Posted on 05/15/2020 7:42:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
At the end of the day, 'Hollywood' doesn't care about telling a compelling story about interesting people, but is intent on demonstrating the importance of representation in media.
There are two excellent stories at the center of “Hollywood,” Ryan Murphy’s alt-history saga of old Hollywood. An intrepid group of friends attempt to make a big studio romance starring a talented black actress in 1947. An aspiring actor must negotiate his desire for fame with his morals, in the backdrop of a sexually exploitive agent and the omnipresent risk of his homosexuality becoming discovered.
Both of these stories are technically covered in the show, but they are not nearly done the justice they deserve. That is because those narratives would be character-focused, exploring the struggles of the protagonists with nuance and drama.
“Hollywood” isn’t interested in real, nor does it seek nuance. Instead, the series is focused on a self-congratulatory look on how the movies are the only real avenue of social change, and that racism and homophobia in the 1940s could be cured by making movies.
The series tells the story of three young men in post-war Los Angeles as they try to break into the movie business, eventually attempting to create the first studio film with a black leading lady. Raymond (Darren Criss) is an up-and-coming director whose goal is to revitalize the career of his favorite actress, Anna May Wong (Michelle Krusiec), who struggled to find roles due to her Chinese heritage.
Ray is dating a black actress, Camille (Laura Harrier) during a time interracial marriages were still illegal. Archie (Jeremy Pope) is a gay, black screenwriter and sometimes gigolo who finds himself balancing career ambitions and a developing relationship with actor Rock Hudson (Jake Picking).
Jack (David Corenswet) is a handsome World War II veteran who wants to be a movie star, but finds himself working as an escort. The only reasons we’re given to support him and his narcissistic dreams are his incredibly sympathetic pregnant wife (Maude Apatow), his charm and good looks, and the fact that he’s the de facto protagonist.
A number of incredibly effective scenes demonstrate the squandered potential of the show, particularly those focusing on transactional sex, both in prostitution and quid pro quo.
A scene in the third episode goes from tense to tragic to heartwarming all within five minutes, navigating the tonal shifts like a much smarter show. Rock is pushed by his slimy and sexually harassing agent Henry Wilson (Jim Parsons) to sleep with a producer, Dick (Joe Mantello). The moment is quiet, emotionally fraught, and deeply personal, one of the only major scenes to just be about the characters and not the impact to society at large. As such, the hopeful ending may be the only one that feels earned.
The show’s ability to play in the morally grey was highlighted during a shocking and clever scene where Camille asks her boyfriend for a role in his movie during sex. The manipulation and emotional complications are handled deftly, as the episode showed audiences exactly what moments led Camille to that decision without excusing the ethical implications and potential harm to her relationship. However, all of the complexity so expertly displayed in the scene is completely undercut when, just moments later, Camille apologizes to Raymond for the manipulation, and he agrees to get her a screen-test.
Rather than allowing Camille to be a flawed, layered character, any poor decisions are cleared up and apologized for within minutes. It would have been much more interesting to witness the long-term ramifications of such blatant sexual manipulation on her self-image and on the relationship. Yet Camille must remain a symbol of the oppressed black actress, and any weakness or shortcoming undermines the purpose of her character.
This problem with Camille stems from a broader issue with the series: it doesn’t allow characters to be morally ambiguous. Everyone is either a moral hero crusading for justice and equality or a cartoonish villain exploiting the systems in place for his own ends. Any protagonist who has doubts or makes a morally questionable decision must come to his or her senses and discover the greater purpose by the next scene, leaving the characters feel more like stand-ins for ideas than people.
At the end of the day, “Hollywood” doesn’t care about telling a compelling story about interesting people, but is intent on demonstrating the importance of representation in media. The self-importance is as astonishing as it is tone-deaf.
That being said, the cast does their best with the one-note characters, attempting to flesh out some humanity in the thinly drawn personas. It’s a shame the performances aren’t given to more worthy material.
Jim Parsons, best known for his work on “The Big Bang Theory,” gives his all to the cartoonishly villainous Henry Wilson, based on the historical predatory agent. His attempts to break from the Sheldon Cooper typecast are effective, though he seems to be leaning a little heavily into the evil of his character. His upcoming role in the Ryan Murphy adaptation of “The Boys in the Band,” set to hit Netflix sometime this year, will far better demonstrate Parsons’s range and talents, as he brings his outstanding turn as the play’s lead from the 2018 Broadway production to the screen.
Patti LuPone’s frustrated studio head’s wife and Joe Mantello’s self-loathing producer come close to some depth, but any character development is quickly washed away in favor of maintaining a black and white morality, which leaves no room for doubtful or tempted characters. This is especially frustrating when LuPone and Mantello play their more compromised scenes so well, it would have been a treat to see what they would have done with more interesting versions of their characters.
The only character to operate in the moral grey is Jack. However, this attempted antihero lacks the one characteristic required for the type to work: any reason whatsoever to like him. Jack is selfish, narcissistic, arrogant, incredibly vapid, and cruel to his kind and likable wife. The only reason Jack is remotely likable rests on David Corenswet’s charm and beauty. Corenswet is very effective as the difficult-to-like protagonist, balancing out an overwhelming slate of bad character traits to somehow make Jack a functioning lead.
The chemistry between the two main couples is spectacular, and helps give the audience something in which to invest. Camille and Raymond have a deep connection, and an exciting chemistry bolstered by Laura Harrier and Darren Criss’s excellent performances. Their scenes together hint at a longstanding intimacy with an exciting spark.
Archie and Rock charmingly portray a developing couple in the thrill of new love with genuine chemistry and believability, and Jeremy Pope and Jake Picking are both strong in their respective roles. However, Picking’s Rock Hudson should have been given a fictional name. The series presents the charismatic and gifted leading man as a naive, talentless actor who is as awkward in front of the camera as he is in real life.
