HOLLYWOODLAND (2006)

Director: Allen Coulter

Writer: Paul Bernbaum

Producer: Glenn Williamson

Cast: Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Robin Tunney, Bob Hoskins, Jeffrey DeMunn, Molly Parker, Lois Smith, Caroline Dhavernas, Joe Spano, Larry Cedar, Kathleen Robertson, Zach Mills, Diego Fuentes, Gareth Williams, Dash Mihok, Ted Atherton, Brad William Henke, Phillip MacKenzie, Kevin Hare, Neil Crone, Seamus Dever, Gareth Williams, Joan Gregson, Richard Fancy, Dendrie Taylor. Jason Spevack, Erin Gooderham, Terry C. Barna, Bill Lake, Brendan Wall, Jeff Cowan, David J. MacNeil, Tim Campbell, Michael Rhoades, Donald Burda, Lorry Ayers, Joseph Adam, Sven Van de Ven, Ayumi Iizuka, Jack Newman, Natalie Krill, Charlie Lea, Gray Powell

On June 16, 1959 in Los Angeles, California, actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck), famous for his television role as Superman, is found dead of a bullet wound to the head in the bedroom of his Benedict Canyon home. Seedy private detective Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) is hired by Reeves’ mother Helen Bessolo (Lois Smith) to investigate her son’s death. Helen does not believe the official suicide verdict. Initially, Simo is just trying to stir up publicity by questioning the validity of the police investigation into Reeves’ death. However, as Simo discovers more about Reeves’ life, he begins to believe that the actor may have been murdered.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

Nowadays, due to the superhero genre profitably established in the movie mainstream, actors are eager to portray comic book characters. Landing such roles is seen as just another indication of a performer’s versatility and bankability.

Unfortunately, when George Reeves starred as the title character on the Adventures of Superman television series during the 1950s, he felt that he was stuck in a professional rut. Like plenty of other actors playing larger-than-life characters (Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, etc.), Reeves was typecast. His success as Superman, at least as far as the movie studios were concerned, caused limitations in his public perception and imposed limitations on his choice of roles. Ironically, 1978’s Superman was the big-budget production that earned the critical and financial success that began to gain respect for comic book superheroes and their actors in films.

The disappointment George Reeves felt about the direction of his acting career provides a possible motive for his suicide. Death by self-inflicted gunshot wound was the official determination given by the LAPD and supported by witness statements and autopsy findings. But real life is usually not as neat and tidy as the conclusion of an Adventures of Superman episode. As is often the case in criminal investigations, there were unexplained details and oversights in the crime scene investigation and autopsy. Some of the relationships George Reeves had and peculiar events in his life raised the possibility of foul play. There were also plenty of Reeves’ friends and his mother who could not believe that George Reeves would kill himself.

Hollywoodland details the final decade of George Reeves’ life and the investigation into his death by the fictional detective character Louis Simo. Reeves’ mother Helen Bessolo actually did seek further inquiries into her son’s death. This film is quite true to the facts of the Reeves case while adding an additional dramatic angle of the Simo character finding parallels between Reeves’ life and his own.

Adrien Brody stars as private investigator Louis Simo. He is fine as the down-on-his-luck hero of the story that has suffered big disappointments in his life. Simo seeks to exploit the Reeves case as a way to generate some headlines that can raise his own professional profile and boost his career. It is only as Simo sees more of his own life’s frustrated ambitions reflected in the life of George Reeves that he develops some sincerity in his search for the truth.

After a two-year lull in his career, Ben Affleck landed the role of George Reeves. This was an opportunity for Affleck to give a performance with more depth than those in his past big-budget spectacles. Affleck really rises to the occasion as he captures Reeves’ charm, humor, and frustration while earning the audience’s sympathy. It is oddly fitting that Affleck, an actor who has played two different superhero roles (in 2003’s Daredevil and multiple appearances as Batman since 2016) and was going through his own career downturn, would portray another actor whose career was stifled by playing a superhero. This award-winning role signaled Affleck’s comeback for quality roles and films.

George Reeves had a longtime romantic relationship with Toni Mannix, the wife of MGM film studio vice president Eddie Mannix who was suspected of ties to the Mafia. This unusual relationship was an open secret and accepted by Eddie. As Toni Mannix, Diane Lane perfectly captures the aging former starlet affecting a certain Hollywood refinement in her speech and manner. There is a passionate desperation in her need for the relationship with the younger Reeves who she wants to be her kept man.

Robin Tunney is funny, insensitive, and a bit pathetic as Leonore Lemmon, the crude, younger woman who prompts George Reeves to end his relationship with Toni Mannix. She has contentious interactions with almost everyone and drives home the sense of hopelessness toward the end of Reeves’ life.

There are many other fine performances to be found in this film. Bob Hoskins as Eddie Mannix, Joe Spano as Eddie’s publicity manager Howard Strickling, Jeffrey DeMunn as Reeves’ agent Art Weissman, Molly Parker as Louis Simo’s ex-wife Laurie, Caroline Dhavernas as Simo’s secretary/girlfriend Kit, and Lois Smith as Reeves’ mother Helen Bessolo all give often understated and genuine performances that always feel just right.

Director Allen Coulter and screenwriter Paul Bernbaum have a unique approach to the frustrating Hollywood mystery of George Reeves’ death. They use the investigation by the fictional detective character of Louis Simo to give the audience facts about the Reeves case that provide multiple scenarios for the actor’s demise. They make Simo more than just a narrative gimmick by having him grow as a character when he gains perspective from the Reeves tragedy.

