The Big Picture

The Big Picture (Christopher Guest, 1989) Every film-maker who has ever made a film in Hollywood has had a sneaking desire to make a film about the absurdities of making a film in Hollywood. There's just a considerable smaller amount who have the balls to risk reprisals in the company-town. One doesn't shit where one eats. There's an even smaller amount who have the talent, wit, and lack of invective to point out the absurdities without making it a hatchet job...or a crashing bore. 

Wilder. Keaton. Sturges (Preston). Kelly and Donen. Cukor (and Wellman). Kazan. Minnelli. Rush. Altman. The Coen's. Welles. That's a considerable list and the results have every color of attitude from wonder-blushing red to ultra-purple put-down. 

Chris Guest's 1989 film falls somewhere in-between, retaining the wonder-lust of film-making with the soul-crushing corporate low-balling of vision. Having the creative impulse doused by a flood of compromises and bidding agendas.

Budding film-maker Nick Chapman (Kevin Bacon) is "hot", having just won a film-making competition and given the opportunity to pitch ideas for "projects." Taking a meeting with studio producer Alan Habel (J.T. Walsh) gives him flashing hope until Habel wants to make changes to his ideas more in line with Habel's peccadilloes. Then, there's the "Catch-22" of not having an agent—he can't be taken seriously without one but can't get one until he's taken seriously. So, he takes a lunch with a prospective agent (Martin Short), more interested in being seen than seeing what he can do.

Then, he gets invited to a Hollywood party given by Habel and his wife (Fran Drescher), but it's less about working than distraction—touring the house, socializing, networking. One of the biggest distractions is Gretchen (Teri Hatcher, her first film), aspiring actress, who further pushes Nick from his artistic visions by suggesting that he write his movie with her in mind. Her efforts further complicate Nick's life by making his girlfriend Susan (Emily Longstreth) jealous, driving a wedge in their relationship. Gretchen becomes the embodiment of every Hollywood enticement, moving him further from making HIS movie and compromising his aspirations. Pretty soon, his potential movie is so far afield from his intentions that his enthusiasm starts to wane, and ultimately, his film is canceled, forcing him to take entry-level jobs in Hollywood just to make ends meet.

Oh, how far the lofty intentions fall. It's hard to drum up much sympathy for Nick—sure, the Hollywood system is corrupt and capricious, but Guest at least makes his downfall as much about the weakness of Nick's character as the environment he's stepped into.

 

That story, thus, is not that involving, and it has a hard time competing with the opening of the showing of student films vying for Best of Show, which is a hilarious look at the pit-falls of student film competitions; they involve a film by an agent's son—loaded with recognizable stars, but clearly shot at a time when those actors are available, with mismatched shots showing that nobody was on the same set at the same time—or a full-of-itself vanity project by a young filmmaker with an outsized ego featuring himself in a starring role. The satire of the sequence is sharp and cruel and the rest of the film never lives up to the potential of the opening sequence—an inadvertent portent for what is to come for its hero.

Hearts of the West

Written at the time of the film'e release...

Caution: there is spoilerage ahead!

Hearts of the West (Howard Zieff, 1975) You've gotta have some kinda admiration for a movie that starts out with dialog you always think of yelling when a movie starts in a jabbering theater: "Allright, people, settle down, please, please!" And then, when we're all settled we are given a screen-test--the illusion (it's all acted, after all) of a reality (screen-tests are "real" world versions of movie illusion) of an illusion (the movie-world that we see on screen).

Through it all stumbles Lewis Tater (Jeff Bridges), but he does it both in 16mm black and white for the screen-test, but also through the 35mm color for the movie-movie that we, the audience, see. Lewis keeps plunging himself through reality and illusion and multiple layers of the two. Lewis is shown to be a writer writing illusions (his western stories), acts them out (which is also an illusion/delusion, but a reality that they are acted out, but that's also an illusion). He is sent a letter from a Nevada correspondence college (reality) to which he goes to attend classes and hang around campus. His brothers are yokking it up as he tells of his plan because they can't adjust so easily as Lewis to crossing between reality and illusion (if they call the college a "ranch" and use all sorts of western jargon, then it has to be able to teach western writing--it's gotta be for real--but the western jargon is idiotic and hype to the brothers).

