BEFORE: Does this happen to you, do you find out about a new film on Netflix that sounds kind of interesting, and the same day, as you're logging it in you realize it's the exact film you need to watch to make a connection between two superhero films, one from DC and the other from Marvel, because you found out too late that the filmmakers didn't hire Nicolas Cage back to voice the character of "Spider-Man Noir", but with just a few minor changes you could add this film and another one on Netflix, and your viewing chain can continue in, more or less, the same order, and the connecting actor-actress chain for the whole year will still be intact? Nah, I'm guessing not - it's probably just me.
Pedro Pascal carries over from "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent".
THE PLOT: A group of actors and actresses stuck inside a pandemic bubble at a hotel attempt to complete a film.
AFTER: What a stroke of luck that I've landed on a film about making movies JUST after they've announced that all of SAG-AFTRA is on strike, for the same reasons that the Writers Guild went on strike in May. Just to prove that I am really sort of Forrest Gump, in my own way, I was there at the WGA meeting in NYC earlier this year, when I think the issues about getting more royalties and protection from A.I.-written scripts, and the guild voted to strike. They had their annual meeting at the theater where I work part-time, however I'm usually forbidden to talk or blog about what happens at the theater, after the fact I think it's OK. (I was also there when non-vaxxed actors picketed against the SAG Awards telecast, but that's another story...)
This film is also about making a movie during the pandemic, which is what those non-vaxxed actors were complaining about - SAG was supposed to ease the protocols so that non-vaxxed actors could work again, but months later they had not taken actions to do so. And who gets stuck dealing with the angry protestors with picket signs? Me, of course. (But you know what, if you want to work on the movie set, just get the damn shot. If your religion is more important than maybe you're just not cut out to be an actor, since it involves sacrifice. I said the same thing when that tennis player wouldn't get the jab and couldn't play in the Australian Open or something. Tough titty - either get the shot or go away and shut the hell up.)
So we've got two shutdowns to deal with tonight - the pandemic one, and the actors on strike. Let's deal with the first one first, then move on to the second. Remember when the world shut down? Remember quarantining? If you weren't able to stay at home and if you had to travel, then sometimes if you had to go to another country you could be confined to a hotel for TWO WEEKS before they let you run free among the populace. Thanks, I'd rather stay at home. Though my wife and I did have a standing agreement that if one of us got COVID-19, we would go and take NYC's offer to go stay in a city hotel for two weeks so we didn't infect the other. Or maybe the non-sick person was going to stay in a hotel, I don't remember - it doesn't matter because we both tested positive at the same time, even though we were double-vaxxed. So OK, two weeks at home it was, what's another two weeks when you've already been (mostly) stuck at home for 15 months?
Across the board, movie and TV shoots were shut down or put on hold - and then a year later when Hollywood started running out of the movies they never wanted to release but needed to anyway, film shoots started up again, but with an abundance of caution (supposedly). After quarantining and testing negative, the cast and crew of a movie were allowed to interact with each other but nobody else, meaning they were in their own "bubble". The NBA teams did this too once they started playing basketball again - meaning that NBA players had to either bring their families into the bubble, or spend months away from their families. (Most players probably opted for the latter, just a theory...). And on the movie sets, they hired people to work as COVID "handlers", responsible for testing everyone once a day and making sure that the rules were followed properly. Yeah, I'm sure they got the best medical professionals to do this for $10 an hour - this was an intern job.
Back in the real world with normal people, we'd hear stories about people who moved in with each other as the pandemic started and bonded well, and other people who'd been together for years but couldn't stand each other in such close quarters, so they broke up. Everyone's lives changed, people stopped going to the office and started working from home, and then when the restrictions eased, many just never went back to the office. Why would they if they didn't have to? Ah, but actors still have to go to the set or the location and BE there for movies to happen. Or they at least have to go to the set full of green-screens and let the tech guys make the magic. (My first gig was painting walls "ultimatte green" on music video shoots, before long every pair of pants and sneakers I owned were speckled in that horrible shade of green, and I still get the shakes when I see that awful color.)
So, as you might imagine, things got difficult on movie sets - actors had to spend more time AWAY from their families and more time WITH their co-stars, and nobody's really talked about this, but I'm betting that a lot of "special bonding" went on behind the scenes with all those dirty no-good actors in such close quarters. Then they had to do love scenes together, one thing leads to another, before long the movie shoot is over and they're in a different relationship than they were before. (OR they have a life partner at home, and another one on the set, who am I to judge? Whatever gets you through your life, it's all right, it's all right.)
So yeah, along comes this movie that says, "You know, a lot of weird stuff probably went down in the bubbles on those movies that shot during the pandemic." "The Bubble" shows how weird it got during the making of the sixth film in the fictitious "Cliff Beasts" franchise, which seems kind of like a low-rent "Jurassic Park" (or a classier "Sharknado") but so many people have been in and out (and in again) of the franchise over six movies, it's like a really messed-up family away from home. These actors are all neurotic, sex-starved, drug-addicted, overly sensitive and quick-tempered, but honestly, they were probably all like that BEFORE the pandemic, and then suddenly they're all twice as bad as before. Yeah, this tracks.
