previously: Little Voice
A 1998 mockumentary and alleged comedy, co-directed by and co-starring Adam Rifkin and Tony Markes, Welcome to Hollywood tells the story of fictional aspiring actor Nick Decker, from his humble origins to what he hopes will be his big break.
Woof. This is an hour-and-twenty-six minute slog about how Hollywood is so fake, man. It’s all about who you know. If you come here wanting to make art but have no connections, you’ve gotta be mercenary. This town changes people, man.
I’m not disputing any of that. But I’m also saying this film is saying absolutely nothing new. This premise has been done better, both comedically and dramatically, by dozens of other films both before and after it.
I was pretty terrified going in. This was the first film I’ve encountered on this journey that appears to be simply unavailable to stream, legally or otherwise. It also seems that the DVDs are out of print, and at the time of my search, there were no used copies for sale on Amazon.
I did find one solitary listing on eBay for a used (or potentially pirated) disc. Six dollars plus shipping. Thanks, Jason, I guess. Now I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. I don’t want to keep it. I could just resell it, I suppose. In spite of the extremely small and niche market, discs do seem to be pretty rare, so someone will probably buy it eventually. But charging someone even six dollars for this movie feels borderline morally reprehensible.
But honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I feared, given its nearly universal scathing reviews and near total unavailability. These seemed like dire omens. Maybe it didn’t seem so bad because my expectations were near rock-bottom. But mostly I just found it really boring.
This alleged comedy allegedly had a script that was co-written by two people, and I simply don’t believe it. Every scene seems ad-libbed, and none of it is good ad lib. It’s made even worse by the editors’ inability or refusal to cut out any of the dead air as the actors struggle to think of a passable response to what their scene partner just said. I’ve never seen so many painful awkward pauses in a mockumentary or a real documentary. It really drags down every single scene’s pacing, to the point where I felt worn down and exhausted by the end.
The whole appeal of mockumentaries is that they’re zany. They take the framing of a nonfiction form of film and turn it on its ear by presenting you with comically exaggerated characters and/or scenarios, and it clashes with a style that the audience associates with grounded, serious storytelling. It’s fun.
Welcome to Hollywood has zero zaniness. Negative zaniness. An utter vacuum, a black hole of zaniness. It’s trying to be a comedy but forgot to put in jokes. It’s trying to be a commentary on the nature of show business but is terrified to actually piss off anyone in the business. It doesn’t even manage to be a weird tonal slop. There is no tone. It’s nothing. It wants to be a satire, but it’s just a boring story about a bland yet earnest guy who can’t act but wants to be an actor, and it barely kind of manages to pull off bittersweet ironic tragedy at the end, I guess. If I’m feeling extremely generous.
I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, but I definitely didn’t expect for Baywatch to feature so prominently. 1998, everybody. I don’t give a shit about Baywatch, but I have binged Allison Pregler’s “Baywatching” YouTube series multiple times. Highly recommend. Because of it, I immediately recognized Jaason Simmons in the casting office before the reveal that he’d already been on Baywatch for three years at this point, and I had to take a minute to think about what I’ve done with my life. Probably the highlight of the film was watching David Hasselhoff tell the camera crew that their fake actor got “bitten” by a stingray. Newmie then patiently explains to Adam Rifkin what a stingray is, with passive-aggressive emphasis on the sting. Michael Newman is a true hero and was the real star of Baywatch in my heart.
I’m not even sure this should count as a film for Ewan Me. Yes, Ewan McGregor is (barely) in it, which was a weird relief to confirm. Nicolas Cage has apparently been reported as being in this film, and his die-hard fans watching his entire filmography have been tracking down copies of Welcome to Hollywood only to find that he is not in it at all. I can confirm the lack of Nicolas Cage, having also unfortunately sat through it. I’m really sorry, guys.
Ewan is in it, but even though he’s listed on both IMDb and Letterboxd as playing the character Ewan McGregor, he’s clearly just playing himself. And aside from the travel docuseries he did, I made the decision at the very beginning of all this to rule out appearances he made as himself. I would be here from now until the end of time watching behind-the-scenes featurettes and archived talk show appearances.
This is a fictional story, it has the “not based on actual persons” disclaimer at the end of the credits and everything. But it’s not, like, The Blair Witch Project, where the characters are named after the actors. These celebrities the filmmakers ambushed on the red carpet are not playing characters. I’m not sure if any of them even knew their blurbs were going to be used in a movie. So I’m just a little bit salty about this, but I paid six dollars plus shipping and watched it so I guess I’m counting it anyway.
I’m complaining, but really, the celebrity cameos were easily the most interesting thing about the movie.
