Short cut to Hollywood
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Short cut to Hollywood |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German , English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 94 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Jan Henrik Stahlberg Marcus Mittermeier |
| script | Jan Henrik Stahlberg |
| production |
Philipp Kreuzer Marcos Kantis |
| music | Rainer Oleak |
| camera | David Hofmann |
| occupation | |
| |
Short Cut To Hollywood is a German film satire from 2009 by Jan Henrik Stahlberg and Marcus Mittermeier . The two play the leading roles, the script comes from Stahlberg. The film premiered in February 2009 during the 59th Berlin International Film Festival . The nationwide launch took place on September 24, 2009. Before it was released in theaters, media attention was drawn to the film through planned false reports about a fictitious suicide attack .
action
Johannes Friederich Salinger, mid-30s, insurance employee, thinks that he has not achieved anything great in his life. He doesn't want to die unknown at some point, so he and his two friends Matt and Chrismon set off from Berlin to the United States to become famous. They are unsuccessful with their band, the Berlin Brothers , who sing trashy songs in English, and so they come up with something more unusual: John's plan is to have himself first amputated in front of the camera and finally killed.
The three land in New York City . Johannes now calls himself John F. Salinger. He meets Roseanne May and wants to get to know her, but nothing happens.
The friends travel to Florida , where they are looking for a sponsor for their project, but are turned away, even after the first two successful amputations; Chrismon John successfully removed a finger and an arm in front of the camera. With the amputated arm, in a transparent container filled with reddish liquid, they burst in unannounced at their desired sponsor during a meeting. The container breaks and spills over the meeting table. Realizing that they need a more effective media presence, they storm into a small restaurant as the Baghdad Street Boys and pull out a bomb. They are seen as suicide bombers and cause panic. American television reported this on the news, but it turned out that the alleged bomb was just toilet paper rolls. The three are arrested and go to jail.
The broadcaster VPK senses a good story, pays the deposit and puts Paula Martini on it. The station is launching a large-scale show about John F. Salinger's project. His next amputation as well as his death are planned and in fact he will become known to a large audience, all the way back to Germany. Meanwhile, the three travel from the east coast to Los Angeles .
At this time John meets Shannon in a bar and a love affair develops. Shortly before the amputation of John's leg is due, he decides to marry Shannon, which is why the amputation and live broadcast have to be postponed.
The four go camping. The night before the wedding, they get drunk in a pub. Matt and Chrismon find John Shannon shouldn't marry and come up with a devious plan. Chrismon has sex with Shannon, which he tells John the next day just before the wedding. He can't believe what Shannon has done to him and breaks up with her.
Once in Los Angeles, the three of them have become so famous that they have a huge concert with several thousand visitors, where they sing their songs. The whole town is in an uproar over John F. Salinger.
When the day of his death comes, John is put in a bed that has been set up on the roof of a skyscraper. Here he is supposed to receive his fatal syringes from his two friends. First comes unannounced, but planned by the broadcaster, John's mother from Germany, who sadly tries to change his mind. There is no further conversation.
Ten minutes before the scheduled live connection, the broadcaster gives John and his friends the last opportunity to speak to each other. Matt and Chrismon tell John there is no way they can kill him and ask him to finally stop. John surprisingly agrees, and the two go to get beer. When they return, John kills himself with a gun.
The credits claim that the TV crew filmed live immediately and that the cameras were not turned off. As a result of this event, 147 other people committed suicide.
background
Emergence
The lyrics to the songs that John sings during the film are, like the script, written by Stahlberg.
After a performance at the Berlinale, Stahlberg said that he had the idea for the script back in 1995 while studying drama in Brussels. He had seen a TV program there that accompanied an elderly person on his way to death (it was about euthanasia ). He said he just couldn't believe how the cameras just kept rolling at the very end.
The film had to get by on a low budget, which was almost entirely due to film funding. With filming fees in the LA Rocky Mountains too high, the team had to find a more remote location with limited road access, and the team had to carry all the utensils down the rock. For a concert scene in Las Vegas , due to the lack of lighting, the city was looking for the brightest casino and before that the road was closed with limousines.
The concert towards the end of the film was actually a concert by the band Die Ärzte , which the film team was allowed to accompany.
Bluewater affair
Two weeks before the cinema release in Germany, public relations work on the film caused false reports and confusion in several German and foreign mass media . The filmmakers Jan Henrik Stahlberg and Marcus Mittermeier, who had already made the film Muxmäuschenstill together in 2004 , created several fake websites on which they simulated coverage of a suicide bombing in a small Californian town called Bluewater. In particular, they presented the hoax on the alleged Bluewater website . City of California and on the homepage of the fake television broadcaster KVPK-TV , on which from September 10, 2009 videos of fake news programs of the broadcaster could be seen, which reported under the name Bluewater Attack on a possible attack and confused eyewitnesses, and then these reports denied as Bluewater Fake Attack : Rather, the three German rappers named Berlin Boys would have faked a suicide attack - but this report was also a fake. Later, film clips from Short Cut to Hollywood were shown on the television station's homepage , in which masked people announced an assassination attempt in an American restaurant, as well as making-of videos to spread the false reports in German media.
