A place to fall

by Roger Director

Thank the Lord for Father Joey O'Dell! Whenever the terminally ill have a dying wish, the soft-hearted, hard-drinking priest stops at nothing to answer those prayers. O'Dell has won America's heart, and has also made his creator very, very happy. No, not God, but TV producer Billy Ziff. A Place to Fall is the hilarious and poignant story of Billy's L.A. misadventures. When he first hit Hollywood to work on a Miami Vice-clone cop series, Billy thought he'd landed in heaven; it was a job for which any writer would happily give up the lifetime's use of a vowel. But tormented, blocked, and downright depressed by his formulaic scripts and conniving colleagues, Billy is just about to chuck his word processor when he sells Father Joey to the network. Suddenly, Billy is hot, famous, and rich. And so is his best buddy, Tony Paris, the previously unknown actor cast as the sexy clergyman, who turns out to be a creep of the worst variety. Which doesn't seem to dampen his allure to the female sex,