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Uppercut

by Ryan N. Wilcox

Happy Endings Are Only In The Movies As a director, editor, and critic, I love the process of making motion pictures. There is little that is easy in the process, and what is defined as easy becomes expensive. Over the years there have been many movies about making movies, but few have dealt with the business and the philosophy behind the business of making movies. Where we get to sit and hear what the producers go through to get a movie on screen and what audiences expect to see when they go to the movies. Robert Altman's The Player, made in 1992, is exactly one of those movies where you see the dog and pony show that goes into making movies. The Player has many threads happening at the same time, typical of an Altman movie. It stars Tim Robbins as Griffin Mill. He plays an executive at a movie studio that is undergoing a lot of staffing changes. Griffin's the guy who reviews thousands of scripts a year and can pick a handful to be made into movies. A writer is upset that Griffin has not optioned his story and he starts send threatening letters to Griffin. He confronts the writer about it and accidentally kills him over it. Griffin later finds out he confronted the wrong guy. He befriends the girlfriend of the murdered writer, and a relationship begins. At the same time, Griffin is helping a new movie to be produced with no known actors and an unhappy ending because it is a movie that should be raw or real. By the time the movie is completed, it stars Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts happily in love. Things continue to build to a head, and by the end, you are laughing out loud as to how it all turns out. The Player starts out with one of the best and most complicated long shots in movie history. It begins with two characters walking out from a meeting discussing how all the movies are "Cut cut cut… No one does the long take anymore." Then it follows a tour group to a window, where the camera zooms into the window where someone is pitching a sequel to "The Graduate," the camera backs out as you join back up with the tour group and continues in this fashion until the shot ends with the two guys at the beginning discussing how good Hitchcock was at the long take. The shot totals about 12 minutes, which is as long as a roll of film. I'm not sure I can begin to tell you the entire cast of this movie. Because it takes place in Hollywood, you constantly see tables or locations where famous actors just hanging out. One scene is John Cusack eating with Angelica Houston. There is a casual joke when we see Andie McDowell talking with Malcom McDowell at a party. There are several actors with regular parts in the movie, but the onslaught of big name Hollywood actors continually in the background is really a great trivia/drinking game for those who think they know actors. What really pushes this movie from being a gimmick flick to fine cinema is the theme of the picture. There are several discussions as to what all Hollywood movies require to make be successful. Some of the things required are a beautiful female lead, conflict, sex, resolution, the bad guy getting what they deserve, and especially a happy ending. One of the reasons they give for being the necessary components for movies is that these things don't happen in real life. We go to movies to escape and Hollywood has to deliver these items to please the masses. The movie mentioned before with no-name actors and a sad ending may have been a great idea because it was "real-life," but the studio knew it was going to end up with a typical Hollywood ending. What The Player points out is that very little has changed in motion pictures over the last 100 years. 1933's King Kong has all the elements discussed in The Player. Hollywood keeps trying new and different things, but what it comes down to is a very strict set of rules that most movies that come out of there contain. Yes many movies are better than others, but that is the job of the storyteller, not so much the idea behind the story. The Player is on several lists of the best movies ever made. Its satirical outlook to Hollywood is well written, and funny. All of the elements you see in movies are contained and discussed within the movie. You're told what you are seeing and what you are expected to see. It then breaks these rules and reforms them while you watch. I truly love this picture and cannot do it justice in a single sitting. Altman is at the top of his game with it, and helps to define his own views of Hollywood, and no matter how much you may disagree with the reasons behind your basic big budget movie, you would be hard pressed to prove them wrong. In the end, we all hope for the happy ending.