Vancouver author and former MGM assistant's debut novel is based on her own Hollywood blunder

Courtney Dickson · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 16, 2025 5:59 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

In the aboriginal 2000s, Christine Stringer worked arsenic an adjunct connected movie sets successful Vancouver. She brushed shoulders with stars and knew the interior workings of Hollywood North. 

While moving connected a movie starring Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, the manager hired her to determination to Los Angeles and beryllium his adjunct portion they finished up the movie — Walking Tall. 

"It was conscionable my imagination travel true," she said. 

But her imagination became thing of a nightmare erstwhile she was accused of stealing a transcript of the movie and investigated by the FBI for piracy aft she mislaid a DVD. 

That communicative is the inspiration for her debut novel, Charity Trickett Is Not So Glamorous, a light-hearted, comedic instrumentality connected what Stringer really endured — which includes a country wherever Charity takes a day to a movie premiere lone to larn he wasn't rather what she thought. 

"Jack is decidedly a existent feline that I went connected a archetypal day with successful L.A. and helium utilized maine to sneak into the premiere of Mean Girls," Stringer told CBC's North by Northwest host Margaret Gallagher. 

'She's a amended mentation of me'

Stringer acceptable the publication successful the '90s, a small earlier than erstwhile she found herself successful Tinseltown. 

"I americium specified a person of Hollywood and, successful my mind, if I wanted to constitute this publication and person it correspond the Hollywood that I grew up with and I loved, I had to determination the timeline backwards a small bit," she said. 

She said she has already planned 2 much books for Charity Trickett, which volition determination into the aboriginal 2000s.

Charity Trickett, who gives disconnected existent main quality energy, is "everything that I privation I was successful my aboriginal 20s erstwhile I lived successful L.A.," Stringer said. 

"She's feisty, she's smart," she said. 

"I deliberation that hindsight and property has fixed Charity … she's a amended mentation of maine due to the fact that of it. When I was successful L.A. and I was nether FBI investigation, each I could deliberation astir was however it impacted me. I didn't realize, past successful my 20s, however it was going to interaction my brag who was connected the verge of getting married, oregon however it would interaction the executives astatine the workplace who had decades of acquisition successful their manufacture and person kids that they person to nonstop disconnected to university."

In the novel, things spell awry for the protagonist erstwhile she loses a transcript of the large movie she's been moving on. 

If this happened today, Stringer said, the fallout would person happened much quickly. 

"With HD, that movie could beryllium distributed globally wrong seconds."

In Stringer's case, things did yet settee down. She continued to enactment successful movie for a fewer years before leaving the manufacture successful 2011. 

As for the missing DVD, she said investigators told her that she had been pickpocketed. 

"He was trying to extort MGM for, like, millions of dollars — this is the communicative I was told, caput you, and past they caught him. Nobody would archer maine immoderate details, but that's the communicative they gave me."

LISTEN | Hear Stringer's interrogation connected CBC's North by Northwest: