I used to laugh about writers who wrote stories about a writer writing stories. It seemed to me like a cheap way around creative blocks. Neal Simon comes to mind.
Today I watched an old Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner movie called The Bad and the Beautiful which was set in the movie industry. Another movie came on later this afternoon called State and Main and I gather, from what I hear coming from the other room, that the plot also centers around the making of a movie. I began to wonder just how often this is done by moviemakers. Three more movies immediately came to mind.
So I’m asking - can you name a movie that is centered in the movie industry or has prominent movie-making scenes?
One of the best ones I can think of is The Stunt Man (1980). Steve Railsback is on the run form the law when he comes across a movie company that just lost their chief stunt man in an accident. Director Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) offers to hide him from the law if he takes the dead guy’s place. Suspicion begins to arise that maybe it wasn’t an accident after all – Cross will manipulate anyone and do anything to get a good take.
Don’t forget Lost in LaMancha, Terry Gilliam’s fiasco of the Don Quixote story. Yes, it’s a documentary, no one would believe it if it was written that way.
I don’t care if it’s entirely subtextual, like Pulp Fiction, or biographical, like Ed Wood, or semi-fantastic, like Shadow of the Vampire.
I’m still waiting for the biopic of Orson Welles Mercury Theatre period, leading up to the premiere of Citizen Kane. It seems to me that Leonardo DiCaprio was born to play a young Orson Welles. What are they waiting for?
As far as existing films go, one of my favourites is Living in Oblivion, in which Steve Buscemi plays a director who has a… umm… nightmarish day of shooting. He’s also good in In The Soup in which he plays a desperate (aspiring) screenwriter who ends up hooked up with a colourful gangster with pretensions of being a producer. (Get Shorty was fun, too.)
The Search For One-Eye Jimmy is a great deadpan comedy (also featuring Steve Buscemi) about a group of friends in the Bronx for whom a missing friend presents an opportunity to get involved in a bit of cinema verite. Hilarious.
Yeah, it’s called Day For Night, which is a photographic technique in which night scenes are shot during daytime using filters to make it appear dark outside. Anyway, a great movie.
Also, check out Living In Oblivion. It’s a great Steve Buscemi flick with a hysterical performance by James LeGros supposedly based on a rather dim-witted Brad Pitt.
Or, you might want to check out Adaptation, a movie about a screenwriter writing that movie as it unfolds.
One thing I’ve learned from the Oscars is that Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood. You want movies about making movies (or more generally about acting/entertaining), just go through a list of past Academy Award nominees, and you’ll find plenty.
Make a halfway decent movie about Hollywood or acting, and you have a good shot at a nomination.
The Purple Rose of Cairo really captures the magic of going to the theatre and being in the audience of a really great movie.
**Mulholland Drive ** takes a somewhat different approach, but still covers the usual Hollywood truisms of phoniness, cutthroat tactics, etc.
Behind the Screen (1916), Charles Chaplin
The Extra Girl (1923), Mabel Normand
Show People (1928), Marion Davies
Movie Crazy (1932), Harold Lloyd
Make Me a Star (1932)
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
King Kong (1933)
A Star Is Born (1937)
It’s Love I’m After (1937)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Hollywood Cavalcade (1939)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
The Reluctant Dragon (1941)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), W.C. Fields
Thousands Cheer (1943)
Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945)
The Perils of Pauline (1947)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
A Star Is Born (1954)
Umm, I don’t know if that applies. It was a DOCUMENTARY, not a fictional movie.
Also, it’s called ‘LOOKING’ for Richard, not searching. Remember the beginning? It shows the words KING RICHARD on the screen, and then the letters “LOO” appear in the with word KING and the word FOR appears between to two to make “KING RICHARD” become " LOOking FOR richard". Sort of neat.
Although it’s a mini series and not a movie, I think it still applies…
Last year there was a pretty interesting series on Showtime called “Out Of Order”. It starred Eric Stoltz, William H. Macy, and several others. It is about a screen writer writing scripts for a series based on his life (the implication is that the end result is what you’re watching).
Through the show, there are many brazen illusions to the fact that the whole thing is a film, including seeing actual cameras following the main character. They go so far as to have “production meetings” with the main character, telling him his life should go and what choices he should make, based on feedback that the audience has given the producers. Very creative.