As a George Reeves fan, I had read quite a bit about his life, his Superman role, and his tragic death. I feel that Hollywoodland makes a sincere attempt to be honest and accurate about the last years of Reeves’ life. It is fun seeing some preparations for Reeves assuming his Superman role and scene recreations typical of the television show. Aside from one memorable bit of Reeves clowning around on the Adventures of Superman set, there is little indication of the fun and joy that those close to Reeves have said was also part of the man’s character. That is hardly a fault of this fine film. Director Coulter has said that he was not striving to just do a biopic about the life of George Reeves. The story uses Reeves’ death as a means of reevaluating one’s life and finding the worth in it.

ED WOOD (1994)

Director: Tim Burton

Writers: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, based on Rudolph Grey’s book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Producers: Denise Di Novi, Tim Burton

Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray, George “The Animal” Steele, Lisa Marie, Mike Starr, Max Casella, Brent Hinckley, Juliet Landau, Ned Bellamy, Stanley DeSantis, Rance Howard, Korla Pandit, Vincent D’Onofrio, Maurice LaMarche (uncredited as voice of Orson Welles), Norman Alden, Clive Rosengren, G.D. Spradlin, Gregory Walcott, Conrad Brooks

In 1950s Hollywood, aspiring filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Johnny Depp), chances to meet faded film star Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau). The two soon become friends. The eager-to-work Lugosi agrees to star in Wood’s very personal film project, and that helps to convince exploitation film producer George Weiss (Mike Starr) to finance Wood’s semi-autobiographical transvestite story Glen or Glenda (1953). Before long, Ed Wood has acquired a group of eccentric characters to work on his strange films.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The ’80s excess of mainstream Hollywood films striving for blockbuster status with massive budgets and over-the-top action and effects resulted in a numbing wave of glossy mediocrity. The true film fan was ready for something original and sincere. Apparently, a number of young filmmakers were as well. There were some very interesting and unique films boosting the indie-film trend in the ’90s. Perhaps the time was right for a movie about a notorious cult film director. Although a guy who worked for Disney and had already made some very successful films was hardly a struggling indie-auteur, Tim Burton strove for his own style and directed an absolutely unique film with Ed Wood. This strange, funny, and heartfelt biopic is one of the finest films of the ’90s. 

Ed Wood is about the naïve optimism required to pursue one’s dreams. Even with few resources and a lack of objectivity to realize one’s own shortcomings, a person through sheer perseverance can create something that is a unique and sincere form of expression. That expression’s faults and merits are for others to judge.

For the Ed Wood fan or detractor, it is fun to see the obsessive attention to detail in the reenactments of various scenes from Ed Wood’s films and the behind-the-scenes shenanigans during those productions. The truth of some of these incidents is suspect. As many of those actually involved in Wood’s films have stated, the more coarse behavior of some of the people in Wood’s group as depicted in this film was exaggerated or invented for dramatic and comedic purposes. No one has ever confirmed that Bela Lugosi used the profanity that he is shown to resort to in Ed Wood. Lugosi’s hatred of his horror film rival Boris Karloff is also created to motivate some of his amusing outbursts in the film. Ed Wood’s supportive, one-time girlfriend Dolores Fuller has refuted her shrewish portrayal by Sarah Jessica Parker. These are some of the contrivances used to create both an absurd and tragic edge to the story that pays homage to the lasting, quirky mystique of the Ed Wood career. Tim Burton is not making a documentary but a tragicomedy in the never-never land of 1950s Hollywood.

Johnny Depp captures the cockeyed idealism and enthusiasm of this story’s misfit hero perfectly. His Ed Wood is both determined and inept. He is so driven or insecure that he can’t take the time to realize his production’s shortcomings and figure out how to salvage them. He just forges blindly ahead with faith that somehow things will turn out great.

The touching, tragic, and funny character of Bela Lugosi is brilliantly portrayed by Martin Landau. Again, many of the particulars about some of Lugosi’s antics are fabricated for this film, but the sentiment behind them and the concerns his character has seem genuine.

The film is loaded with other great performers portraying the members in Ed Wood’s filmmaking fringe. Sarah Jessica Parker as Ed’s increasingly frustrated girlfriend Dolores Fuller, professional wrestler George “The Animal” Steele as professional wrestler Tor “Super Swedish Angel” Johnson, Bill Murray as drag queen John “Bunny” Breckinridge, Jeffrey Jones as television psychic Criswell, Lisa Marie as TV horror film hostess Maila “Vampira” Nurmi, and Patricia Arquette as Ed’s tolerant new girlfriend Kathy O’Hara are just some of the characters that make the world of Ed Wood so fascinating.

Tim Burton’s penchant for viewing stories through a prism of playfully weird visuals is indulged as soon as the film begins. His opening scene immediately breaks the fourth wall in much the same way as two of Ed Wood’s films did. Jeffrey Jones’ Criswell character addresses the audience with a variation on the introductory monologues Criswell gave in Wood’s films Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959). This is performed in a setting like the old Willows house of Wood’s Bride of the Monster (1955). After this Criswell intro, we are treated to the film’s credits sequence exhibiting iconic images from Wood’s films as they would have been portrayed if the hapless director had access to a large budget and ’90s film technology. This sequence immediately establishes a sense of reverence for the weird visions in Ed Wood’s film canon.

Of special note is the terrific score by Howard Shore. His music perfectly compliments the era of the ’50s and captures the kitsch and sentiment of Ed Wood’s films.

The fate of Tim Burton’s finest film is as frustrating and surprising as that of its cult filmmaker hero. The Ed Wood film was a box office failure, yet it won two Oscars (Martin Landau for Best Supporting Actor and Rick Baker for Best Makeup) and has gone on to become a cult film itself. That is both ironic and fitting for a film based on the life of “the world’s worst director.”