Allow me to explain myself

So... to my great surprise/honor, the penultimate entry of my whole "Best Movies about the Movies" series of posts was chosen over the weekend to be part of the IMDB's awesomely awesome "Hit List."

As a dedicated reader of the Hit List, and as someone who has just recently joined the thriving write-about-movies-on-the-internet industry, getting chosen to be part of the Hit List is sort of like getting an award at one of those big award shows, only this doesn't happen.

I'm not usually wearing a dress, either.

Anyhow, what I thought I would do here is talk a little about a few of the more notable movies that, for one reason or another, didn't make the cut.

Now, I realize that this is an inherently stupid idea, since in the list making business talking about why you made a list the way you made it and what you may or may not have left off of it is well... it's just not done. For one thing, by revealing your underlying methodology, it leaves you that much more open to being called an ignorant douchebag.

Pictured: me, apparently.

But that's okay. Because, as one of my favorite philosophers once said: "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not." And whatever else might be said about this hill of beans, well... to paraphrase another famous philosopher: this is my hill, and these are my beans.

So keep in mind, gentle readers, that I certainly haven't seen every movie in this particular genre. And know that I am well aware of how stupid I am for having missed, you know, whatever it is I've missed.

The Nearly Made-Its

The Player

As I documented in my entry on Ed Wood, The Player nearly made #2 on my list. Sadly there was a clerical error (read: I screwed up), and I had to omit it. But suffice to say I truly love The Player -- the story Griffin Mill, a jackass Hollywood producer played by Tim Robbins who begins to get threatening messages from a writer he once dismissed. When he confronts the man he thinks has been doing it (Vincent D'Onofrio), Mill kills him in a rage. Later, he learns the D'Onofrio character had nothing to do with it. Will he get away with murder?

Directed by Robert Altman, The Player is a truly brilliant and completely fearless movie that, not unlike Adaptation, dares to deliberately flirt with the form. As Mill's predicament gets more and more melodramatic and he's saved by senseless hairpin turns of fortune (like the movies he produces), we sense the laughing hand of the filmmaker, grinning at the cliche that's transpiring on screen.

Like all great movies, it's a high wire act. And Altman, always one of the most inconsistent of directors, navigates the minefield here flawlessly.

Why it didn't make it

Well, like I said, it almost did. But at the end of the day, when forced to chose between it and Ed Wood, I just felt like Ed Wood was a better (and, for the purposes of a countdown, a more different) movie. Besides, I'd already written about The Bad and the Beautiful, a movie about a similar (and, with all due respect, better exectued) character who faces more realistic circumstances.

Bowfinger

A mostly forgotten satire starring Steve Martin (who also wrote the script) and Eddie Murphy and directed by Frank Oz, Bowfinger has never gotten it's due respect.

The story of flea pit level producer Bobby Bowfinger (Martin) and his desperate, clandestine attempt to film a major movie star (Murphy) and put him into his movie with the star knowing it, Bowfinger hones in on the desperation of the talentless hustler willing to do anything to get his movie made.

Why it didn't make it

Well, it's basically the same story as Ed Wood, and Ed Wood's a better movie. Bowfinger also works against itself, shoehorning a funny but unnecessary series of digs at the Scientology stand-in Mind Head, with which the Murphy character is obsessed.

Bowfinger is at it's best when, like Ed Wood, it focuses in on the weird troupe of people Bowfinger surrounds himself with: an awkward kid named Jeffery who looks exactly like the Murphy character (played, of course, by Murphy, who somehow manages to avoid getting into a fat suit in the movie), a fresh off the bus actress looking for her break (Heather Graham, playing a roller skates-less and clothes-on version of her character from Boogie Nights), and a series of other, you know, losers.

Essentially, Bowfinger's problem is that it doesn't quite have the guts to go far enough, settling instead for more surface jabs that, in the end, also rob the movie of a truly enduring heart.

State and Main

Leaving State and Main off this list was another hard choice, as it's one of the few movies that really delves into what it's like to be on location, trying to actually shoot a movie.

Written and directed by David Mamet, the story focuses (if you can really call it that) on a writer, director, star, producer and Local Educated Townsperson played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, David Paymer and Rebecca Pidgeon respectively.

Written and acted in Mamet's mile-a-minute style, State and Main's true attribute is in showing how little about the act of shooting a movie is about art, giving life to that old notion that directing a movie and getting art out of it is like trying to write War and Peace in the back of a taxi cab.

Macy's director character, in particular, navigates problems with ruthless efficiency. After they're kicked out of one town because of the star's relationship with an underage girl, they move the production (called "The Old Mill") to another town. As the title suggests, an old mill features heavily into the plot of the movie, and the new town is supposed to have one.

The problem? Well, uh... the old mill burned down years ago.

The solution? Rewrite the movie.

Macy's character wants a certain shot dolly shot of a firehouse. He's insistent. The problem? A valuable stainglass window on the firehouse the town won't let him remove.

The solution? A brick through the window in the middle of the night.

State and Main is filled with little moments like this, but the main thread of the movie happens when the Baldwin character starts a new relationship with a new underage girl (played by underage girl specialist Julia Stiles). Driving drunkenly back from what in polite society is called a "dalliance" but what I'll just call "banging," Baldwin and Stiles get in a car accident that's witnessed by the neurotic writer played by Hoffman.

Their relationship (and the accident, which is quickly covered up) could ruin the movie, but when the stereotypical dickhead local politician gets wind of what's happened, it falls to the Hoffman character to uphold the story or tell the truth.

Will he live up to the principles of his script, which he claims is about "purity," or will he succumb to the pressure of douchebagdom?

Why it didn't make it

It's hard to talk about without ruining the ending, but suffice to say the decision Hoffman makes, and what happens after, sews things up in a gimmicky manner that's too cute by half. It might have worked if the intention -- like The Player or Adaptation -- was for the ending to be a commentary on the movie making (and watching) world's obsession with happy endings. But in a movie that deals at least fairly realistically (if sarcastically) about the movie business, it strikes the wrong note.

Stay tuned (if you can really call it that) for Part 2, where I'll bash a few well-known, well-respected movies about the movie business that I nonetheless thought were shit. Buckle your chin straps. You will be offended.