Funny Boys

Warren Adler

Since the fame attending the publication and film of Warren Adler’s The War of the Roses, Adler has been chronicling the American experience in novels and screenplays. Now, with Funny Boys, Adler takes on the New York of his childhood in a dark comedy of errors about success, the mob, and true love.

Mickey Fine is a young man with a promising future in comedy. Attracted to the applause of the crowd at a lavish hotel casino in the Catskills, he gets a job as a tumler – part entertainer, part host, all funny boy. But he is naïve about the more sinister side of his audience. They’re mobsters and power players of New York’s scandalous underbelly —men with whom Mickey had run-ins during his childhood.

When Mutzie Feder, a Jean Harlow-esque gangster girlfriend, gets into the act with dreams of escaping her brutal reality, sparks fly between her and Mickey. But as their circumstances start to catch up with them – and the body count starts mounting from the rough crowd they’re running with – Mickey and Mutzie start angling for a way out. That, of course, isn’t as easy as it sounds.

With film rights already optioned to a major producer, Funny Boys is a timeless love story and a sweeping American tale told as only Warren Adler could tell it. Smart, wry, and beautifully written, it’s as unforgettable and authentic as anything Damon Runyon or Ring Lardner ever wrote, from a writer with a keen eye, an acute ear, and a very big heart.