BEFORE: Chris Messina carries over from "Everything Is Copy" - I wish I could have watched that Mike Nichols documentary next, since he was interviewed in the doc about Nora Ephron, but then I wouldn't be able to proceed with my chain, and I only JUST found my path to the end of the year, so I don't want to do anything to mess with that. The rule is that if I add something, then I also have to take something from the plan away, and also if I add something, it has to lead me back to the path I've established somehow, now that there is a path. I'll add "Becoming Mike Nichols" to my list, and maybe I can fit it in somewhere down the road.
Chris Messina's making a sudden move toward the top of this year's leaderboard, and if I hadn't moved another film with him from July to September, he'd be just about there. But I've got documentaries coming up, and that means a lot is going to change very soon, I know that Oprah's got a few more 2021 appearances in her, and then there are also the people who appear in the docs but aren't listed on the IMDB (yet, just wait...) so there could be some surprises still. I'm not going to say more until the Summer Music Concert & Documentary series is done.
Oh, and by the way, a happy (belated) birthday SHOUT-OUT to Will Ferrell, who appears, apparently uncredited, in "Zeroville". Yes, his birthday was yesterday, July 16, but I was on break, I'm only watching four movies a week right now. Anyway, I started watching "Zeroville" a little before midnight on 7/16, so it still counts.
THE PLOT: A young ex-communicated seminarian, Ike "Vikar" Jerome, arrives in Los Angeles on the same August day in 1969 that a crazed "hippie" family led by Charles Manson commits five savage murders, then finds work in the movie industry.
AFTER: You know, I COULD have watched "Becoming Mike Nichols", because that documentary features archive footage of several celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, who's also featured prominently in today's film, via footage from "A Place in the Sun". Only she wasn't listed in the IMDB credits for "Zeroville", so how was I to know? This is what's so annoying about the IMDB, they have very arcane rules regarding archive footage - some of it is credited, but much of it is not - and then when I try to add it, I'm successful about 75% of the time, which makes me wonder why the IMDB editors reject 25% of my additions? And why for only certain actors? Don't they TRUST me by now, that I wouldn't suggest an addition of a celebrity unless I saw the footage myself? It's so annoying, especially when the IMDB staff could easily prove my claims by, I don't know, watching the damn movie themselves? Why isn't that automatically part of the plan to confirm submissions? Because it would take too long? OK, then why bother having any kind of database at all about who appears in what movie, if you're not willing to put in the time to do it RIGHT? I made about 40 submissions for people who appeared in "Everything Is Copy" who weren't properly credited, and so far only 25 of them have been accepted. What, are Cher and Jack Nicholson suddenly too important to have all of their archive footage properly credited? What gives?
Even so, I don't want to add "Becoming Mike Nichols" after the fact because that would throw off my count, I wouldn't land on the right film for Movie #3,900, which is coming up soon, and then I'd also have to delete something from the November/December line-up. So Chris Messina remains my link from "Everything Is Copy", and in this film he plays Brian De Palma -
yes, the director. There's a scene not too far in where Seth Rogen's character takes James Franco's character to a party, and there at the party are actors playing the soon-to-be-famous film directors of the 1970's - Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, some guy named "Marty", and this is all done in a bit of tongue-in-cheek sort of way. Spielberg says he wants to make a movie about a shark terrorizing a town, Lucas talks about robots (sorry, DROIDS), and Rogen's character forbids them to ever make a movie together, which is only funny because it eventually happened.
Stunt casting is involved here, too - Derek Waters plays Paul Schrader, and in a later scene, Horatio Sanz plays Francis Ford Coppola on a movie set in the Philippines that looks an awful lot like "Apocalypse Now". Vikar, Franco's character finds himself there, too, making him the equivalent of a Forrest Gump-like filmworker for a while, turning up at some of the most important filmmaking moments in the 1970's. Note to Hollywood - I would watch an entire 90-minute movie based on the scene at the party, with actors playing Lucas, Spielberg, etc. (Rogen's character threatens to shoot Lucas in the face, and haven't all "Star Wars" fans felt that way, at one point or another?)
