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We can reflect on a momentous decision by Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights leaders in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963.

Specktor is the son of a well-connected movie agent, Fred Specktor, which meant he had run-ins with the biggest celebrities of the 1970s and ’80s.

Specktor opens the story on the cusp of the ’60s, depicting his father, Fred, as a rising star at MCA, the talent agency then led by Lew Wasserman.

As Fred ingratiates himself with higher-caliber clients — Bruce Dern chief among them — he swims with the current of the decade’s most convention-breaking films.

Katherine, an avid reader who loves James Joyce and modern poetry, tries her hand at screenwriting, with Fred’s encouragement.