Simon Thompson presents ten great movies about making movies…
The job of a filmmaker is one of great artistic fulfilment, but it is also a taxing, emotionally fraught line of work connected to a rapidly changing industry that is more often than not undergoing a great existential crisis over being about art or commerce. It turns out that this backdrop provides a great launching pad for story ideas, which is why when you are randomly scrolling a 200 greatest movies list, drunk, at 2 in the morning, you will find that many of the great works of cinema are often about the act of making a film itself.
The ten films that I have chosen for this list are picked on criteria of both general quality but also about how much they examine the highs and lows of the creative process…
The Player (1992)
Directed by Robert Altman, with a screenplay from Michael Tolkin, the author of the original novel of the same name, The Player is a pitch black satire of Hollywood that Billy Wilder and Nathanael West would be proud of. Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is an ambitious executive in charge of script development. When Griffin begins to receive death threats in the post, he suspects they are coming from a screenwriter whose work he had previously rejected, resulting in him taking the grizzliest approach possible in proving his assumption right.
Through a combination of stellar acting by Tim Robbins, and a stacked supporting cast featuring the likes of Vincent D’Onofrio, Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Ward, and numerous celebrity cameos, each of whom play a ridiculous version of themselves, The Player is a deft balance between being both a satire and an electrifying crime thriller.
If you’re a complete cynic, and find various “isn’t the movie business magical” stuff hard to swallow, The Player is a perfect antidote to the saccharine side of movies about filmmaking. Sadly, this is the kind of movie that wouldn’t be made any more for two reasons, one is that Hollywood has absolutely no sense of humour about itself at all, and secondly this movie is a brilliant example of the kind of mid-budget adult drama that Hollywood has long since abandoned.
The Bad and The Beautiful (1952)
Vincente Minelli’s The Bad And The Beautiful is ostensibly described as a melodrama, and although that is largely true, it softens the blow of how biting and angry Charles Schnee’s script is at times. The film follows a ruthlessly ambitious producer named Jonathon Shields (Kirk Douglas), the son of a hated studio head, Shields has spent his life within Hollywood with the result that he understands its chew them up and spit them out nature better than almost anybody else.
As Shields rises further and further up the totem pole, he puts the friendships that he’s made with director Fred Amiel (Sullivan), a starlet named Georgia Lorrison ( Lana Turner), and a screenwriter named James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) in jeopardy.
What makes The Bad and The Beautiful work as well as it does is pretty simple. The script by Charles Schnee is witty but also unafraid to show how much of the movie business is built around backstabbing and envy, Minelli’s direction is some of the most elegant and beautiful (the funeral scene at the start of the movie alone) this side of Ernest Lubitsch, and the chemistry between Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner is mesmerising to watch.
Kirk Douglas in particular was at the absolute height of his powers around this time (the late 1940s to the end of the 1950s), and shows off just how skilled an actor he was in the sense that he doesn’t turn Jonathon Shields into a cartoonish manipulative bastard, but plays him as a sneaky fast talking charismatic manipulator instead, with the audience being bamboozled into rooting for him even when he’s being an absolute monster as a direct result of that charisma. If you want a movie that combines the best traits of both film noir and romantic drama, then The Bad and The Beautiful has you covered.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Voted the finest film of the 21st century, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a beguiling masterwork, with an oblique nature that lends itself nicely to multiple rewatches and interpretations of its hauntingly surreal imagery. What most people can agree on however, is that at its core the film is Lynch’s dark interpretation of the themes of both fame and the desire of a human being to be widely known in the first place.
Mulholland Drive is centred around Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress who moves to Los Angeles in the pursuit of fame and fortune. Upon her arrival, she comes into contact with Rita (Laura Harring) an amnesiac, who lost her memory after a car accident. Over the course of two and a half hours, Lynch plays with our perceptions of narrative, time, and reality itself, cultivating a dream-like atmosphere through both the film’s noirish visuals and Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score.
Lynch’s vision of Hollywood is of a town that on one level provides a superficial beauty that belies what is truly under the surface, a theme that he has explored countless times throughout his work, from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks. Characters such as Justin Theroux’s Adam Kesher, a director trying to make a film that’s true to his artistic principles despite interference from the mafia, or Betty’s entire narrative arc, are the clearest pieces of shorthand for Lynch’s main thesis that Hollywood is the easiest place in the world to lose your sense of identity.
