"The Big Picture" (1989)

according to this poster, it's available on videocassette now, so act fast...

You should watch this movie as a compendium to “Living In Oblivion” both deal with filmmaking at its bare bones and are (to this day) very accurate as to how this movie business works. Add in “Swimming With Sharks” and you have a triple feature of cynicism. What’s funny is that when we all started in movies out of film school, most of us promised ourselves we wouldn’t be Michael Bay or Brett Ratner. Because they’re colossal douchebags. I’ve met them both and though the rumors are inflated, there is a shred of truth in how people who maintain success need to function, in order to make anything. Both tapped into a niche market that was very commercial.

Directed by Christopher Guest, the movie is about Nick Chapman (Kevin Bacon) a young filmmaker who recently directed a short film that wins a film school award. Immediately he is tapped by the industry to make his leap into feature filmmaking. Nick’s student film is painfully artsy, inaccessible dreck. Naturally this gains the attention of a producer who listens to what he wants to hear, then adjusts to what he believes is commercial. We see he’s not really interested, only that he knows as much as we do: Nick won an award, he must know something.

The producer is played wonderfully by J.T. Walsh. His office is a faux cabin in the woods. He’s a painful people pleaser and throws industry parties completely unaware the decadence of his lifestyle. My guess, he’s probably someone the industry all knows.

Anyways, Nick is in over his head. He wants to be an artsy filmmaker, the movie business wants him to make commercial hit. And his silly agent (Martin Short) seems to be more interested in just get his cut. Just make something.

This movie doesn’t end how reality would be. Or maybe it does. It’s ridiculous turn of good fortune that isn’t truth, but sure gives you hope. In that sense, it eventually becomes the movie Chapman himself, would be ashamed to make. But maybe that’s the case too.