Hollywoodland

dir: Allen Coulter
[img_assist|nid=830|title=Hollywoodland. Bad things happened there, apparently|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=269|height=400]
There must be, somewhere, someone who was desperate to find out about the fate of George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on tv before most of us were born. Hasn’t it been keeping you up at night? “George, George, what happened to you, you bright, shining star?”: isn’t that how you cry yourself to sleep each night?

Maybe he was mentioned around the time when Christopher Reeves, who played the cinematic incarnation of the Man of Steel, snapped his unsteely spine or when he died. The Superman Curse, people intoned in hushed voices. The hubris of playing a guy who is invulnerable calls down the anger of the gods to punish the idolater, in the same way that playing Jesus tends to crap out most actors careers. Just ask Jim Caviezel.

Who? It doesn’t matter. This is, after all, about a different fantasy character that we’re talking about.

I have a dim recollection of the show being played on telly when I was a kid. Black and white, initially, but then again, the telly was a black and white one anyway. The Richard Donner Superman movie had already come out as well, so watching the tv serial was anachronistic even then. It was like watching something from vaudeville, from the visual Stone Age. That’s where it derived its charm from, at least for me.

The thing about the television Superman was, nearly half a century before CGI and better effects turned him into the multi-skilled ubermensch he would become, he was all too human. He looked like your dad wearing a costume and play acting. The flying looked faker than a pole dancer’s boobs, and the dialogue was trite even by the standards of early tv triteness.

Maybe there’s a market for a story about the guy. Maybe you were as curious as I was. Maybe you couldn’t give a damn either way. In which case you’re already bored and probably scratching yourself deftly in two places at once. Aren’t you the pinnacle of evolution?

Allen Coulter’s big screen debut (he is best known for working on The Sopranos) tries to tell a compelling story regarding the death of Superman, but it’s not entirely successful. It uses an A-B story structure to give us background on George himself, surprisingly well played by Ben Affleck, as well as an investigation into his death, but only one of these works.

The A story follows the adventures and travails of a sleazy private investigator, Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), as he tries to unravel the inconsistencies around Reeves’s death in 1959. Much as they try to turn it into Chinatown, with a hell of a lot of film noir clichés, he doesn’t really work that well as a character.

Far more successful is the B story which follows Reeves from his early days as a jobbing actor, to his peak as the all American hero, and his inevitable decline. He begins a relationship with Toni Mannix (Diane Lane) an older woman married to a powerful studio boss (Bob Hoskins). Toni possesses all the glamour of an ex-showgirl matched with that Golden Era of Hollywood elegance, and she is quite devoted to her boy. She dotes on the boy, and becomes his sugarmomma par excellence.

Affleck, unlike the vast majority of roles he’s ever played, manages to represent an actual character here different from the overeager and slightly retarded fratboy that he usually plays. It’s in his voice and in the way he carries himself, and it really is an impressive performance.

The shame is that the film seems to concentrate more on the badly underwritten private investigator character rather than Reeves. Simo, based on an actual sleazemonger who got himself involved with the case called Milo Speriglio, has a bad relationship with his ex-wife, his son, his girlfriend, and pretty much anyone he appears with. There is no adequate explanation given as to why.

When he starts drinking straight out of a Jack Daniels bottle whilst driving later in the film, we’re supposed to understand that he’s on some kind of downward spiral because of the nature of the case, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense. There is no sense of motivation as to why he is pursuing the case, since he has no personal or financial investment in the outcome past a certain point. Then when bad stuff starts happening to him, you realise that its all bullshit, especially by the end.

The common trope of ‘divorcee dad trying to win back the respect of his children’ is introduced, as if he’s determined to find out what happened to Reeves that fateful night because his son is so depressed at Superman’s suicide, but it’s throwaway in its nature and in its implementation. When he turns up drunk at his son’s school, are we meant to be horrified, disgusted, saddened, or, as I was, confused?

Both storylines are adequately (and sedately) put together, all the same. The look of the film is well done, trying to recall the Golden days when studio executives could have people killed with the flutter of an eyelid, and where starlets and b-movie hunks were at the mercy of the studio system, which ruled over all. It was a time when studio execs in LA had more power than politicians, the police and controlled the media with threats and money. Ah, nothing like today.

The acting by everyone except Brody is very good. There is practically nothing Adrien Brody does that indicates he is in the same film as the rest of the actors. I wondered at some stages if he was a time-traveller from the future, sent back in time to solve the mystery of Superman’s death and to impregnate Sarah Conner’s grandmother.

Though they have a hard time finding parts of LA that still look like they did fifty years ago, they give it enough of a glow, and get the ladies to dress real nice to make it look right. And everyone smokes and drinks, from breakfast onwards so it must be the 50s.

Of the recent flicks set in 50s LA, this is one of the better ones. Brian DePalma’s recent atrocity The Black Dahlia, which is nothing like this, isn’t fit to sniff Hollywoodland’s panties let alone sit on the same DVD shelf with it.

Strong scenes include anytime George is paired with Toni Mannix onscreen, a scene where George makes a public appearance with kids going berserk, only to have a child ask if he can bounce some bullets off of him, and a melancholic, aging George singing songs in Spanish about beautiful girls with green eyes.

Reeves’ story remains the most fascinating part of the film; watching him try to navigate his way through the treacherous waters of the studio system, and be continually confronted with people telling him that he should be happy with his place in life. It’s not so much someone wishing he had something someone else had. You get to feel something for a guy who is trapped by the expectations and limitations placed on him by others, and even more by the expectations he places upon himself.

To get to the good stuff, you have to sit through a lot of other crap, but it’s not too onerous, and it’s not too crap. Wow, what a sterling recommendation. You’d see a film if it was marketed that way, wouldn’t you?

“If you see one film this autumn, make sure it’s Hollywoodland: It’s Not Too Crap.”

My biggest problem is with the setup that proceeds thusly.

Something happens, apply Occam’s Razor to the situation in order to derive the likely story as to what happened. Discard Occam’s Razor because you cut yourself with it, and proceed to entertain every crackpot conspiracy theory out there that you or anyone else can think of. Eventually come to realise you should have stuck with the Razor in the first place, but only a few minutes before film ends.

Such a structure is more likely to get the audience feeling a bit cheated, don’t you think?

Gods know whether anyone else will even get to see this, it’s playing in about 4 cinemas around Australia at the moment, and it’s only been playing for a week. You have to wonder why they’d bother, really, unless that pantie-throwing George Reeves fanbase is far more massive than I ever contemplated.

6 times I’d never ask anyone whether they can blow smoke rings out of their vagina out of 10

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“An actor can't always act - sometimes he has to work.” – Hollywoodland.