Although Netflix is Hollywood borrows from the story, your main character, Jack Costello, was not a real person. The young aspiring actor, played by David Corenswet, is the point of entry into Hollywood‘s alternate history of Tinseltown, but, unlike many of the other characters, and he is totally the creation of the writers. Even so, it plays an important role in highlighting what Hollywood was really like.
The character of Jack Costello is a fiction, but it is something of a stand-in for a archetype of the young actor, trying to do it in the time of Hollywood. During the boom of the movie, countless young (and not so young) came to Hollywood with the hope of being “discovered” and what is great. Like many young men of the time, Jack is a young veteran of the war, after having fought in the second World War and return home to try to figure out your new normal. In fact, several of the biggest stars of the time were veterans of the second world war, including Jimmy Stewart, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, and even Rock Hudson, who is also a character in Hollywood (although a version fictionalized whose life is very different to that of the real Hudson did).
Jack is also half of the version details of the running man in the “service station” that was infamous in the Old Hollywood. Scotty Bowers was a former Marine who was the owner of this “special” gas station in Hollywood in the 1940s and, as a result, learned of all the scandalous gossip of the day. Since Bowers is not an actual character in Hollywoodhis role in history is filled by two original characters, including Jack. Like bowers, Jack is a young ex-military with an important role to play in the petrol station. By the way, the other half of the Arbors of the story is the character of Ernie (Dylan McDermott), who runs the station and organizes all meetings between their clients and staff.