Unfortunately, the rest of film is a bunch of loose plot lines that don't seem to connect, it's a bunch of stuff that ultimately goes nowhere. The connection to the Manson Family murders mentioned in the plotline is a non-starter, it's seen at the beginning of the film and then becomes just another loose thread that never gets picked up again. Instead Vikar goes to work building sets at a movie studio, then spends a few months on the set of that Vietnam movie, but ultimately finds work as an editor, and then somehow loses himself in that job - before long, months and then years have gone by. Umm, I think, actually this is a bit unclear, because this film doesn't really adhere to strict standards of continuity.
Vikar becomes obsessed with an actress named Soledad, he meets her at a party, then gets a job editing a film that she appears in. They do have a relationship off-set, but it's a brief one, she moves in with a producer (Vikar's boss, of course) perhaps for the sake of her young daughter (who appears years older every time we see her) but Vikar just can't get her out of his mind. Eventually this appears to be some kind of one-sided relationship, but one that eats away at him while he spends hours, days, (months?) at the editing deck. And this was back in the 1970's, before digital editing, when film had to be cut by hand, and if you made a mistake, you had to order a whole new print of that reel so you could fix it. I remember those days, and trust me, it was very inconvenient - and wasteful.
Months (or perhaps years) later, Vikar is watching a Jodorowsky film and swears that he sees a flash-frame of Soledad. He goes so far as to steal the print from the projection booth, just to see if what he saw was real. But by this point, there is the very real possibility that he's gone insane, driven by some combination of love, loss and grief. There's some loose story presented by an (imaginary?) film archivist that there is a secret film, which can be assembled from flash-frames that are hidden in some of the world's most classic movies - but this is just plain impossible, for many reasons, chief among them the fact that the people in these images weren't even born when those classic films were made. Umm, I think - so I'm going with the "Vikar's gone insane" theory.
This movie was filmed in 2014, but the distribution company that acquired the film rights filed for bankruptcy soon after, so it didn't see any kind of release until 2019, and is now considered a box-office bomb. Gee, you don't suppose that's because the film is really a bunch of loose plot lines that don't connect, and ultimately go nowhere, do you? Or that none of the scenes seem to adhere to any kind of strict continuity? Or maybe it's the impossible story of a film that can be assembled from frames cut from other films? Take your pick, I guess.
James Franco directed "Zeroville", in addition to starring in it, and I think that's all very ironic, considering he also starred in "The Disaster Artist", which was about another filmmaker who made questionable choices, was possibly insane in a creative-type way, and also made cult films. "Zeroville" was made before "The Disaster Artist", but ended up getting released later. Both "The Disaster Artist" and the film-within-the-film, "The Room", became underground sleeper hits, but will "Zeroville"? Nah, I very much doubt it. This feels more like the film that both David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino somehow intentionally forgot to make, if that makes any sense. I'm awarding points tonight mostly just for that comic scene with actors playing Lucas and Spielberg, it's the highlight of the movie.
Also starring James Franco (last seen in "Howl"), Megan Fox (last seen in "Friends With Kids"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Joey King (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "Bird Box"), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Dave Franco (last seen in "6 Underground"), Craig Robinson (last heard in "Dolittle"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Clear History"), Mike Starr (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Nick Buda, Jack Kehler (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Tyler Danna, Mia Serafino, Jason Fox, Horatio Sanz (last seen in "The New Guy"), Ryan Moody, Kevin Makely, Mino Mackic (last seen in "Captive State"), Thomas Ian Nicholas (last seen in "Rookie of the Year"), Derek Waters (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Nanghana, Keegan Allen, Steve Erickson, Jacob Loeb (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Nina Ljeti, Scott Haze (last seen in "The Vault"), Alberto Barbera, Thalia Ayala, Una Jensen, Aaron Garcia Silverman, Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Jesus Rolls"), Stewart Strauss, Vince Jolivette, Scott Reed, Melody Cole, Cadence Cole,
with cameos from Gus Van Sant (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Wim Wenders, and archive footage of Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Montgomery Clift, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Jack Nance, Laurel Near, Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard.
RATING: 3 out of 10 lines flubbed by Ali McGraw
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