On top of the high-strung type A personality issues that take place - the lead actor and the lead actress in the "Cliff Beasts" franchise were married for a while, and divorced just after adopting a son, and now they have to work together again, for example - there are the issues caused by the quarantining (basically sitting around a nice hotel room moping, eating ice cream, gaining weight and working out in a vicious cycle) and the constant testing, masking and trying to not interact with anyone outside the bubble. Time apart from their loved ones is another problem - one actress finds that her boyfriend has moved on to another partner just DAYS after she left for the set. Now THEY'RE in their own bubble, but in her house! Not cool.
As the shoot wears on, past day 100, past day 130, it becomes too much for some of the cast - they try to leave the set, even though that means they can't return. And if they successfully manage to leave the compound, it could mean that their character then gets killed off in "Cliff Beasts 6", those are the breaks. Other cast members try to get the word out via social media that the cast is being held against their will, the set is unsafe and their lives are in danger - only to find out after months of shooting that the studio wants to keep them in the bubble and go right ahead with shooting "Cliff Beasts 7"!
Now, how does this all relate to the actors strike? The film depicts the actors as having no rights, they're little more than pieces of walking meat to the executives. Or trained monkeys who are assigned to do their little dance, flash their tits (men, too) and get back in their cages. Meanwhile, the studio executives call in from the island of Fiji or an African safari to check in on the progress of the movie shoot. Again, this tracks. If you've ever wondered why so many actors form their own production companies and try to transition to producing or directing, it's really not that hard to figure out why.
So I guess I'm with the actors on this one - they've got my sympathy, look, I'm under-employed for the summer but I know exactly when I'm going to return to my second job, about a week before student orientation and classes start again in September. The striking actors have NO IDEA how long the strike is going to last. And there's a point to be made when the CEOs of Netflix and the big studios are making 7-figure salaries for - umm, doing WHAT, exactly? - and getting rich off the hard work of all the monkeys in the cages. Sorry, actors on the sets. It's long hours working and weeks away from home and family, unless you're Adam Sandler and you cast your wife and kids in every movie and take them with you to Hawaii or Africa as a working vacation. (Again, I don't hate Sandler for this, it's a savvy set of perks that not everyone gets to pull off...)
But I've just got to point out to the SAG leaders that if one of their complaints is that they want protection against actor roles being taken over by A.I., sure, maybe some legal protections need to be put into place to preserve the rights of actors to their own face images. However, by going on strike and refusing to work, they're actually creating an incentive for the studio executives to replace flesh-and-blood actors with digitally created ones. Just saying. Also, every time that someone like Harrison Ford agrees to be made to look digitally younger for an entire Indiana Jones film, and you just KNOW some of the older actresses are dying to have this technology applied to them, then they're working at cross purposes with themselves. If it's not right to replace actors with CGI pixel-driven versions of themselves, then actors should STOP agreeing to let this happen for their own vanity. If you let the special FX guys take away a wrinkle here or a gray hair there, then before you know it, you've been replaced by a digital model of yourself that works for free.
Look, I'm not saying this film is going to change the world, or even that it's an accurate portrayal of what went down on movie shoots in 2021. Honestly, I haven't even SEEN that many movies come out about the pandemic, and you'd think that would be a no-brainer source of comedy. Why did this take so long? Probably because when movie shoots resumed, the goal was to create films that would take people's minds off of their problems, not remind them about them. But then comedy is just tragedy over time, or something like that. There was "Locked Down" and "Alone Together" fit right into my romance chain, those are really the only pandemic-related movies that I can recall watching, and this one is the third? Yeah, that seems about right.
Also starring Karen Gillan (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "Clerks III"), Iris Apatow (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Maria Bamford (last seen in "Stuart Little 2"), Leslie Mann (last seen in "Blithe Spirit"), David Duchovny (last seen in "Things We Lost in the Fire"), Keegan-Michael Key (last heard in "Wendell & Wild"), Guz Khan, Peter Serafinowicz (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Rob Delaney (ditto), Vir Das, Maria Bakalova (last seen in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"), Samson Kayo (last seen in "Dolittle"), Ross Lee, Harry Trevaldwyn (last seen in "The King"), Nick Kocher, Galen Hopper, Kate McKinnon (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), John Lithgow (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Austin Ku, Danielle Vitalis, Chris Witaske (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Audrina Woolrich, Grant Woolrich, Ben Ashenden (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Alexander Owen (ditto), Celeste Dring (last seen in "Cyrano"), Raphael Acloque (last seen in "The 355"), Zanda Emlano, Donna Air, Ivy Wolk, Kathryn Drysdale (last seen in "Vanity Fair"), Vivian Full (last seen in "Skyscraper"), Chloe Delanney, David Cheung, Katie O'Brien,
with cameos from Maude Apatow (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Beck (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"), John Cena (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), James McAvoy (last seen in "Welcome to the Punch"), Daisy Ridley (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker") and archive footage of Hugh Grant (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Martine McCutcheon (last seen in "Love Actually").
RATING: 6 out of 10 actors who played Batman
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