“The movie business is a cruel and shallow money trench, where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.”
What Just Happened?, written by Art Linson based on his own memoir about life in Hollywood as a film producer, follows the fictional account of once-powerful producer Ben (Robert De Niro) as he juggles several problems at once in the span of a week. His Hollywood clout dimming, he finds himself stuck managing a battle between a powder keg director and a studio chief over a controversial scene in his latest movie. At the same time, his latest production hits a snag when its star, Bruce Willis (playing himself), refuses to shave off his Grizzly Adams beard, causing the studio to threaten pulling the plug on the film altogether. All this, while he’s suspecting one of his ex-wives having secret trysts with a screenwriter.
There are several subplots going on, but no plot to speak of. It’s a week in the life of a Hollywood producer, and while it’s full of amusing anecdotes, it’s mostly inconsequential, all leading to the same conclusion as the one already stated at the beginning of the movie: that Ben is not as influential as he once were. The film opens with a photo shoot gathering the most powerful producers in Hollywood. While included, we later discover that his role is now largely a whipping boy to the studio; so much so that he has to personally take care of Bruce Willis’ beard fiasco, since Bruce’s nebbish agent (John Torturro) is deathly afraid of his own client.
The film’s humor is a constant seesaw of hits and misses, with most of the hits offering genuine insight on movie industry pettiness. The humor peaks early with a quick gag about a tasteless Variety headline that makes a groan-worthy pun out of an agent’s tragic suicide. The cold and faux-sad—not to mention glossed over—reaction this death generates in the film is an example of Hollywood’s career-comes-first mentality. Never is this more evident than in Catherine Keener’s character, whose frigid demeanor represents all the terrible stories you’ve heard about Hollywood studio heads turning a blind eye to integrity. All of this is covered adeptly in the film, but none of it felt fresh. The art-versus-commerce squabble, no matter how truthful, is a tired subject of exploration. At least in a bold-faced approach such as this. What’s more effective is the film’s observation of the fragility of Hollywood’s filmmaking process, where an entire production can be shut down by a guy refusing to shave his beard; or that a director would throw a tantrum and sabotage his own work just to defend his artistic right to shoot a dog onscreen. The irony is that it’s a terrible and manipulative scene in the first place, but of course, in such a focus group-tooled movie biz, anything that goes remotely against the grain is considered revolutionary.
The misses come when the film tries too hard to inject some laugh-out-loud comedy that would play bigger, like John Torturro’s overdone mousy agent (what kind of agent would survive in Hollywood with balls that small? We’re supposed to believe he would land an A-lister like Willis?) or Michael Wincott’s super-emotional artsy filmmaker. The whole charade is like a depressing and unhip episode of Entourage, with Robert De Niro acting morose for the entire thing. It’s always fun to see De Niro play someone so vulnerable once in a while—it is a major improvement over the phoned-in tough lead nonsense he’s been floating on lately (with the exception of the twist in Stardust)—but the fact that he pushes against one problem after another in that somber state, with seemingly no hope of winning, makes the film disastrously aimless and no fun at all.
Hollywood is evil and being rich and powerful there wouldn’t make you happy. The correct question isn't "What Just Happened?" It should be "What Else is New?"
"What Just Happened?" opens October 17, 2008 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama. Directed by Barry Levinson. Written by Art Linson. Starring Bruce Willis, Catherine Keener, John Turturro, Robert De Niro, Robin Wright Penn, Sean Penn, Stanley Tucci, Michael Wincott.
