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Hollywood Comeback
We're back for another year!!! Saw a gazillion movies during the Christmas break. A lot of those flicks will make my yearly top ten. Our return this week will feature a few reviews from myself and my collaborators. We begin today with Miss Jones' thoughts on the Hollywood Homicide screenplay. Expect my review of Chicago to come out later this week along with some more good stuff...
Hollywood Homicide Script Review
Director and co-screenwriter Ron Shelton (Tin Cup, White Men Can’t Jump, Academy Nom. for Bull Durham) is rightfully known as the sports movie guy, and after reading this, I’m beginning to think that maybe he should stay in his comfort zone. He did team up with a debut screenwriter and ex-LAPD officer, Robert Souza, so the lack of a pungent storyline is not entirely his fault. I’m guessing that Souza provided the basic story and snazzy police detective dialogue, while Shelton helped to take the script up a few notches, as chef Emeril Lagasse would say. This is an interesting script because the character-driven aspects are not to blame. In fact, they’re pretty fun. It’s the story itself. If Shelton and Souza would have challenged themselves by buying the name brand cereal instead of the simple generic kind, they could have stepped to the table with a truly delightful script, entertaining in almost every aspect. Hopefully, Harrison Ford and Josh Harnett’s acting ability can deflect some attention away from the plot. A few popular hip hop acts will also garnish the screen with their presence in the final flick to be called Hollywood Homicide due to hit theaters in August of 2003.
In a sentence, Hollywood Homicide is a piece that need only be digested then quickly forgotten; and if revisited at all, done so only to fill the cold, empty space of boredom. This project reminds me of one of those tv movies that come on Sunday afternoon, that once over, you say, ‘Hmmm, that wasn’t so bad for a tv movie’ (you know the kind). Still, though, Hollywood Homicide will manage to find a snug place among a class of topographical films all too common in movie theaters these days. Whoa... .was that harsh?If so, I apologize in advance. It’s just that the main character, Joe Gavilan, and I didn’t have the best of first impressions. This is what Joe said to a friendly little soul, and innocent fellow officer who had traveled all the way to the store and back to get the officers’ lunch.
JOE
Look’t this? C’mere. Look.
(beat)
What’ya see? You see sprouts? Goddamnit, did I say ‘sprouts’? Did anybody in the room hear the word ‘sprouts’?
UNIFORM COP
Sorry...
JOE
The hell they teach at the Academy anyway?
(studies his sandwich)
And the mayonnaise is light. Light mayonnaise. There’s something in this tuna... rabbit food or something, I don’t know what it is... Something...
(More conversation)
JOE (cont’d)
... Dump this for me please... I expect better.
What?? I thought protagonists were supposed to strike accord with the audience? Who in the mess does Mr. Joe Gavilan think he is?!? As for Miss J., I wouldn’t care if he was the head honcho or not, I would have had to beat him to an insignificant pulp, even if he is a senior citizen. (smile)
But outside of this initial misunderstanding with Gavilan, I did in fact find myself sailing through the 130-page hunk of screenplay, and, honestly, it’s not horrible. It’s just not very fulfilling either. The project was already in production by October 2002, so how far the final version will be from my first draft copy dating June 2002 is anyone’s guess. After finishing the script, I sat back and asked myself what exactly drove me to read it through till the end, besides my needing to write a review? Well, quite simply, its’ levity. Pitched as an action dramedy, the script delivers a quarter of action, a quarter of drama, and the remaining half devoted to spoofing Hollywood cops and their district. As for the quality of the action and drama portions, anyone who has seen an episode of a television cop show in which the cops chase down a bad black bossman rap executive for suspected involvement in the murder of other bad black rap stars pretty much knows what they’re in for. I actually did see an episode of Boomtown not too long ago having that same basic breakdown. And given the recent happenings with Jam Master Jay of Run DMC, I’m pretty sure that this will not be the last time this murderous rap star plot plays itself out on TV or the big screen. Shelton and Souza manage to add a trial size element of surprise to the plot, but even that big surprise is hardly earth shaking at all, i.e the hunters become the hunted, a subplot exacerbated by the fact that there happens to be a mole in the department. Those surprise elements do work, I must say. The thing is, they have always worked with Hollywood project after project.
The comedy, on the other hand, is what will make audiences stay in their seats, and thank goodness too after paying close to $10 bucks a pop. Imagine taking a young sexy policeman/part-time Yoga instructor and aspiring actor (they’re in Hollywood here, don’t forget) and partnering him with a sullen middle-aged quick tempered officer/ part-time real estate agent who absolutely lives for policing... and can’t understand how a silly thing like acting could come between that. That’s exactly what we have in UCP. The first officer is K. C. Calden (Josh Harnett), and the second, of course, Joe Gavilan (Harrison Ford). Joe is about three steps away from turning into a funnier version of Paul Newman in The Verdict, except he’s not hindered by alcoholism, just the trials of life. If you can picture Harrison Ford having a well-developed profane vocabulary, hanging out with a pimpstress, jamming to Motown bands, and throwing back a few cold ones, then you’re doing a whole heck of a lot better than me. I’ll need to see it to believe it. Samuel L. Jackson, hmm, yes. Harrison Ford, hmm. Most aspects of Joe’s character fit Ford like a hand in glove, namely his hard-shelled good guy persona. The few other qualities will just have to grow on us throughout the movie, which I’m sure they will. Word is that Ford was looking for something a bit lighter (ding ding), and even evident from the bold line that I have drawn around his abilities, perhaps this will be the role that expands his image. In general, though, I am indeed looking forward to seeing him as Joe Gavilan.
On a slightly analytical bend, perhaps what makes UCP seem like such a perfect TV movie are the strangely convenient key factual revelations. It almost feels like Robert Souza and Ron Shelton were writing blindly and when, at the last minute, they found an opportunity to connect facts or characters said, ‘OH! Let’s make so and so fall in love with so and so, so that this, that, and the other thing can go together,’ and after doing that once, they again said, ‘Ou! Why don’t we make this guy be the so and so, so that K.C. can follow through on the what-cha-ma-call-it.’ Maybe they didn’t do that at all, and what really happened was that both writers had seen and/or written in Shelton’s case, entirely too many Hollywood type movies before taking pen to paper. Either way, the script feels a bit crafted and methodical, but then again, maybe that’s why it’s called HOLLYWOOD Homicide. The characters themselves are unconventional, which makes this piece a cut above the ordinary, but still, the plot is super blasé.
My mother will probably take this one in via video rental. As for me, I’ll wait patiently for the tv version.
-Miss Jones laying down the law..
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