Anyone who has seen Hudson’s films, from “Pillow Talk” to his Oscar nominated turn in “Giant,” knows he can really act. He also has a magnetic onscreen presence, which made him such an effective heartthrob. Picking plays his character beautifully, but that character simply isn’t Hudson.
A lot of talent went in to the making of “Hollywood.” It’s beautifully shot, well acted, and a handful of scenes demonstrate that the writers and directors can produce gripping and moving products. However, the show doesn’t work, because it isn’t really a show at all. It’s a self-congratulatory sermon celebrating Hollywood’s woke-ness.
It can be more frustrating to watch an okay show with immense potential than a hopelessly awful one. Every frame of Hollywood is dripping with a heart-wrenching “what could have been.” But rather than a nuanced look at race, sex, harassment, movies, and dreams in 1940s, the show opts for a surface-level approach as vapid as the Hollywood sign central to its title sequence.
do they include red baiting Communist “witchhunters”?
Hollywood is proud of its Communist past now and so are streaming services
NOW Was founded on that
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3200158/posts
Marxist Feminism’s Ruined Lives
Frontpagemag.com ^ | 9-2-2014 | Mallory Millett
It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:
“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears. Was I on planet earth? Who were these people?
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.
They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.
It fell on my ears as a ludicrous scheme, as if they were a band of highly imaginative children planning a Brinks robbery; a lark trumped up on a snowy night amongst a group of spoiled brats over booze and hashish.
Marvel/Disney is in freefall over their “creative content” pushing Wokeness.
Star Wars/Disney is crashing and burning over the blatant attempts to reboot/retcon the franchise.
BBC is reeling over the consumer backlash because of the re-imaging of Doctor Who into Doctor Woke.
Amazon has fired the entire writers room involved with the multi-billion-dollar Lord of the Rings-based series; rampant rumors of a “woke re-write” abound.
The Left reached critical mass in 2009, as they realized they could say and do anything without being called on it. But they failed to realize that market forces would cause a correction - in other words, ‘Get Woke, Go Broke’.
That always cracks me up. Violence, language, sex, nudity and ...smoking.
Unfortunately all of the “Original Netflix Production” shows and movies are infected with this. Some more in your ace than others. And most of it is garbage in any event.
I’ve been watching the Last Kingdom on Netflix. So far they haven’t filled Anglo Saxon England full of black and asian people for the sake of diversity or gay romances.
Who watches Netflix? That amounts to putting money in Odungo’s pocket, as well as subjecting oneself to visual garbage.
Exactly, how far I got, too. About 40 minutes in, I gave up on this piece of trash.
In fact, in the 1948ish time frame of the series, there was sexual perversion out and about Hollywood that would probable equal what is shown in the plot yet it was not as public as "Hollywood" offers up. Folks in the industry knew what was going on but they did not do anything to make it public. Matter of fact they spent considerable time, money and effort to keep it out of the public eye. The out and out sex going on was common knowledge but not public knowledge outside the tight knit film community.
Even in my limited time on the Looney Left Coast, most of the sexual proclivities of the stars, directors, producers and studio heads was known even down to the small fry extras. I was offered parts if I would come across, so to speak, yet I was straight and had no interest in performing in gay sex for any payment big or small.
And I was also once offer the same thing by a female casting agent, but passed on it. Now, I will go to my grave wondering if she had been much better looking and better built, would I have given in? Guess we will never know--
So, I would recommend watching the series if you have a strong enough stomach to get past the hard core gay dialogue for if nothing else to see Jim Parsons forever leave Sheldon Cooper in the dust. He give us the most contemptible, disgusting character in his portrayal of real life agent Henry Willson who made Rock Hudson both figurative and literally. I will now always watch Sheldon in "The Big Bang Theory" reruns with one eye cocked for him breaking out in full blown Henry Willson--
Netflix is another liberal rag that tires to normalize the abnormal through propaganda.
Watched the whole thing. Love the period and style, and they did a great job on that.
But the story portrays EVERYONE as homo or bi or a homo/bi prostitute. Rock Hudson attending the Oscars (and kissing) with his boyfriend is laughably absurd.
Then there’s the acting head of a studio condemning Disney’s Song of the South as racist. Just plain dumb, and there’s no shortage of this type of eye-rolling opportunity.
Rob Reiner total POS.
Wow! Was she a beast?
Dude, you need to write a memoir!
If you consider 40 pounds overweight in a dress two sizes too small, teeth yellow from chain smoking and she appeared to apply her makeup with a shovel, yeah--
And she must have know where some bodies were buried because she was still a casting agent with the same studio when I happened to see where she had died from lung cancer back in the early 2000s.
I have written off and on a memoir but the truth be told, I don't see a publisher springing for the story my life. I decided in the mid-90s to use my memories for a "Hollywood" novel and got about 300 pages into it before my health cratered. I haven't looked at it since 1995 and even finding it in those boxes of my files in the bedroom closet is more than I could accomplish today.
Maybe my cousin Henry P will do something with it and/or all my screenplays plus other writings of mine as he gets them in the will--
The Cowboys won 14 - 7 but the strange thing was they seem to have the newly drafted players on the roster but still had Jason G as the Dallas coach?????
My girlfriend started watching this because she’s a fan of his American horror story. I caught some of it. The performances are excellent we the art direction is incredible. But it’s way way too gay
Bendy? Please let Henry P know that while you will always be in our hearts, we would love to have something tangible to hold in our hands and to read and to remember you by.
I bet a whole bunch of people who’ve never met you, even on line, would also love to hear that story.
I heard some jerk suggest we do the whole season on Madden, with the coaches playing it I guess.
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