So Lewis goes to college. It ain't there. The college is an illusion, but not really, it's there in the form of the real post office boxes ticket agent Dub Taylor points at. The college is an illusion, but it's there in the reality of the boxes. And Taylor talks about it as though it were really there. Tater is thrown out of his funk by a landlady who sets him up for the night. There he can start professing his abilities ("I'm a writer!--also an illusion if you take the words of Howard Pike (Andy Griffith), "You're not a writer 'til somebody tells ya are," for reality--but still Tater writes--he is a writer, whatever his talent) and acting out his illusions of battling desperadoes with an imaginary whip. Then, suddenly illusion becomes reality as he must fight and flee flea-bag desperadoes. He "wanders through the desert, parched and thirsty" turning the reality of his situation into the fantasy of his novels. Who should he wander upon, or who should wander upon him? Real cowboys.

But not real cowboys--movie cowboys. They are, but they are not. Lewis becomes one himself, living out his fantasies on a movie set in an illusion of the West, while (in reality) he is being stalked by the two con-men he has inadvertently robbed. The conflict of reality and illusions abound: Lewis, overcome by his fantasies, going berserk, charging the leading man, extending a "bullet-tearin'-his-gut" death, generally screwing up a scene; the improbably scene where Lewis must pose as a young businessman to get some cash from the bank-notes of the two swindlers at the bank (improbable, but...what is a more interesting situation where a young actor must act a role to gain something, ala Hitchcock's Stage-Fright); Howard pike's "in-the-nick" entrance as he shoots one of the swindlers full of lead--he only shoots imaginary bullets--blanks--which are enough to convince the crook, and us, that he has been shot, especially after Lewis really has been shot (his disbelief that such a thing could really happen exemplified in his "there's a hole in my leg...a round little hole" My God! It isn't pointing your finger and whistling air through your mouth, it's real!), and the final confusion as Tater, led into the ambulance, tells Pike, "What a story this'll be...independent wealth." Reality turned into Fantasy. A complete turn-around from the beginning of the film when Lewis' fantasies became true. Now, the truth will become a story--a fantasy. Lewis' life is now enough to fulfill his need of fantasy and illusion.

Howard Zieff directed Hearts of the West very simply and economically, a habit handed over from his commercial-making days. His Slither, to me, was a vacancy--I can't remember much of it, except that it was paired* with Scarecrow, which at least has Gene Hackman, Al Pacino and Vilmos Zsigmond going for it. And if I've dwelled too long on Rob Thompson's script a bitt too much (a bit?), it is because I found Zieff's direction of this story a trifle pedestrian. Zieff can direct a fine picture for writers, for he doesn't let his direction get too flashy and hurt the story. That's good if ya got a good story like Hearts..., but it you've got an "El Goose-egg" like Slither his direction can't help.

Written December 1, 1975

I had to re-read this several times (and again, even as I was typing this out), and had trouble following it each time. So rather than re-review the movie, I feel like using this space to review the review. It's all too much "theme-paper" analysis assuming that the reader has already seen the film (and that's not a safe assumption, given this particular film) as opposed to being a good summation/review of the particulars for people who, it is assumed, have not seen it, and are making a decision to do so. For example, I give away far too much of the plot, and, again, as this film is not often seen, or even known about (undeservedly so, I think) that's not a good thing. Not a very good review, and not very well-written. An "off" day.

So, perhaps a little summary is in order. Hearts of the West was a fairly-low budget film written by Seattle-based writer Rob Thompson, who, after a long time seeing B-westerns, wrote a screen-play about the early days of film-making--not too long after the time of the cowboy era, really--and of an aspiring writer who lived and dreamed the Old West, or rather the Old West portrayed in pulp-novels and the silent westerns. It was light-hearted, with some dark spots, and a unique voice that set it apart from most other movies being made at the time.

What I remember of Hearts of the West are the performances of Jeff Bridges and Blythe Danner, but especially Andy Griffith (playing a morally ambiguously character after years of squeaky-clean "Mayberry" television work) and more especially Alan Arkin**--all riding-cropped egomania as the director. And I remember the bits of dialog--those sited in the review, like "a ROUND little hole," and "You're not a writer 'til someone says you are" (a favorite of mine), but also his screen-test line "This ain't a ca-tillion!" Rob Thompson the script-writer moved from films to television, and from writing to directing, and his quirky brand of each breathed that atypical freshness to such quirky shows as "Northern Exposure," "Ed," "Monk," and "The Book of Daniel."

It's nice to find entertainment outside of the cookie-cutter.

* This was in the day of double-bills (R.I.P.)

