A Star is Born!

Our movie for August-September is A Star is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. The setting for this movie is Hollywood. Not just the city itself, but the whole idea of making movies. Despite the fact that Hollywood is kind of shy about making movies about itself, there have been many good (and a few bad) ones.

My favorites include the following:

Sunset Blvd. (1950) - Billy Wilder's somewhat satirical film noir about a down-on-his-luck screenwriter (are there any other kind?) and a past-her-prime silent film star is one of the best American movies ever. Along with William Holden as the writer and Gloria Swanson as film legend Norma Desmond, it features Erich von Stroheim playing a former movie director that has become the chauffeur/butler of Desmond. Stroheim had actually directed Swanson during the silent era, but she fired him a third of the way through the movie they were working on. It was one of Stroheim's last directorial efforts, and afterwards he turned strictly to acting.

The Player (1992) - Even though Robert Altman said this was one of his least favorite works, it's the Altman film I like the best. Tim Robbins plays a producer who thinks he's getting death threats from a disguntled (read, "down-on-his-luck") screenwriter. The movie is famous for all the cameos of Hollywood celebrities (more than 60). It's also famous for its opening tracking shot, where the camera follows different characters around a movie studio lot, while many of them talk about famous tracking shots!

Singin' in the Rain (1952) - Not only is this a great musical, but it also gives you a funny and slightly accurate view of what Hollywood was like in that transition period from silent pictures to sound. My favorite sequence has always been the re-shooting of The Dueling Cavalier as a talkie. Placing the microphones is impossible, the lead actress's Brooklyn accent is annoying, and when they finally screen the picture, the sound gets out of synch. "Yes yes yes!" "No no no!"

I should also mention some great documentaries about moviemaking:

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) chronicles the difficult task of shooting Apocalypse Now. The lead actor has a heart attack, a typhoon wrecks the set, and Marlon Brando shows up late, having never read the script. The film was shot by director Francis Ford Coppola's wife Eleanor.

Lost in La Mancha (2002) is about another difficult production, only this one never made it past the first few days of shooting. It's about Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which encountered its own problems with weather and sick actors. The film was eventually closed down, but we hear that Gilliam is back at it and plans to release a completely re-shot version in 2011.

American Movie (1999) is about the difficulties of an eccentric ne'er-do-well trying to make a super-low-budget independent film. Even though he's working on a shoestring, it's no easy task.

I guess when it comes to documentaries, I like watching other people have problems.