Academy Awards 2020: Hollywood love-hate relationship spawns movies about movies – cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio —  The red-carpet rituals. The marvelous gowns and tuxedos. The paparazzi and the gilded Oscar. And, yes, of course, the acceptance speeches by the famous and the fabulously rich — where nods to the power players that made it all happen mingle with moralistic shout-outs to social causes.

The Academy Awards — whose 92nd edition takes place at 8 p.m. today on ABC (WEWS Channel 5 in Cleveland) — have come to define our perceptions of Hollywood.

It’s the night we get to revel in the glitz and the glam, see our favorite stars and peek at an industry that exists in some rarefied reality very different from our own.

Yet, this is not the Hollywood we see when Hollywood takes a good look in the mirror. The land of golden fever dreams has made countless films about itself that reveal a very different picture.

It’s a walk of fame paved with broken dreams — a place that cast aside so many, like Orson Welles,  a place that Ray Davies of the Kinks once sang about in “Celluloid Heroes”:

You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard
Some that you recognize, some that you’ve hardly even heard of
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain.

“There’s the myth, and then there’s reality of the Hollywood dream,” says Hollywood screenwriter and producer Larry Karaszewski via phone from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s a story of people coming here to make movies and then having to work in a record store or bookstore or restaurant in the hopes of catching a break.

“And, then, even if they finally make their movie, they’re back to struggling to find a way to make their next one … and they realize that the dream isn’t all it’s made out to be.”

François Duhamel, Netflix

Karaszewski and his writing partner Scott Alexander explore the theme with wit, heart and humor in one of 2019’s most charming and acclaimed films, “Dolemite Is My Name.”

The comeback vehicle for Eddie Murphy explores the life and times of 1970s Blaxploitation star and former Clevelander Rudy Ray Moore. It’s the story of a comedian who plays a pimp and tries to make a movie against all odds. (To read about the life and times of Moore and his beginnings in Cleveland, go here.)

It’s one of many films that explored movie themes and reflect the spirit of Hollywood released in 2019.

Andrew Cooper/Sony via Associated Press

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (nominated for 10 Academy Awards) tells the story of two actors on the outs of the changing movie business.

Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory” (up for best foreign language film and best actor) features Antonio Banderas as a filmmaker struggling with age, depression and drug addiction.

Todd Phillips’ “Joker” (nominated for 11 Oscars; read review here) recalls Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” and “Taxi Driver” and even appropriates the logo from the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange.”

“ ‘Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood’ is steeped in references to Hollywood, and it’s perfect in how it captures the place,” says Karaszewski, who also sits on the Board of Governors for the academy. “Tarantino is looking at the Hollywood pecking order and how quickly you can find yourself at the bottom of it — a place where no one feels like they’re on solid ground.”

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That feeling of desperation and insecurity has fueled countless movies about movies in America, but also Europe: from David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” to the Coen Brothers’ “Barton Fink” to Federico Fellini’s “8½” to Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place” to “Contempt” Jean-Luc Godard (which even features German-American filmmaker Fritz Lang playing himself).

It’s a theme that is almost as old as Hollywood, beginning with “Show People.” The 1928 silent-era comedy starring Marion Davies as a girl who drives from Georgia to Hollywood to make it in the movies only to discover that the reality is  very different than the dream. Like most of the films of its day, it took an aw-shucks approach to things — in this case, the Hollywood rat race, the studio grind and the trappings of fame.

“From the beginning, there were movies about movies exploring the theme that Hollywood isn’t all it’s made out to be,” says  Karaszewski,  who also sits on the Board of Governors for the Academy, as the Governor of the Writers Branch, co-chair of the International Feature Film Executive committee and Vice President History/Preservation.

United Artists/Warner Bros./Warner Bros./Warner Bros.

“A Star Is Born” brings a more serious tone to the other side of Hollywood. The 1937 romantic drama focuses on an aspiring actress who heads out to become a star only to be discover that she’s just another face in a big anonymous crowd of extras and is told that she has a one in 100,000 chance of making it.

Of course, she does make it — though she has her named changed and finds herself in a relationship with an alcoholic.

