On B List of Movie Reviews
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The Big Picture (1989)
Rate:
8
Viewed:
4/25
4/25:
The Big Picture is the first film directed by Christopher Guest of
This Is Spinal Tap fame.
This is as accurate as it gets. Thousands and thousands flock to Los Angeles annually in the hopes of becoming
famous, and many were voted the most popular or best looking during high school and/or won beauty pageants.
Most never succeed and end up waiting tables or doing shit jobs to make ends meet. Those who do usually take
around ten years, and all of that is solid, hard work and sometimes luck. It's extremely rare that somebody
gets placed on the top right away upon arrival. Just ask Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, and Mickey Rourke.
As for Kevin Bacon's character Nick Chapman, it's impossible to judge until I see between
two and four pictures of his to decide if he has something or not. No matter what, quality isn't a priority
to Hollywood. The bottom line is net profit and...will always be about net profit. If a director makes shit
pictures that happen to be enormously profitable, the studio will be happy with it. Why do you think cinema in
general has been sucking the last 25 years or so and will continue to? Awards mean nothing, either, if these
movies can't make money.
It's not the end of the world for Nick if he doesn't get what he expected. He needs to aim lower and
do the grunt work before moving up. I'll say the best time to be a director is from the 30's to the 50's,
especially with the rise of television, or the early 60's and most of the 70's when the studio system got
caught in an upheaval because its formula stopped working, as
evidenced by Easy Rider,
Macon County Line, and
Gone in 60 Seconds, and it's willing to take a chance on anyone.
Whatever the circumstances are, there are assignments in news, TV shows, sports, documentaries,
commercials, music videos, and porn. Or they can make their own films just like Francis Ford Coppola, Brian
De Palma, and Martin Scorsese. The main thing is to keep working to create a résumé and establish networking
connections, and something will come up which is to say "opportunity meets preparation." This advice pretty
much applies to all kind of jobs in the profession.
It's common that the final product will be almost nothing like the initial idea. There are always meetings
and meetings with lots of input to modify this or that. Producers, who mostly deal in financing
and putting movie packages together, are often replaced because millions of dollars are on the line and many
are reluctant about green-lighting anything much due to high rate of failure. That's why most scripts or ideas
never go beyond the development phase. The Player does a nice job of
illustrating this.
Back to The Big Picture, Martin Short gives the best performance. I wonder if an agent was like him.
Kevin Bacon is fine, but his character is predictably shallow and only cares about himself. Ironically,
he directed only one film called Loverboy, and it's among the worst I've
seen. The rest of the cast is solid with plenty of unexpected all-stars. It's Teri Hatcher's
screen debut, and of course, she was going to hit big albeit in television.
All in all, aspiring filmmakers should check out The Big Picture, and they're also encouraged to
read some Hollywood biographies to understand the process more.