To support the distribution of this newspaper , the filmmakers also made use of other media, such as MySpace , YouTube and Twitter , but also phone calls with German mass media or manipulation of the English-language Wikipedia. In addition to other hints, Jan Henrik Stahlberg confessed to the false report in the MySpace profile of the fictional rap group Berlin Boys , gave explanations on the procedure and justified the action:
“'Short Cut To Hollywood' […] assumes that we live in times when the scandal is more important than anything else. [...] We always assumed that what we tell in the film could also happen in real reality. If the story works in the film, doesn't it work in reality? [...] While the 'Baghdad Streetboys' do everything possible to get a real suicide attack in the film, we wanted to bring a fictional suicide attack into reality ... 'VPK', the station you will have heard about now does not exist. The 'Berlin Boys' with their song 'Hass' never existed. There is also no city of 'Bluewater', and there was never a police officer, mayor or firefighter answering the phone there. [...] The job of the media was to expose us. Our job is the same - just the other way around. "
The attempt at deception can be described as successful: The German press agency (dpa) distributed the report of the fictitious television station on two explosions on the morning of September 10, 2009 at 9:38 am, followed by numerous online editions of German-language newspapers. At 10:38 am, the dpa was sitting on the second part of the false report when the agency reproduced the new report from the fictional broadcaster: “Three German rappers had put on dummy bombs and stormed into the restaurant to gain media attention. The authorities announced a tough crackdown on the Germans, the broadcaster reported. "
The media watch blog Bildblog reported on "the fiasco" of the dpa and of "their blind copiers":
“The action was planned according to the general staff and […] elaborately prepared - but it would actually have been easy to unmask on the basis of many indications. […] It was only at 1:44 pm, more than four hours after the first report, that dpa brought the following breaking news: 'Please do not use the coverage of the alleged attack in the small Californian town of Bluewater […]. The German press agency dpa is investigating evidence that the television broadcaster's website, named as the source, is fake and that other Bluewater websites are also not genuine. "
Wolfgang Büchner, the deputy editor-in-chief of dpa, admitted "serious mistakes" the next day and formulated "six lessons from Bluewater":
“A story too good to be true is likely to be just that: not true. It is absolutely implausible that the dpa is the only medium to hear about a terrorist attack in the USA and only a local TV station reports about it there. "
Reviews
"Too brutal and simple for a media satire that makes you think, the film entertains at best as a rough corruption of media derailments."
“But as a parable of reality soaps and casting madness," Short Cut To Hollywood "remains shockingly conservative despite all the joy of showing. Which is also due to the fact that Stahlberg and Mittermeier, who otherwise earn their money with not always laudable public television products, approach their material with aloof disgust and therefore don't really understand it in "Short Cut To Hollywood", a functioning game of media manipulation and film fiction to get going. Just disgust does not replace the exact analysis. "
“The film floats around without getting snappy or developing a brilliant idea. Behind the cynicism that the story carries in front of it, there is a sense of comfort. The cheap formats of trash TV should be criticized in a cheap way. The title song of the film, performed with great fervor by Stahlberg, is remembered longest from "Short Cut". Unfortunately, enthusiasm does not replace a cinematic concept. "
Web links
- Official site for the film (Flash only)
- Short Cut to Hollywood in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Short Cut to Hollywood in the Lexicon of International Films
- Short Cut to Hollywood at filmportal.de
- Video for the song Hass from the fictional rapper band BerlinBoys666
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c The film team during a conversation after the film screening at the Berlinale, February 14, 2009.
- ↑ Säm Wagner: The most unsuccessful boy group in the world . In: kult , issue 10, September 2009, p. 36.
- ↑ Bluewater is the name of a small town, a dependent administrative unit ( census-designated place ) in California , for which a population of 265 was surveyed in 2000. See Bluewater, California on Wikipedia. The alleged homepage bluewatercity.com ( memento of the original from September 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. was based in part on this Wikipedia article, but reported a population of 730.
- ↑ The alleged homepage bluewatercity.com ( memento of the original from September 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. was registered on June 29, 2009, according to the query for bluewatercity.com on whois.net , accessed on September 12, 2009.
- ↑ The alleged homepage vpk-tv.com ( memento of the original from September 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. was also registered on June 29, 2009, according to the query for vpk-tv.com on whois.net , accessed on September 12, 2009.
- ↑ The newly created article KPVK-TV was deleted on September 11, 2009. The changes of September 9, 2009 to the English-language article Bluewater, California , which among other things claims the existence of the television station K-VPK , referred to the corresponding homepage, as well as the false Bluewater homepage . City of California were already removed on September 10th.
- ↑ a b Berlin Boys on myspace.com, accessed on September 12, 2009.
- ↑ Quote from the dpa report of September 10, 2009, 10:38 am, according to Ronnie Grob: As once nothing happened in Bluewater on Bildblog of September 10, 2009, 2:10 pm
- ↑ As once nothing happened in Bluewater , Ronnie Grob on Bildblog from September 10, 2009, 2:10 p.m.
- ↑ a b How nothing happened once in Bluewater (2) , Stefan Niggemeier on Bildblog from September 10, 2009, 6:33 pm.
- ↑ a b Six lessons from Bluewater by Wolfgang Büchner on September 11, 2009. Quoted from Stefan Niggemeier: Lessons from Bluewater on picture blog from September 15, 2009.
- ↑ Short Cut to Hollywood. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Film review chop off arm and smile, please from September 24, 2009
- ^ Film review hobble to the bitter end of September 24, 2009