If you love movies, and by some small miracle, you haven’t seen Mullholland Drive yet, you owe it to yourself to rectify that as soon as possible.
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is a film which intelligently rides roughshod over every genre convention going. Half pure film noir and half a dark meta satire about fame and the fickle nature of the movie business, Sunset Boulevard tells the story of an ambitious struggling screenwriter named Joe Gillis (William Holden) who takes on the chance to write a script for Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) a faded silent movie star. Joe bites off far more than he can chew, as it quickly becomes apparent that Norma is living in (to quote Stevie Wonder) a ‘pastime paradise’ of her glory days, taking their partnership to some dangerously odd places.
Through casting Gloria Swanson, who up until that point had experienced a long career downturn throughout the first two decades of the sound era, as well as cameo appearances from the likes of Buster Keaton, one of the great stars of the silent period, and Doris Dawson, Wilder mocks the concept of stardom with a unique wit that is often imitated but never bettered.
With one of the great scripts of classic Hollywood featuring unforgettable line after unforgettable line, the right balance between humour and tragedy, as well as two career defining performances for both Gloria Swanson and William Holden, Sunset Boulevard is easily one of the greatest works about filmmaking ever put on screen.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap is one of the most influential comedies of the last four decades. The movie chronicles the exploits of Spinal Tap (Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean), a rock band from Britain with a massive sense of ego and self-importance, but with very little musical or songwriting talent to back any of it up. American filmmaker Marti Deberg (Rob Reiner), decides to make a documentary about the band’s upcoming US comeback tour. Put simply, absolutely everything that could ever go wrong for the band does, resulting in beautifully conceived gag after beautifully conceived gag until the credits roll.
Guest, Shearer, and McKean all nail their respective roles to a T, and unlike the vast majority of Americans playing British characters, pick up the small but pronounced verbal quirks of specific types of English accents, that I’ve only seen a select few American actors incorporate into their performances.
Filmed by Reiner in a mockumentary style which bridged together fiction and reality in a way which hadn’t been done before and has been oft imitated since by the likes of The Office, Borat, and numerous others, This Is Spinal Tap’s quick witted script and revolutionary filming style are forever timeless.
Barton Fink (1991)
Simply put, the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink is one of the funniest depictions of writers’ block in cinema history. Set in 1941, the story chronicles the exploits of its eponymous protagonist (John Turturro), a neurotic and intellectual Jewish screenwriter who moves from the intellectual self-conscious world of New York’s theatre scene to the sun-kissed vapid world of Los Angeles and Hollywood.
Tasked with writing a script for a b-movie, Barton becomes more and more distracted and enveloped into the strange world of Los Angeles through his eccentric insurance salesman neighbour Charlie (John Goodman), and fellow writer WP Mayhew (John Mahoney) a Faulkner- like alcoholic whose secretary Audrey (Judy Davis) has been forging his scripts due to the severity of his drinking.
Specifically, the character of Barton Fink himself is easily amongst the Coen’s greatest from Jerry Lundegaard to Marge Gunderson, to The Dude to Tom Reagan and Chad Feldheimer. John Turturro’s performance in the role is pitch perfect, nailing both his anxious nature but also the complete contradiction of his wanting to illuminate the social conditions of the “working man” despite being unable to see past his own reflection.
Simultaneously a claustrophobic thriller and an examination of what it truly means to be an artist in a commercial industry, Barton Fink encapsulates the Coen’s considerable ability to combine Preston Sturges style screwball wit, nail biting tension, and a sense of heart at the same time. If you want to get into the Coen’s work, Barton Fink is a fantastic place to start.
Day For Night (1973)
A meta commentary on everything that can go wrong behind the scenes, Francois Truffaut’s Day For Night stands amongst the esteemed director’s very best. Day For Night centres around Ferrand (Francois Truffaut) a frustrated, yet dedicated director trying to get a long gestating passion project off the ground. Ferrand is beset by chaos from his cast and crew on all sides, to the extent that watching it from afar is a mixture of comedy and bafflement, but actually being a part of it would be unimaginably painful.
