Hollywoodland

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Hollywoodland
Directed by	Allen Coulter
Produced by	Glenn Williamson
Written by	Paul Bernbaum
Starring	Adrien Brody Diane Lane Ben Affleck Bob Hoskins Molly Parker Robin Tunney Caroline Dhavernas
Distributed by	Focus Features (USA) Miramax Films (non-USA)
Release date(s)	September 8, 2006
Language	English
Budget	$14,000,000 (reportedly)
IMDb profile

Hollywoodland is a 2006 biopic/docudrama directed by TV alum Allen Coulter (his feature directorial debut) about a down-on-his-luck detective, Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), investigating the suspicious death of actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck), the star of television's Adventures of Superman. Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), the wife of MGM studio executive Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), had been in a long romantic relationship with Reeves, who had ended the affair and had become engaged to a younger woman, an aspiring actress Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney).

[edit] Plot

George Reeves has had a long, steady acting career which began in the late 1930s with a small role in Gone with the Wind and ended soon after the Adventures of Superman television series. However, he is unhappy with being typecast as Superman and has not found major film roles. Reeves has also had drinking problems and a long affair with Toni Mannix, the wife of MGM VP Eddie Mannix. When Reeves is found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in the early morning hours of June 16, 1959 the police rule it a simple suicide but Reeves' mother hires private detective Louis Simo to find out what happened. Simo tracks down Reeves' life story and other details of the case, finding the evidence is far more ambiguous than the police are willing to officially admit. The film presents three possible scenarios for Reeves' death but does not introduce any new theories or resolve the death, other than hinting that it probably was a suicide.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Box office and critical reception

Hollywoodland received generally positive responses from viewers and critics, garnering a 70% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.9 on the Internet Movie Database. Ben Affleck earned the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance as George Reeves. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls.

Hoskins and Lane have also been applauded for their performances. Critics at The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair called the film 2006's Brokeback Mountain (also from Focus Features) and an Oscar contender, but the film failed to receive any Oscar nominations.

The film debuted at #2 at the box office. Shot on a budget of less than $14 million, 'Hollywoodland' grossed $14,426,251 in the United States as of October 26, 2006. A further foreign gross of $1,878,000, plus $9,140,000 in DVD rentals and a spot in the top ten DVD sales for its first three weeks of release (ref. Rentrak Corporation, 3-3-2007) may allow the movie to turn a slight profit.^{[original research?]}

[edit] Historical inaccuracies

Hollywoodland takes liberties with actual historical events for dramatic purposes. Several events and places are condensed to fit into the film. Some examples follow:

• During a personal appearance on a children's western show, George Reeves meets a boy with a loaded gun, who almost shoots bullets at him. Reeves talks him into giving up the gun while saying that they would bounce off him but hurt innocent bystanders. Reeves researchers have never been able to find anything to corroborate the story. Some speculate that Reeves may have offered the situation as a "What if--?" possibility, and the story was taken as fact to become urban legend. Certainly, he was hounded by small children who would test "Superman's" invincibility, which is briefly touched upon during his depression over his identification with the character.
• After Reeves' death, Leonore Lemmon is shown at the reading of his will, stunned when everything he owned in his estate goes to Toni. In reality, since Lemmon was not included in his last will and testament, she was not invited to the reading at all. She did, however, make public statements akin to the dialogue in the film.
• Reeves is shown asking Toni to ask her husband to use his influence to get him a role in From Here to Eternity, and later his agent thanks her, which she returns with, "For what?", inadvertently revealing that she didn't help at all. He actually won the part on his own, but it is true that he tried to use her husband to get him more film roles, without much success.

[edit] Warner Bros. rights issues

During its production, Hollywoodland went through many rounds of getting clearance from Warner Bros. Pictures to use different aspects of George Reeves's "Superman" persona to reflect the actual nature of his career. Time Warner is the parent company of both Warner Bros. and DC Comics and as such WB has all final say in the depiction of characters or indicate relating to their properties.

At first using the title, Truth, Justice, and the American Way, Superman's well-known patriotic catch-phrase, Warner Bros. threatened legal action unless the film's title was changed so as not to associate the classic slogan with Reeves' death—especially as they were banking on their own Superman reboot, Superman Returns, for that summer. (Oddly, Superman Returns was criticized in some corners because they did not use the full catch-phrase, saying instead "truth, justice-- all that stuff".) The film-makers changed the title to Hollywoodland, not as a reflection of the ailing Hollywood Sign, but in reference to the general milieu of "movieland" itself. Residents of the actual Hollywoodland development, the neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills which the sign was originally promoting, protested the use of their trademark in the title, to no avail.^{[citation needed]}

Focus Features was forbidden from showing the Superman 'S' in promotional materials.

The film makers wished to use the familiar filmed opening of Adventures of Superman in context within Hollywoodland but Warner Bros. refused to license clips from the show itself. The movie recreated the show's opening and substituted a re-recorded version of the opening theme.

Arguably, the largest hurdle for the production was over the usage of the Superman "S" symbol, probably one of the most iconic of superhero symbols, if not the most iconic, and a seemingly obvious requirement for the costume Affleck had to wear when portraying Reeves shooting Adventures of Superman. Originally reported that the Superman costume in the film would be missing the "S" because of Warner Bros. ownership, on July 6, 2006, the website Ain't It Cool News broke the news^[1] that while Focus Features couldn't use the logo in promotional materials, the costume would sport the iconic letter "S" in the film, which it does.

[edit] DVD

The DVD was released in Region 1 on February 6, 2007. In addition to the film, it contains commentary by director Coulter, as well as featurettes on the making of the film. Included in these featurettes are interviews with the cast and crew and also original TV Jimmy Olsen actor Jack Larson, film historian Rudy Behlmer, Hollywood columnist James Bacon, and actor and George Reeves biographer Jim Beaver (who served as biographical consultant on the film). A HD DVD version of the film is also available, in the US only (due to Universal's exclusive support of HD DVD. The UK saw video release (including Blu-Ray Disc, which is not available in the US.) on March 19, 2007.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site
• Hollywoodland at the Internet Movie Database
• Hollywoodland at Rotten Tomatoes
• Hollywoodland at Metacritic
• Hollywoodland at Box Office Mojo
• The Straight Dope on Reeves's death
• Hooray for Hollywood......land? at CriticalMess.net