** I love Alan Arkin and his work (and his son's, for that matter). And I came across an interview with Dick Cavett, where he talks about playing this director and he did it in such a way that, in every scene, he was doing the attitude of every director he hated--but a different director in each scene. The characterization is the same ("That would have been a DISASTER!" he says in the interview), but the attitude of each director is different. Alan Arkin amazes me.

Hail Caesar! (2015)

The Hollywood Tenet
or
Mannix Depressive (Art and Artifice and Commies, the Movie)

The Coen Brothers return to Hollywood (and specifically Capitol Pictures, which figured in their Barton Fink) in Hail Caesar!, their latest production and it is an all-star affair. One also gets the impression that, after toiling in the Big Studio fields for awhile, it is also something of a purge for the film-making brothers. Because, however much they love movies and making movies, the business of movie-making turns the love bittersweet and sour.

Hail Caesar! has both those aspects in mass (entertainment) quantities. It looks gorgeous—it's photographed by their frequent shooter Roger Deakins and pops with technicolor hues. The movie stops dead in its momentum for a couple of giddy production numbers: one featuring Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-type who's America's sweetheart, so much so that she's pregnant and not sure who the father is; there's a sailors-on-leave song and dance number front-lined by Channing Tatum that's so clever and choreographed so well it rivals the M-G-M dance numbers in their zenith. It's great Hollywood-style stuff, and the movie perks up a hundred-fold when those sequences, however ironic they are, happen on-screen.

But, they're small parts—the tent-poles that keep up the fabric of the movie, serving the same functions as the numbers did in the old musicals. The trouble with Hail, Caesar! is the fabric those tent-poles are supporting is pretty saggy, a bit tattered, and is constructed of barely held together parts, like a bad quilt. It's a good idea for a movie—showing the artifice that goes on behind the curtains of art. It's been done before, this showing of how glittery sausage is made (whether Day of the Locust or The Last Tycoon or The Big Knife or The Bad and the Beautiful and its European cousin Two Weeks in Another Town), and what they all say is the same old saw, the movies are great, they make you feel good, but the behind-the-scenes of the manufactured beauty and quest for perfection is pretty ugly and cut-throat.

"Yeah, yeah, sure it is, Mr. critic. Can we see the movie, please, instead?" That's the problem: the fantasy is so much more compelling than seeing how it got that way. It's the problem with all the other movies; it's the problem with Hail, Caesar!, too. We're so in love with the movies, we just don't care what goes on behind the scenes, despite the tabloids. We dig the illusion, want to believe in it. Klieg lights blind us, sure, but we're attracted to them like moths to a flame.

It is 1951. Eddie Mannix* (Josh Brolin), an executive with Capitol Pictures, goes to confession—the second time in twenty-four hours, much to the weariness of the priest on the other side of the screen, the father who must bless him for he has sinned. Seems he's been sneaking cigarettes after telling his wife that he'd quit, and he's heartily sorry. Not sorry enough that he'll change, but sorry enough that he'll be back at the confessional in another 24 hours. But, it is a good show of remorse, nonetheless. A couple "Hail Mary's" will solve it.

So, give unto Mary what is Mary's and give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Back to work. A check of his watch—he's got a meeting. Eddie has time management almost down, despite working 18 hour days for the studio. First stop after the confessional is getting to a house pre-dawn to nix one of Capitol's starlets from making questionable modeling choices ("She's young, she needed the money") before the cops bust in and cause a tabloid scandal. Next, back at the studio, is a phone call from Capitol's President, Mr. Skank, to tell him that, rather than put another more expensive star in its place, he wants to cast Capitol's rootin'-tootin' cowboy star, Hobie Doyle, (Alden Ehrenreich, who's a real find, like Johnny Depp's dimmer little brother) as the lead in a sophisticated drawing room comedy "Merrily We Dance." **

Yes, boss. Sure, boss. Next up is a summit of LA religious leaders (Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Jewish) about their "respectful, serious" religious drama "Hail, Caesar!" There is much debate, much doxology, but the Truth of the matter is that it's Capitol's most expensive film in production and headlines Capitol's biggest star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). The purpose of the meeting is to ensure that, after reading the script,*** they will give their approval and not protest the film at its opening, which they grudgingly agree to as long as "there is no portrayal of the godhead."

That over, Mannix visits Capitol's aquatic musical star DeeAnna Moran (Johansson) who's got a serious case of the hormones and is distressed (no, "pissed" would be the word) that she may be getting too big for her mermaid's tail. She's pregnant, not sure who the father is, and wants to keep the baby without anybody finding out that...well, that she's pregnant and not sure who the father is. Hey, call back the earlier ecumenical council and they might suggest "Immaculate Conception," (but think of the pressure on the kid!).

