Welcome to Tinseltown
This week, we're having a Hollywood moment
Hollywood has been the heart of the film industry since the early twentieth century: from the weird & wonderful machinations of the movie studios and their mogul bosses along to the antics of the artistes themselves. Thanks to the enormous egos, the vast numbers of neuroses and the desperate need for power, money and attention, this crazy industry has spawned a plethora of stories over the years.
There have been memoirs, podcasts and behind-the-scenes accounts of everything from how certain movies got made, how certain couples got together and plenty of how certain stars died. So this week I offer up a few that have particularly tickled my fancy.
TL;DR
Watch The Studio; read What Makes Sammy Run?; listen to You Must Remember This and The Plot Thickens; and watch The Player.
WATCH
First up, the title that gave me this week’s theme: The Studio on Apple TV+, further cementing the platform’s status as the leader on producing quality original titles.
It stars Seth Rogen as a studio executive, Matt Remick, who lands his dream job as the head of a studio - after lying through his teeth that his real focus is making the studio millions of dollars…not to make more arthouse, less bankable, titles.
The cast in this show is knockout: the demigod Catherine O’Hara appears as Remick’s mentor - Patty Lee, Brian Cranston is fake tanned out the yin yang for his turn as the studio CEO - Griffin Mill, and Kathryn Hahn is magnificently aggressive as she struts around dressed as though she wants to front a JLo music video from the mid-’00s as Maya Mason, the studio’s head of marketing. And whilst Rogen is of course entertaining and utterly convincing in his naive dedication to making “good” movies, not just multimillion dollar franchises, it is Ike Barinholtz as Sal Saperstein who steals every scene he’s in.
This wondrously boiling hot weather is about to turn folks and, when it does, may I recommend you sit on your sofa and tuck in.
READ
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg is the classic rags to riches story - a favourite Hollywood trope: the poor boy done good tale of working your way up from nothing to be everyone’s boss.
The eponymous hero is Sammy Glick starts off life in a ghetto in New York city who has his mind set on success and wealth. He gets a job as a copyboy at a newspaper and there meets successful critic Al Manheim.
Manheim starts out as Glick’s mentor but as the latter’s double-crossing, plagiarism and blind ambition vaults him to the top of their shared profession, Manheim is forced to work for Glick. He witnesses Glick get everything he ever wanted and where it lands him…
I can do no better than to quote you the writer Nick Davis’s description of Glick & how he was an amalgamation of several real-life Tinseltown characters: “Sammy…was a beautiful embodiment of all of [Hollywood’s] most horrible characters rolled up into one hugely unsympathetic, grasping ball of ambition”.
LISTEN
Karina Longworth was previously the film critic for the LA Times. In 2014, she started the You Must Remember This podcast.
The show consists of episodic stories of well-known actors and other notorious characters ancillary to the world of Hollywood, with some spreading out over several episodes given that Longworth’s research is extensive and in-depth to say the least.
The people focussed on range from Frank Sinatra in the very first episode to a twelve part miniseries on Charles Manson and a thirteen episode arc on “Dead Blondes” including Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield and a miniseries within a miniseries on the most infamous dead blonde of all: Marilyn Monroe.
But be warned: you may want to play the podcast on 1.5x speed as the speech and delivery can be slow (frustratingly so!)
The Plot Thickens has five seasons each of which are dedicated to a different tale.
Four focus on individuals (director Peter Bogdanovich, comedian Lucille Ball, actor Pam Grier and filmmaker John Ford) with the second season diving into the utter disaster that was the Brian De Palma’s production of Tom Wolfe’s novel,The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Host Ben Mankiewicz and the team at Turner Classic Movies unearth stories from behind the scenes that have rarely, if ever, been heard before and provide a well-researched glimpse into the gilded cage that is life as a success in Tinseltown.
WATCH
In a neat bit of narrative construction, the protagonist in today’s final story is called Griffin Mill. Have you been paying attention? (Answers in the comments)
The Player stars Tim Robbins as Mill, an increasingly crazed studio executive who starts to receive death threats and starts to suspect various screenwriters whose scripts he has rejected. Baby-faced Robbins plays the schmoozing, greaseball exec to perfection as slimes his way from his restaurant to restaurant and party to party, ingratiating himself with any celebrity going. It’s also a fun couple of hours of spotting the great & the good of the late 80s/early 90s limelight.
Other big names in the cast include Greta Scacchi, Whoopi Goldberg and Peter Gallagher (the guy who’s sleeping in the Sandra Bullock classic While You Were Sleeping) and the roster of names who make cameo appearances is impressive, from Susan Sarandon, Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts to Anjelica Houston, Jeff Goldblum and Cher. It’s a proper thriller from a proper director in Robert Altman but also properly funny and hilariously representative of its time: when big, bold excess and stopping at nothing for success was the order of the day.