The Glitter Ghetto. From Melrose to Hollywood Blvd. and from La Cienega to Western Ave., the Hollywood "Flats" are the remains of the L.A. basin before it climbs into the hills. It is the left-over residue of what was once the paramount of the film industry. And it is far from the star-studded mecca where young hopefuls once went to seek their fortune and fame.

More like a Bohemian theater off-Broadway, Hollywood has become a strip mall of sight delights and pleasure services, a barrio of sexual adventurism. A place where the producers are pimps, the starlets are harlots, the studios are bordellos, and the casting call is solely for those whose lives have been devalued in MAKE-BELIEVE CITY.The story revolves around a man, Mickey Chazworth, who is the premier reporter for a small, financially strapped, bi-weekly newspaper on the way to becoming "tabloidized." He is called on to do a series of articles about the sex-for-sale trade in Hollywood.It is a desperation ploy by Chazworths editor, the indefatigable Max Stowt, to inject reader interest by pandering copy about the oldest profession on Earth. The hope being to engender a larger circulation and create advertising sales to bail out the paper, even at the sacrifice of turning it into a tabloid. And to do this, the editor is willing to keep his ace reporter on assignment for several months.Now, Mickey Chazworth is a man who sees himself in the limelight of greater glory - a reporter with a mission to do quality work on stories of substance.

And it is the perfect foil for the embarrassingly ribald situations that occur along the way to trashing the "high-brow" image he has of himself.Thus, the story attempts to contrast the seedy side of the Hollywood streets in opposition to the glitz of this fantasy world of movie stars, to-die-for fashion, and the high life.