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Moving Pictures

Moving Pictures

FantasyHigh Fantasy
Pages
400
Published
1990
Language
English

Synopsis

Holy Wood is calling — a mysterious force is luring people to a stretch of Discworld coastline and turning them into movie stars. Victor Tugelbend, a wizard student who has spent years deliberately failing exams, finds himself the reluctant leading man of the new 'click' industry. As the moving picture craze grips Ankh-Morpork, something terrible stirs beneath Holy Wood, using the power of dreams and mass belief to break through from another dimension. A parody of Golden Age Hollywood and the cult of celebrity.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

FunnySatiricalAdventurousWhimsical
Reluctant HeroFish Out of WaterMystery BoxSurvival

Genres

Fantasy High Fantasy Comic Fiction Humor Horror Science Fiction

About the author

T
Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was an English author best known for the Discworld series, a sequence of forty-one comic fantasy novels set on a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. Across four decades, the Discworld grew from a parody of sword-and-sorcery fantasy into one of the most sustained works of social satire in English literature, examining politics, religion, science, gender, race, capitalism, and the nature of stories themselves. Pra...

Characters

Victor TugelbendProtagonist

A wizard student who has deliberately been failing his exams for years to avoid graduating and working. Holy Wood lures him into becoming a film star.

GingerSupporting

The female lead of Holy Wood's click industry — a natural star whose connection to the mysterious force beneath Holy Wood is deeper than she knows.

Cut-Me-Own-Throat DibblerSupporting

Ankh-Morpork's most persistent street merchant, who immediately pivots to selling terrible food to film audiences. A recurring comic figure across the series.

Havelock VetinariSupporting
The BursarSupporting
All characters in Moving Pictures

Frequently asked questions

  • What does Moving Pictures satirize?

    Golden Age Hollywood — the dream factory, the manufactured star system, and the way cinema creates illusions that can take on a life of their own. Pratchett parallels the metaphorical 'magic' of cinema with actual Discworld magic.

  • When was Moving Pictures published?

    First published in October 1990 by Victor Gollancz. It is the tenth Discworld novel.

  • Is Moving Pictures in a Discworld sub-series?

    It is the first book in the loose 'Industrial Revolution' arc — a grouping of Discworld novels that each examine a different modern industry transplanted to the Disc. The sequence continues with The Truth (newspapers), Going Postal (postal service), and others.

  • What is the horror element in Moving Pictures?
  • Who is Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler?

    Dibbler is one of the Discworld's great comic supporting characters — an Ankh-Morpork street vendor who can smell any business opportunity and immediately produce a terrible product to fill it. His meat pies are legendarily bad. He reappears across many Discworld novels.

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