"Hail Caesar!" (the movie within the movie) has a lot riding on it. So much so, that the biggest problem for Mannix to solve is when Whitlock, its star, is kidnapped for ransom by a group called "The Future." Fending off twin-sister gossip columnists (both played by Tilda Swinton) who want the story, Eddie must get Baird back and keep the movie in production, while also talking to the Lockheed corporation about taking a corporate job with them. The pitch from the aerospace boys is that Lockheed is the future—they just had a hand in doing the latest H-bomb test, something far more important than the trivial glamor of Hollywood. 

Mannix is conflicted. He spends 18 hours a day managing that trivia and the Lockheed job would, supposedly, cut that time that could be spent on his family. And that job has more "real" use than the manufacturing of fantasy. But, it's the '50's. America has just come through a devastating war that decimated humanity and displayed the worst that human beings are capable of. And now, America is in a propaganda war (and a potential devastating real war) with the forces of communism—and impacts him with Union negotiations and a vocal group of screen-writers who see no profit from their work (save for a pay-for-hire salary)—and America needs that fantasy of glamour and the potential for the best things in life to inspire the American populace to turn the wheels of Industry. Isn't that important, too?

Wellllll....this all makes Hail, Caesar! sound more important than it is. It's one of the least of the Coen Brothers movies, feels less fully formed, and more scattered, and with less of an over-arching theme. Even if they make you grasp for it, you usually get the sense from them, that there's an important thesis to their works, but this—this just feels trivial (appropriately, I guess). And speaking of trivial, if you're going to see this for Scarlett Johansson or Channing Tatum or Jonah Hill or Ralph Fiennes, they have glorified cameo's, single scenes, actually. They're good ones, but they're basically guest stars here. Most of the movie is spent on Brolin, Clooney and Ehrenreich and the rest are...atmosphere? Padding?

And the best part of the movie (besides those musical numbers and the sharply written meeting with the clerics) is the Coen's playing around with History—specifically with the role the Communist Party played in 1950's Hollywood. What they imagine is Joe McCarthy's worst nightmare: that the Hollywood Ten was more than a bunch of barking chihuahua's just trying to find work and WERE actively agents for the Soviet Union, trying to subvert the government and planning an imminent attack. Maybe that work with Spielberg on Bridge of Spies gave them the inspiration, and they transplanted a bit of the director's 1941 into the mix for some subversive spice. It amuses me to think so.

But, it's not quite there; it is a couple sub-plots and connecting tissue short of a good movie...well, actually a good Coen Brothers movie (which usually is better than most movie-product these days). Even if you exit one, depressed by the story or the negative or nihilistic conclusions, you still walk out knowing you've seen something fully formed and solid—a well-conceptualized and realized project. Hail Caesar! isn't that, though. It's a good idea for a movie, and great to look at, but not very satisfying to watch, despite the efforts made to produce it. The craft does not add up to content. 

Maybe those commie screenwriters are right. If it wasn't for them...you might get a movie like this one.

* Eddie Mannix. He really existed, but not the way he is in the movie. Mannix was a "fixer" for M-G-M, a problem-solver, the studio plumber fighting leaks. It was his job to keep the product safe, making the actors look good in the press, keeping the workers in line, feeding stories to the gossip columnists while keeping them away from ones that would harm the studio's product, and thus, the studio. Mannix worked for M-G-M from 1923 to 1962, working his way up to general manager and vice-president (an apt title given his activities). Mannix worked the press and the LAPD to keep M-G-M's "more stars than there are in the Heavens" out of the scandal sheets and was very successful doing it. He was Roman Catholic. He was not a family man, allegedly conducting many affairs during his lifetime, was married twice, and rumors swirl about how he actually wielded his power, and his most notorious rumor is that he may have had something to do with the "suicide" of George Reeves, TV's "Superman," who had just broken off an affair with Mannix's socialite second wife. The Coen's conception of Mannix is primarily fiction, because Mannix was as good as keeping his own secrets as he was with others'.

** John Wayne once told Dick Cavett he'd always wanted to do a Noel Coward play, but "I guess they figured spurs and 'Blithe Spirit' wouldn't go together."

*** Which is generally approved with one exception—"The jumping between chariots...is a little 'fakey.'"

Robert Taylor in Quo Vadis. Look familiar?