The film has been remade three times — most recently in 2018, with a version that starred Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga and earned eight Academy Award nominations and one Oscar win.

Paramount Pictures

Billy Wilder’s 1950 “Sunset Boulevard” set the standard for the down-and-out Hollywood outsider. It tells the story of a failed screenwriter who, while trying to evade debt collectors, meets and begins a relationship with a faded silent-movie star, Norma Desmond.

The film noir classic received 11 Oscar nominations and won three at the 23rd Academy Awards in 1951.

“‘Sunset Boulevard’ is the great one — it shows you how brutal Hollywood could be. Here you have Gloria Swanson, who’s not much older than Charlize Theron is now, playing a Hollywood has-been,” says Karaszewski. “In Hollywood, everyone is one step away from being Norma Desmond.”

Ah, but she lives on with her delusions — fantasizing that she’s still a star and that her friend Cecil B. DeMille (who appears in the film as himself) is waiting to cast her in his next epic.

Welcome to LaLaLand.

Fine Line Features

Iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Altman was beloved for classics such as “M*A*S*H,” “Nashville,” “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “The Long Goodbye” — a cynical neo-noir classic that takes a jaundiced view of Los Angeles. It concludes with “Hurray for Hollywood.” The ditty features lyrics by Johnny Mercer that lampoon the lust for fame that attracts people to Hollywood. It first appeared in movies in 1937 —  in the Hollywood-does-Hollywood musical, “Hollywood Hotel” — and has become a staple at Academy Awards shows.

Altman was notorious for his battles with movie studios throughout his career. He was considered a problem child and was proud of it.

“People talk about ‘the director’s cut.’ Well, all of my movies are ‘director’s cuts,'” Altman once told The Plain Dealer.  “That’s why ‘M*A*S*H’ is still a great movie. I never let them [expletive] with it.”

In 1992, Altman spoofed Hollywood with “The Player” — which boasted the tagline, “Making Movies Can Be Murder.” It  was nominated for three Oscars at the 65th Academy Awards. The story of a studio mogul who kills an aspiring screenwriter, it rolls out countless Hollywood references and in-jokes and cameos by dozens of Hollywood celebrities.

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Hollywood is often derided as being insular and out of touch. But so many movies about movies have less to do with navel gazing than universal themes. The fear of losing is as old as ambition itself. The anxiety that accompanies holding on to what is fading away is central to the human experience.

Hollywood has helped us laugh at but also identity with the beautiful losers — in films such as “Bowfinger,” the 1999 story of a down-and-out filmmaker who tries to make a flick on a shoestring budget with a movie star who doesn’t know he’s in the movie.

Or “Ed Wood,” the 1994 Tim Burton movie about the ultimate Hollywood outsider — a Z-grade schlockmeister with a dream.

“Ed Wood is like Rudy Ray Moore in that they want to make movies they’d like to see,” says Karaszewski, who co-wrote the screenplay for “Ed Wood.” “They’re outsiders, but they have a dream, and they’re going to pursue it regardless of what anyone thinks or how hard it’s going to be.”

Niko Tavernise, Netflix

It’s a theme that taps into more than our love for the underdog. Such movies have become a part of us. They shape our language. For instance, lines such as “It is what it is,” from “The Irishman,” quickly entered into daily discourse. (To read a review of “The Irishman, go here.)

In many ways, our romance with mobsters  is shaped by directors like Martin Scorsese. We’ve grown up with watching Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel shooting, bludgeoning and killing — so much so that we bring our memories of “Good Fellas,” “Mean Streets” and “Casino” to the screen when we watch “The Irishman.”

Wait, Scorsese is trying to de-age De Niro? … That’s not the De Niro we remember in “Good Fellas”?

“Movies have become part of our consciousness,” says Evan Lieberman, film professor at Cleveland State University. “They’ve shaped our reality and even our expectations when we go to see movies.”

Lieberman points to the “Star Wars” and superhero enterprises that have dominated the last two decades of cinema.

“Our connection to movies is often bigger than the movies themselves,” he adds. “We see a ‘Star Wars’ or an ‘Avengers’ film, and they’re part of a broader experience. We already know the characters going into the theater, and we’ve come to expect something is going to happen at a predetermined point.”

