable. And the idealism that the author packages in some of the characters, who parade as consummate cynics, is not always believable.

--Thea Davis