User Reviews

Starts with a good premise and Martin Landau in the first scene. Pretty soon Eli Wallach shows up. Bit later Robert DeNiro. Things are rolling along nicely when I realize Robert Wuhl, who irritates me at the best of times, was shouting his way through the movie. And then Laurie Metcalf shows up. Is she really this bad an actor or is it just a bad director working with no budget? It's all downhill from there. I just didn't care anymore. Didn't care about Wuhl's character. And why would I care about Christopher Walken's ''Warren'' character? And who is the kid's dad supposed to be? Elmore Leonard? Yelling, yelling, yelling. So tiresome. I bet this movie didn't gross a thousand bucks when it was released.

The movie is actually fairly dull, not that funny, with kooky characters that are just kooky and not that interesting. That said, it makes an important statement about Hollywood and Hollywood screen writing.

The consensus is that this film accurately explains the hellish environment a Hollywood screenwriter goes through in trying to chase their dreams. I've read a couple of biographies of famous writers and the issues they mention are shown in this film. While most people presume that everything we see in a movie is based on the many concrete choices made by its screenwriter or director, the reality is different. For a screenwriter either you never get the film made the way you want it, or you chase the paycheck and compromise with the money men.

In this movie the money men are only willing to put up money for a film as long as their girlfriend is handed a juicy part. This of course means the main character, a screenwriter played by Bob Wuhl, has to decide to compromise or not to compromise. A complication exists in that his wife is in New York, trying to get their dreams of a restaurant up and running.

Unfortunately this isn't a real fallback option, since she isn't his muse; the Hollywood dream is. Thus the concept "mistress" is multifaceted. Is it a reference to the girlfriends of the producers? Is it his wife? Is it Hollywood? Is it his dream of being a famous respected artist? The movie could have gone deeper and been a powerful satire, a wonderfully entertaining critique and an important cautionary tale. Regrettably its not as deep as all that and only succeeds at the latter.

Perhaps this is in itself a statement. A very formulaic film done on purpose to explain why most Hollywood films are indeed formulaic? It feels like a precursor to Adaptation. Or am I trying to see things that aren't there?

In any case while the whole experience is a little watered down, if you know someone that wants to be a screenwriter you should show them this film as it does lift the lid on the Hollywood dream and reveals how it really is, at least most of the time. For a better quality satire on the same topic watch The Player (1992).