Films such as “Avengers: Endgame” (nominated for an Academy Award for best visual effects) and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” (up for three awards) might not be movies about movies, per se, but they tap into imaginations formed by movies.

“You’re no longer seeing a movie. You’re a ‘Star Wars’ person,” says Lieberman. “You’re part of an entire ‘Star Wars’ reality — where the imaginary realm has become more real than the real world.”

The opening scene of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” shot in Hollywood institution Musso & Frank. (Sony Pictures)

“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” manages to set one foot each in the real and the imaginary worlds. It focuses on fictional characters amid a historical backdrop — in this case, the story of the Manson Family murders — then proceeds to create a fairy tale that warps what is real and what is Hollywood.

Yes, it’s is audacious portrait Los Angeles, 1969,  as a decade was coming to a close and many of its cultural bonds were splintering. But Tarantino also pays homage to a Hollywood in flux, set in the year of “Easy Rider” — the film that sparked the New Hollywood era of the 1970s.

John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer

“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is such a love letter to Hollywood,” says  Karaszewski. “It’s works on two levels: He’s giving us movie history and he’s creating it at the same time by giving us two movie-star performances [by Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio] that are we rarely see anymore. Quentin was formed by 1970s filmmaking and he creates a throwback to the time when we had movie starts like Paul Newman or Robert Redford.”

Like all of Tarentino’s films, it features references to films and locations that reflect the Golden Age of Hollywood — like Musso & Frank Grill.  The Hollywood Boulevard institution might have a monopoly on Tinseltown allure, with its elegant bar and dining room, legendary literary and movie guests and servers in red coats. But it offers a slice of vintage Hollywood that make you feel like an extra in a movie.

It’s provides the backdrop for the meeting between Leonardo DeCaprio and Al Pacino in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” Before that it played backdrop to a meeting of Ed Wood Jr. and Orson Welles in “Ed Wood” and made cameos in “Mad Men.”

“Tarantino is the master of mythology — where history is a building block of the narrative, but is also fully malleable,” says Lieberman. “History has been replaced by a story, and the movies are bigger than reality.”

As Ray Davies once sang,

Everybody’s a dreamer and everybody’s a star
And everybody’s in show biz, it doesn’t matter who you are.

In other words, Hollywood is in all of us — even if we don’t realize it.

John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer

PREVIEW

92nd Academy Awards

When: 8 p.m. today.

Where: WEWS Channel 5 (ABC).

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Hurray for meta-Hollywood

The land of golden fever dreams has made countless films about itself — the kind that reveal a picture very different from the glitz and glam we associate with the Academy Awards. It’s a walk of fame paved with broken dreams

It includes “The Bad and the Beautiful.” The 1952 Vincente Minnelli film tells the story of a bad guy film producer played by Kirk Douglas, who died on Feb. 5 at the age of 103. “The Bad and the Beautiful” won five out of its six Oscar nominations at the 25th Academy Awards.

The list of movies about movies is long as goes back to the beginnings of Hollywood. Here are a few others:  “Footlight Parade” (1933); “Sullivan’s Travels“ (1941); “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952); “The Big Knife” (1955)’ “Two Weeks in Another Town” (1962); “The Day of the Locust” (1975); “Hooper” (1978); “Hollywood Shuffle” (1987);  “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” (1994); “Boogie Nights” (1997); Shadow of the Vampire ” (2000); “Tropic Thunder” (2008); “Adaptation” (2002); “Hail, Caesar!” (2016);

John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer

Los Angeles in the movies: A tour of 50 iconic film locations

Did the city make the movies or did the movies make the city? To read about and see the most iconic filming locations in Los Angeles, check out this travelogue of the city:

https://www.cleveland.com/travel/2018/03/los_angeles_in_the_movies_-_a_1.html

John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer

Cinema in a time of outrage: The year in movies, 2019

To read about the year in movies 2019 — the outrages, panic, shifts in cinema and some of the most striking films — go to:

https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/g66l-2019/12/ab368fec957104/cinema-in-a-time-of-outrage-year-in-movies-2019-photos.html

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