- The answer to the question the title asks is: not a hell of a lot. Bruce willis trashes a wardrobe department but that’s about it. If Hollywood behind the scenes is really as boring as this, I can’t imagine why anyone stays in this line of work. This movie isn’t bad, it’s just tedious and not terribly interesting.
- I’d still do De Niro. There, I said it. Still, I don’t need to see him in boxer briefs at any point, let alone more than once.
- After we met De Niro’s second (technically the first) ex-wife, I was kind of wondering how many more ex-wives and non-custodial children we’d meet.
- The only genuinely funny part of the movie was when De Niro was parked outside his ex-wife’s house and everyone knew he was clearly going to see her silhouetted against the window with another man except for the guy who, five minutes later, went “OH!” Everyone in the audience laughed at him. That said, the audience was small so I suppose it could have been worse.
- Bruce Willis plays a melodramatic diva version of himself as a star who refuses to shave his beard of six months for his next role. Moderately amusing but not really enough to significantly carry the film in any way.
- Michael Wincott is in this! He played the edgy, scattered, drug-addled British director who refuses to edit his brutally violent film just because the studio wants him to. He was most excellent and stole every scene he was in.
- Speaking of the brutal violence, the scene they studio wanted them to cut from the film was of a dog getting shot in the head at the end of the movie as it approaches its heroic and thus dying owner, Sean Penn. The studio execs see through the plan and know they only included the scene so that they could sacrifice that scene and keep all the other gory stuff they actually wanted in the film. I like to think this is a shout out to Casino‘s head vice scene, but who knows.
- Going back to the edgy British director for a second: HE IS CLEARLY MODELLED ON KEITH RICHARDS, OMG. At first I kept thinking “Oh, he’s just got the swagger down and he just happens to be borrowing Keith’s fashion sense” but there are a couple of scenes inside an editing booth where there’s a handwritten sign on the wall that says “BABOON CAGE”. Guys. The Baboon Cage is what Keith calls his hotel room when the Stones are on tour. I thought that was a nice nod to people like me who clearly know far too much about Keith Richards. This was pretty much the highlight of the film for me.
- I’ve asked this before but I’ll ask it again: when are we going to get a Keith Richards biopic?
What Just Happened?
Not a hell of a lot, apparently.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Two weeks in the life of a fading Hollywood producer who's having a rough time trying to get his new picture made.