A few celebrities, like Matthew McConaughey and Will Smith, appear to be in on the joke in some capacity. It seems they were at least given a brief pitch on what this interview was really for. Sandra Bullock was in a fun mood when they caught her, that was nice. But largely, red carpet events are absolute chaos. The press has to shout and be aggressive because the talent has to keep moving steadily down the gauntlet. Red carpets would have been the best chance for the filmmakers to get quick, informal soundbites from as many celebrities as possible in a short amount of time for way cheaper than actually formally booking anyone famous. They would not have had the opportunity to explain in detail that the footage was for a comedy movie. This seems like a recipe for awkward quotes ripe to be taken out of context for laughs. But it was really surprising to me that in a movie where Hollywood is painted as a fake, fickle, cutthroat town, how many celebrities had earnest and thoughtful answers in the midst of the glitzy controlled chaos. It ends up rubbing against the movie’s supposed thesis in a way that seems depressingly unintentional.
Okay, Roger Ebert looked genuinely pissed to be approached by these chucklefucks, and honestly good for him. And Mike Leigh clearly had a brain fart:
A good actor is someone who’s good at acting.
Mike Leigh, Welcome to Hollywood
Not a quote I’d want with my name next to it forever. But he and Tom Arnold are kind of the only ones who came out of this looking like idiots.
The first celebrity we see is John Travolta. He’s asked how he would define a “star.” He says he doesn’t know, it’s a hard question and so many factors go into it. There’s no one way to qualify what makes someone a star. Does he have any advice? If acting makes you happy, don’t give up.
Jeff Goldblum says a star is “bravely authentic.”
Will Smith says stars have a certain “attitude,” as he smoothly puts on a pair of sunglasses he had at the ready.
Cameron Crowe says a star is someone whose heart you can feel beating through the screen. Goddamn. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
Ron Howard says a star is someone who elevates the material.
When asked if she’d ever struggled, Glenn Close says she acted on stage for nine years before she got her first movie role and you have to be resilient.
Laurence Fishburne says he considered quitting acting at least three times. The filmmakers then ask if their fake actor can do a brief ad-libbed scene with him, and I know I couldn’t make it in this business. If someone introduced me to Laurence Fishburne and then immediately ordered me to improv at him while cameras were rolling I’d simply pass away on the spot. But he’s very good-natured about it and is clearly like, “Sure, I’ll give this guy a little thrill.” The handful of seconds of Laurence Fishburne putting on a New Jersey accent and refusing to clean up his white alcoholic brother’s mess this time is legitimately the only good acting in the entire damn movie.
For advice, Wes Craven says determination is a requirement to make it because there will be a lot of rejection.
Cuba Gooding, Jr., says essentially the same thing, you’ll hear a lot of no’s and making it takes endurance.
Again, when asked to define a “star,” John Waters says that a star is someone you want to get drunk with or have sex with who looks better than anyone you know in real life. This is possibly the truest and definitely the funniest answer. Thanks for everything, Mr. Waters.
Ewan appears alongside Cameron Diaz, immediately after Will Smith and his sunglasses. Cameron and Ewan were clearly there doing promotion for A Life Less Ordinary at the time. Danny Boyle is hanging out in the background of the shot. Cameron looks bored and tired and cranky and says nothing, because the microphone was not shoved in her face. A muscle in her jaw twitches as Ewan talks.
Ewan also looks tired. He’s rubbing his face at the start of the clip and has the most off-topic, incoherent answer of the lot. Everyone else seemed to interpret the, “What is a star?” question as being about “star quality,” today, in the present. When you’re watching someone, how would you define that feeling when you realize you’re witnessing a star-making performance? What’s your idea of a movie star?
My ideas of stardom are always of fantasies about the kind of Hollywood in the thirties and forties when there was a studio system and you’d make three or four films a year for a studio. That’s when I think there were movie stars. I guess I’m myself more of a… No, I’m gonna get published, I don’t know. Them. That. Is my idea of a movie star.
Ewan McGregor, Welcome to Hollywood
Ow. I mean, it’s not necessarily a bad answer in spirit. I don’t think he’s actually advocating for a return to the studio system or anything. It’s very stream-of-consciousness. I think he’s saying that glamor, prestige, and nostalgia are what made movie stars, but he clearly did not understand or just didn’t hear the question. This interview is maybe the one with the most going on in the background. During that giant pause he took to compare himself to the stars of yore (and I’m very curious about where the hell he was going with that and why he self-consciously cut himself off,) a baby started crying offscreen. Was he there with his family? Was it his baby? Whose baby was on the red carpet at the 1997 Emmys while there were press interviews going on?
He’s also there to specifically promote his movie, I’m not surprised he’d hear something something “star” and assume are you asking about me? And my movie? What are you talking about? What does this have to do with my movie? Are you asking everyone this? How do I spin this into something that promotes my movie? Scratch that, how do I spin this into a lucid answer? Posterity. This quote is for posterity. Say something intelligent. Once upon a time, paparazzi didn’t exist. Real stars didn’t have to be turned on, witty, accessible, likable, and relatable at all times. Those must have been the days. God, I’m so tired.
I can feel the jet lag radiating off him and Cameron Diaz in that sixteen second clip. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last big event at the end of the press tour. They both look so miserable and out of it, I feel bad. I didn’t need this movie to tell me that acting and all that comes with it is a deceptively difficult job, even if you do “make it.” That sixteen second clip accidentally says more about how exhausting and thankless show business can be than the whole rest of the movie.
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