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Joel Thurm's new book SEX, DRUGS and PILOT SEASON: Confessions of a Casting Director (Bear Manor Media) is smart, sardonic, and perhaps best of all: filled with great dish. One of Hollywood's most admired and accomplished casting directors, Thurm worked in a business where people were still deep in the closet. He was the first person in NBC history to take a same-sex partner as his date to company events. When the AIDS crisis hit, Joel made every effort possible to get work-any work- for actors who were ill, so that they could get or keep their health insurance. You might have seen the recent New York Post story where Joel shares his experiences with Rock Hudson and Robert Reed. SEX, DRUGS and PILOT SEASON takes us on the wild ride of his career from working in the theatre with legends Pearl Bailey, Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, David Merrick, and Gloria Swanson to being part of the wise (and sometimes unwise) early career casting decisions involving Jason Bateman, Tom Cruise, Ted Danson, Farrah Fawcett, Don Johnson, Regina King, Madonna, Joaquin and River Phoenix and Susan Sarandon, to name a few. Thurm played a key role in many of the most pivotal casting decisions in TV history (including Cheers, The Cosby Show, Hill Street Blues, and Taxi)-and for three enduringly popular movies: Grease, Airplane!, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In contrast to Hollywood memoirs where the author attempts to lionize himself and get even with the everyone on the planet, Joel is a wonderful storyteller who is honest about his success and failures. Thurm candid about doing his fair share of drugs in his leisure time and acknowledges instances where other powerful Hollywood people did employ a casting couch. If Thurm learned that someone did have a casting couch, he would subsequently have nothing to do with them.