Everybody wants their fifteen minutes. As an American, in a culture of reality television, instant fame is almost considered a right. People will eat goat brains, marry strangers and swap wives just to get a chance see themselves on TV. Almighty television is a projection of all our affirmations and expectations. To see oneself on it, in no matter what state or context, often has one convinced that they have officially become somebody.

In Mark Connelly's Fifteen Minutes, George Sabro, is a nobody and he knows it. He's grown up around greatness, "in the shadow of the Chrysler Building," but has never achieved much semblance of success. George is a middle aged, junk food addicted, disaffected man whose life has been average, unexciting and except for a gross accounting error back in the mid 1980s, decidedly exiguous. But as George knows, being an apt student and surveyor of the TV landscape, an instant, easy fame can put all his failures and shortcomings into their proper perspective. An encounter with a CNN reporter covering a violent feminist protest at Victoria's Secret gives George a dynamite idea for his shot at stardom. "The media," the reporter tells George. "Can make anybody a starÉ A bunch of guys will blow up a bank and then stand around giving interviews like they've got diplomatic immunity." Fame is George's destiny, so he builds a bomb out of a Lucky Charms box and starts taking hostages.

From watching made-for-TV movies, George knew just who to choose: an old man, feeble but without a potentially dangerous cane, a pregnant lady, but one not too far along because sudden labor could ruin everything, a pretty girl; an acceptable ethnic; and a handsome, but not too virile, young man.

In the taking of hostages, however, Fifteen Minutes becomes a little problematic. Each hostage is seized without a struggle in mid-town, mid-morning Manhattan. George simply approaches them on the street and explains that he has a bomb. They don't put up a fight or even seem that concerned about their own safety. He takes them into a defunct boutique and handcuffs them to chairs, where the hostages complacently converse among themselves as if they were in the waiting room at the dentists.

As repayment for their cooperation, George's "demands" to the police are based on the needs of his prisoners. He wins them over by negotiating the delivery of an expensive, lavish lunch and Milky Way candy bars. Another round of "final demands" brings a year of free daycare for the pregnant lady, a raise for the ethnic truck driver and a tenure track position, upon completion of his doctorate, for the young man. After a mere few hours, the hostages cease to be George's prisoners and become his cheering section. They encourage him during his TV interviews, offer suggestions to help better his plan and, in the case of the pretty girl, flirt openly with the aging captor. George, they realize, has become their ticket to fame and fortune.

Mr. Connelly has skillfully crafted Fifteen Minutes in the language of consumerism; with effective product placement like any television show or movie you might see today. Populated in its pages are spots for Milky Way, Playboy magazine and George's favorite meal in the world, Lucky Charms cereal. Mr. Connelly, with his knowledge of faded television stars, talk show vernacular and made-for-TV movie scenarios creates a world where an aging TV and junk food addict such as George Sabro feels right at home. Everything is easy in the Fifteen Minutes world and if a problem arises, an answer is usually presented before the top of hour.

Over the course of the tense afternoon negotiations, a giant crowd with boisterous sign holding revelers and devoted rooting sections for each of the five hostages grows outside the boutique. Television crews shoot and air hours of sappy background footage on each hostage. Political and civic personalities are falling over themselves to meet every one of George's silly demands. He and his hostages are stars on every local channel. A cable network produces an expose into George's past and the hostage standoff has moved from a spot on the CNN news ticker to ninety-second clips of actual live footage. The hostages are delirious. George is speechless with pure ecstasy. They have made it. They are stars.

However, as their popularity crests, George finds plenty of opportunists who try to bogart their rightfully earned fame. Has-been personalities from Jackie Reno to Geraldo show up to grab the limelight for themselves. Then, more pressing entertainment newsbreaks and primetime ratings on the standoff plummet. As quickly as it came, stardom is on its way out. Without regard for prosecution or consequence George Sabro is tempted by the true media hog's delusion. Will he try to feed forever in the trough of that all affirming fame and wallow at any cost in the spotlight of a fickle, every shifting and attention-deficit entertainment landscape- or is his fifteen minutes truly enough?