# Movies about making movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 12, 2005, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275 "2005-12-12T17:09:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/41 "2005-12-13T04:28:36Z")
How about “Scream 3”? Or “Get Shorty?” ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/42 "2005-12-13T04:42:51Z")
Robert Townsend’s _Hollywood Shuffle_ skewers the movie industry, and Ah-nold Schwartzeneggar’s _The Last Action Hero_ skewers genre movie conventions, and Spike Lee’s _Bamboozled_ is about racist preconceptions in television. So I got nothing. Maybe we can lump these three under “honorable mentions.” ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/43 "2005-12-13T04:45:44Z")
Oh, wait. Lee’s student film, _The Answer_, posits a black filmmaker chosen to helm the remake of D.W. Griffith’s \*Birth of A Nation. \* ---
**Author:** ![stegon66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee59a6/32.png) [@stegon66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stegon66)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/44 "2005-12-13T14:09:47Z")
[Everything for Sale](http://imdb.com/title/tt0065226/) Not the easiest film to get into, but worth a rental. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/45 "2005-12-13T14:09:56Z")
**Baadasss!** , which I watched just last night, thanks to the miracle of Netflix, is about Melvin van Peebles making “Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song” and just about destroying himself in the process. It was made by his son, Mario van Peebles, who plays Melvin. Neat movie. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/46 "2005-12-13T14:35:05Z")
**[RKO 281](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0120801/)** a made for TV drama about the making of **Citizen Kane** **The Bad and The Beautiful** and **The Barefoot Contessa** deal with moviemaking, with some scenes involving filming. ---
**Author:** ![ColonelDax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@ColonelDax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ColonelDax)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/47 "2005-12-13T15:50:05Z")
> [@The Scrivener](#): > > There was an anarchic French black comedy from about ten years ago [nitpick] Belgian. [/nitpick] ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/48 "2005-12-13T16:30:37Z")
Fassbinder’s _Warnung vor einer Heiligen Nutte_ (Beware of a Holy Whore.) _Living in Oblivion_ reminded me a _lot_ of this movie. One of the things that I like about _Living in Oblivion_: [spoiler]It’s _entirely_ dream sequences. At no point in the film is anyone _actually_ awake. It’s dream-sequence-within-dream-sequence, much of which involves dreaming about _simulating_ dreaming. Who’s dream is it? It might be the Red King’s dream, or Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker’s.[/spoiler] [_Perfect Blue_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0156887/) is a nice little Polanski-ish tale about a film production that is marred by serial murders. Sort of. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/49 "2005-12-13T17:05:41Z")
One of my all time favorites not mentioned yet: [White Hunter Black Heart](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100928/) with Clint Eastwood directing and starring as John Wilson (John Houston) and his trip to Africa to film The African Queen where he is more obsessed with hunting elephants tahn making the film. ---
**Author:** ![haardvark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@haardvark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/haardvark)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/50 "2005-12-13T17:40:55Z")
**A Midwinter’s Tale** revolves around a bunch of neurotic British Hacktors staging Hamlet in a falling down church. Not about a movie, but still entirely in that “behind the curtain” vein. One of my all time faves. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275/51 "2005-12-13T17:59:14Z")
Hey! I almost forgot one of my favourite movies _ever_: _[Crime Wave](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088963/)_. Not the Sam Raimi movie of the same name which was released the same year, but a tragically under-distributed Canadian indie that is something extremely special. It’s about a writer/director who’s working on a script for a noirish picture. He’s a peculiar character that has a few quirks. He doesn’t speak much. He rents a makeshift room in a suburban family’s garage, and his schedule is set by the streetlamp outside his window, which produces the only light he can write by. Oh, and he can only write beginnings and endings – he can’t seem to come up with a middle to connect them. (The audience gets to see every iteration of his script as though it had been realized.) The family’s juvenile daughter is thrilled to have a movie person living in the garage, and does everything in her power to help him with his writer’s block and hook him up with a producer. What makes the movie especially awesome is the way it looks, though: It’s shot entirely on expired 16mm Kodak colour film, which gives it a supersaturated, hallucinatory feel. The sound mix is excellent, too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-about-making-movies/335275.md?page=2)