On its 20th anniversary, surveying and surviving the trauma of JIMMY HOLLYWOOD.

On this date twenty years ago, the comedy/drama JIMMY HOLLYWOOD opened.  I was one of its three stand-ins; none of us received screen credit for our seven to eight weeks of labor--ce'st la vie.

JIMMY HOLLYWOOD opened against the cinematic competition of MAJOR LEAGUE 2 and FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL.  It stiffed.  The audience didn't like it/didn't think it was funny or involving/didn't care for its takes on would-be actors and Instant Fame in an era seven years before SURVIVOR unleashed a floodtide of TV stars cast for reasons other than talent or conventional training in acting.

A few months after its release, JIMMY HOLLYWOOD was recut for VHS/DVD release (in some ways, an improvement over the theatrical cut).  Though it has some supporters, it sank into the cinematic equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits, now so devoid of market value it can be seen for free by clicking the following link:
http://viooz.co/movies/19930-jimmy-hollywood-1994.html

Perhaps the lasting impact of JIMMY HOLLYWOOD was that it served as a laboratory for its director.  The shoot-an-A-picture-fast approach was later applied to WAG THE DOG, more universally acclaimed critically and successful at the boxoffice.

I've written before about the unpleasant work atmosphere of JIMMY HOLLYWOOD as I perceived/experienced it.

Here's a quick precis: some crew members on the film were decent and generous to me (and I tried my best to reciprocate).  Others' behavior ranged from patronizing to contemptuous to hostile to downright vicious, seizing on any mistakes I may have made as a way of venting anger they couldn't display to people equal or higher on the filmmaking ladder.

I was scared of not measuring up and being fired--and two decades later, time and distance have enabled me to accept that other crewpeople were fearful for the same reasons and there were some things I could and should have taken less personally.  But, at the time, it was quite difficult for me to be detached enough to have a Big Picture view of what a key crew member of JIMMY referred to as "this madness."

Twenty years later, I write poetry and try to sell books and e-books of my work.  It's not always an easy vocation/avocation, but at least I've moved on with my life.

And, if I make a mistake, I can correct it without the paralyzing worry that I'm causing a hundred crew members to stop in their tracks and wait for me to get it right.

Celebrating the upcoming 15th anniversary of the release of JIMMY HOLLYWOOD.

Here's a film-workplace story with some humor and some horror:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYw1Ho9AVec&feature=channel_page

And I'm glad I write poetry now. It satisfies any remaining desires of mine to be a part of show-business-of-sorts without being yelled at and/or being made to feel responsible for the fates of 149 other crewpeople on a set.

In terms of the finished product--
Here's a comment I wrote for Amazon.com in 2004, with some updates:
Barry Levinson's comedy/drama about an actor-turned-Hollywood crimefighter (JoePesci), his skeptical lover (Victoria Abril in a rare English-language performance)and his addled but adoring young friend (Christian Slater) was a fast flop in the spring of 1994--perhaps due to the public's lack of interest inseeing a film about a "loser" eager for a chance to become a "legendary" starlike Errol Flynn and live the glittering Hollywood lifestyle (with a home infashionable West L.A.) and his frustration over that lifestyle remaining forever beyond his reach.

In the 10 years since JIMMY HOLLYWOOD's release, the advent of both the internet and the glut of reality television series make Levinson's taleof an ordinary man thrust into a sort of fast-food version of stardom more relevant than ever [particularly with Nadya Suleman's current fifteen-minutes-plus-fourteen-children period of notoriety].I was Pesci's stand-in on the film, so my opinion isn't completely objective.But I do believe that Barry Levinson is noteworthy for treating audiences with intelligence and respect [although I have some issues with MAN OF THE YEAR,which fumbled its comic-becomes-President premise]. And I believe that JIMMYHOLLYWOOD, underrated and largely unseen over the past nine years, deserves to be rediscovered and re-evaluated on its DVD release.

I'm presuming that this is a bare bones DVD [it was]. But some interesting outtakes should still exist--including a scene of Pesci and Slater singing aLeonard Cohen song called "Democracy".

Since the above piece was written, JIMMY HOLLYWOOD is now available from Lionsgate (offloaded from Paramount) as half a double-bill DVD along with Ron Howard's pretty-much-forgotten American/Japanese culture clash comedy GUNG HO (with Michael Keaton, Gedde Watanabe and Mimi Rogers).