What works about Day For Night is that it never veers too far into broad parody of the tortured artist trope or schmaltzy melodrama, but instead stands as an incredible testament to loving cinema and the process of making it, as well as emphasising the importance of perseverance in dealing with its most infuriating variables.
Even if you know absolutely nothing about filmmaking, Day For Night is such a compelling story that it doesn’t matter in the slightest, as not only will you come out having viewed one of the great films of the French New Wave, but also the sheer dedication that directors have to their craft.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991)
Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now is famous for two reasons. One is that it’s rightfully considered, one of the great masterpieces of the Hollywood Renaissance, and the second is that its production history is one of the most tortured and bizarre in the history of American filmmaking. Through footage filmed behind the scenes by Coppola’s wife Eleanor, and retroactive interviews with the cast and crew, we, the audience, are invited into the Mad Hatter’s tea party that was the making of Apocalypse Now.
To cut down an epic $31 million, 238 day long shoot into the simplest terms literally anything you could ever envisage going wrong on the set of this movie did. From natural disasters, to a hard partying cast and crew, to conflicts on set between Marlon Brando and pretty much everybody else, this documentary illuminates some of the wildest there is no way in hell you could get away with a shoot like this now stories from its mammoth sized production history.
The strongest feeling you get from this documentary, above anything however, is Coppola’s sheer dedication as he is presented with setback, after setback over which any sane individual would have thrown in the towel as fast as possible. Yet despite all that, this nightmare of a shoot resulted in one of the greatest American movies of the last four and a half decades, defying all the odds.
8 ½ (1963)
One of the most acclaimed films of Federico Fellini’s career, 8 ½ is cited as an inspiration by so many filmmakers to the point where frankly you would be hard pressed to find a director who doesn’t hold it in the highest regard. Marcello Mastoriani gives an iconic performance as Guido, a director stuck in a creative rut, while simultaneously trying to helm a big budget science fiction movie that’s spiralling out of control by the second and balance his work responsibilities with a complicated love life.
Fellini’s film nails just how chaotic a big budget production can become, and when coupled with Nino Rota’s jaunty score that compliments the movie’s surreal tone perfectly, what you end up with is a mixture of sound and imagery that has been oft imitated but never bettered. 8 ½ works best as both a comedy, but also a stark warning not to overextend yourself as a director, unless you want to end up over-budget and over schedule.
What is so timeless about 8 ½ above anything else however is that you can view it five, ten or fifteen years apart, and come away with something new after every single watch, which is what truly makes it a special work.
Ed Wood (1994)
As much as I love Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, of course it’s not a better movie itself than 8 ½, but to an even larger extent than 8 ½, it’s the best film I’ve seen about wanting to be a director. Ed Wood tells the life story of Ed Wood (Johnny Depp), a b-movie director who is widely considered to be one of the absolute worst in Hollywood history. Eccentric, dedicated, lovable, and yet completely inept, Wood’s strange, and uniquely schlocky work brought him a dedicated cult following and turned him into a midnight movie icon.
Burton’s movie depicts Wood at his creative height (I use that word loosely), his fascination with cross dressing (which he explored most famously with his film Glen or Glenda) and his relationship with horror legend Bela Lugosi (played by Martin Landau in a masterful turn).
What makes Ed Wood great is that it doesn’t turn its eponymous protagonist into a figure of fun, nor does it paint him as some kind of misunderstood genius either. Even as we are familiarised with Wood’s technical lapses, such as his wobbly sets, awful dialogue, or his desire to put tonally dissonant stock footage into various points of his films, we still root for his madcap ideas to work.
Johnny Depp gives a career high performance in the title role, infusing the character with a can do sense of optimism, and boundless spaniel chasing a tennis ball-like energy that never veers into broad pastiche for a single second. Infusing the upbeat qualities of Mickey Rooney, The Tin Man, Ronald Reagan, and Casey Kasem into his performance Depp creates one of cinema’s eternal optimists.
Equal amounts of funny and touching, Ed Wood should be required viewing at every film school on Earth, as its encouraging message that as long as you believe in your art it doesn’t matter what others think, is something every young director needs to hear at some point.
What are your favourite movies about making movies? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Simon Thompson
