BOOK REVIEW : Shining a Spotlight on the Path to Success : HOW TO MAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD: All the Right Moves;<i> by Linda Buzzell</i> : HarperCollins $22, cloth; $10, paper; 384 pages

Every day, hundreds of people come to Los Angeles hoping to work in film or television, obsessed with the dream of creating dreams. “How to Make It in Hollywood” won’t provide them with a map to success, but it will throw a little light on their path. This should be required reading for every star-struck kid stepping off of a bus at the Hollywood Greyhound station.

In Hollywood jargon, author Linda Buzzell is a hyphenate: a studio executive-psychotherapist, to be precise. It is her background in psychology that makes this book a worthwhile read for people considering a career in the entertainment industry. For example, the chapter “Focus: Know Who You Are” has readers create personal inventories of their talents, tastes and skills through a series of psychological questionnaires. It’s fun, actually--like taking a Cosmo quiz.

In another chapter, “The Right Reasons and the Wrong Reasons for Going Into Show Business,” Buzzell explains that it’s not nearly as important to “make it in Hollywood” as it is to have a happy and fulfilling life. “Could you be happy in any other line of work? If so, do it! Please!”

The entertainment industry has long been America’s way of denying prejudice. We like to point to a Bill Cosby or an Eddie Murphy as proof that bias is a thing of the past. But Buzzell says Hollywood is no more immune to prejudice than the rest of the country. She discusses discrimination--especially racism, sexism and ageism--with sensitivity and intelligence.

“It isn’t easy for anyone to get a job in Hollywood, but when the industry gets a cold, members of the non-dominant groups get pneumonia. There’s a double standard.”

She cautions against denial, advising people from “protected classes” to face up to discrimination realistically. “The people I know who deal most effectively with discrimination follow a simple plan: they admit it exists. They don’t pretend it doesn’t. They get appropriately angry about it, but don’t blame every problem in their lives on it.”

Her psychological approach follows through in her advice on networking, marketing yourself, selling and schmoozing. Instead of offering snake oil and tricks that promise to magically turn the reader into the next Michael Eisner or Tom Cruise, Buzzell preaches hard work, self-discipline and tenacity.

She counsels: “You can break through--if you make the right moves. Nobody said it would be easy. Don’t turn the anger inward, where it can fester. . . . Channel this energy into constructive action, on both an individual and collective level.”

If nothing else, Buzzell gives the reader a good pep talk. She suggests thinking of yourself as an employee of your own corporation: “Your gifts are the major asset of this corporation. It’s your job to get out there in the world and give those gifts, sharing them with other people who would benefit from them. This is a job from which you can never be fired.”

Buzzell’s book is primarily for people at the beginning of their entertainment careers. The first chapters are a primer on show business and its culture. If you work in “the business” or watch “Entertainment Tonight” (or even know someone who subscribes to People), you may find this a bit rudimentary. Had Buzzell presented it with some irony or humor, it might have been more digestible.

But she takes her job of giving the reader a primary education seriously. In an appendix, she includes a show business glossary with a section on Yiddish and another section on writer-speak. These days, it might be worthwhile to include a few words of Japanese.

Then there’s the book’s title. Entertainment is an industry where knowledge, or even the illusion of knowledge, is power. People who want to read this book in public in Los Angeles might hide it behind today’s Variety or, better yet, dress it up with the dust jacket of Julia Phillips’ “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.”

In a city where everyone considers himself or herself an insider, it’s easy to laugh off books about how to make it in Hollywood. It’s easier still to laugh off books titled, “How to Make It in Hollywood.” But books like this tell us that the Hollywood dream is still alive. That dream attracts the fresh faces and new voices that can make going to the movies so wonderful.

Besides, without the dream, what would we do with all that popcorn?