Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland
Directed by	Allen Coulter
Written by	Paul Bernbaum
Produced by	Glenn Williamson
Starring	Adrien Brody Diane Lane Ben Affleck Bob Hoskins Molly Parker Robin Tunney
Distributed by	Focus Features (USA) Miramax Films (non-USA)
Release date	September 8 2006
Language	English

Hollywoodland is a 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 suicide of actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck), the star of television's 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 Lenore Lemmon - (Robin Tunney).

Plot

George Reeves has a long, successful career from the late 1930s, starting with a small role in Gone With the Wind and ending soon after Adventures of Superman. Despite his fame, he is discontent with being typecast as Superman and cannot find major roles. Reeves is also having drinking problems and has engaged in an 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 becomes suspicious and hires private detective Louis Simo to find out what has really happened. As Simo learns Reeves' life story and tracks down details of the case, he finds that the evidence is much more ambiguous than most of the police are willing to admit.

The film presents several possible scenarios for Reeves' death, but it does not introduce any new theories, resolve the murder, or point to any particular theory as being "right."

Cast and characters

Template:Standard table ! style="background: #ddffdd;"|Characters ! style="background: #ddffdd;"|Cast |----- |Louis Simo |Adrien Brody |----- |Toni Mannix |Diane Lane |----- |George Reeves |Ben Affleck |----- |Eddie Manix |Bob Hoskins |----- |Leonore Lemmon |Robin Tunney |----- |Laurie Simo |Molly Parker |----- | Helen Bessolo | Lois Smith |----- | Evan Simo | Zach Mills |----- |}

Box office and critical reception

Hollywoodland generated solid responses from viewers and critics, garnering a 68% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ben Affleck earned the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance as George Reeves. He is now considered a contender for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

Hoskins and Lane (who was willing to be made to look considerably older than her actual age, 41) have also been applauded for their performances. Critics at The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair called the film 2006's Brokeback Mountain and an Oscar contender.

But the box office figures for the film plummeted quickly. Shot on a budget of less than $14 million, 'Hollywoodland' grossed $14,426,251 as of October 26, 2006.

Historical innaccuracies

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" invinciblity, 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, she was not included in his last will and testament, so she was not invited 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?" 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.

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. Warner Bros. is the parent company of DC Comics and as such has all final say in the depiction of characters or indicia 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 Reeve's death--especially as they were banking on their own Superman reboot, Superman Returns, for that summer. 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.

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

The next hurdle for the filmakers was in regards to the opening of the film, and one in which they had intended to use the opening of the classic George Reeves series to play their credits over. Warner Bros. refused the filmakers the right to do this, and as such the film opens on a re-shot approximation of the credit sequence to the George Reeves show.

Arguably, the largest hurdle for the production was over the usage of the Superman "S" symbol, one of the most iconic of superhero symbols, 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 Warner Bros. owns the film likeness of Superman, on July 6, 2006, the website Ain't It Cool News broke the news 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.

Trivia

• Actor Jim Beaver, who has long been preparing a biography of Reeves, served as the historical/biographical consultant on the film.
• Although Louis Simo and his family are fictional characters, there was a detective named Milo Speriglio who at 21 was a minor operative for the firm Mrs. Bessolo hired to investigate the death of her son. Speriglio died of lung cancer in April of 2000 at the age of 62, still promoting the ideas that Reeves and Marilyn Monroe were murdered. Screenwriter Paul Bernbaum's original script named the fictional character "Louis Moglio," a near-anagram for Milo Speriglio. The film's character was renamed Simo to further distance the film from potential litigation by the Speriglio family.
• Joaquin Phoenix tested for the role of Louis Simo. This is the second time Phoenix and Brody have lobbied for the same role; the first time being for the part of Lucius Hunt in The Village.
• Benicio Del Toro also read for Louis Simo, but the part went to Adrien Brody. Conversely, Brody lost the role of Jackie Boy to Del Toro in Sin City.
• Robert De Niro was the first choice for Eddie Mannix, but he turned it down. This is the second time Hoskins and De Niro have been thought of for the same part, the first being when the studios wanted a bigger name actor than Hoskins to play the part of Al Capone in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables.
• Nicole Kidman was considered for the role of Toni.
• Hugh Jackman read for the part of George Reeves and was set to play the role, but he turned it down due to conflicts with the shooting of X-Men: The Last Stand.
• Kyle MacLachlan also read for the role of George Reeves.
• On a budget of less than $14 million, Ben Affleck took a pay cut and only received $2 million for his fee. The rest of the cast was hired at a total cost of six million.
• Portions of the movie were filmed on location in Long Beach, California and others in Toronto.
• The film, at a preview screening of From Here to Eternity, replaces George Reeves with Ben Affleck in the scene in which Reeves and Burt Lancaster are interacting. This technique was also used in Woody Allen's Zelig (1983), and, later, Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994), when the title character met many famous people, including Presidents John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

See also

• Competing films with similar plots (See: The Black Dahlia)

External links

• Official site
• Hollywoodland at IMDb
• Online trailer (requires QuickTime)
• Hollywoodland at Rotten Tomatoes
• Hollywoodland at Metacritic
• Hollywoodland at Box Office Mojo
• The Straight Dope on Reeves's death
• More About the Movie and a Review by Michael T. Bannon