Themes: Nothing Goes Right, All Washed Up, Filmmaking
Main Cast: Woody Allen, Téa Leoni, Debra Messing, Mark Rydell, Treat Williams, George Hamilton
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
A down-on-his luck auteur gets one more chance at the big time -- provided his neuroses don't swallow him whole -- in Woody Allen's 33rd feature release, Hollywood Ending. Allen plays Val Waxman, a one-time cinematic genius who's resorted to taking advertisement work to pay the bills for himself and his airhead live-in girlfriend, Lori (Debra Messing). Val finds his luck is about to change, however, when he receives the script for The City Never Sleeps, a period noir set against the backdrop of 1940s New York City. It seems his ex-wife, Ellie (Tea Leoni), now an executive at Galaxy Pictures, has been pulling for him to direct the picture, claiming he's the only man who can do justice to the script. She even manages to convince her boyfriend, Hal (Treat Williams), Galaxy's high-powered studio head, to take a chance on Val's "unique vision." Just when the cameras are ready to roll, however, Val finds that unique vision in jeopardy -- literally -- as he's struck with a psychosomatic case of blindness. When physicians and psychiatrists fail to cure him, Val contrives a scheme to forge ahead with the picture, for fear of blowing his one last chance at greatness. Hollywood Ending co-stars George Hamilton and Mark Rydell. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Review
A funny, promising setup gives way to endless schtick in Woody Allen's well-cast but slack farce. Despite its loaded subject matter -- namely, big-budget filmmaking -- this is no Player: Save for a few throwaway industry jokes, Hollywood Ending is mostly pratfalls and slapstick, centered around a neurotic conceit that even Allen, cinema's neurotic laureate, can't pull off. Once afflicted with hysterical blindness, his Val Waxman spends much of the movie fumbling and stumbling around a movie set, to rapidly diminishing comedic results. Allen has made entire films on such slight premises before -- Zelig and his chapter of New York Stories, Oedipus Wrecks, come to mind -- but those films were at once richer with subtext and more economical. Ending's climax, on the other hand, comes after at least 20 minutes of painfully broad, extraneous comedy, and hinges on a character who's barely been mentioned, let alone seen. All this notwithstanding, Allen evinces spry, witty turns from his supporting cast, including the ever-sharp Tea Leoni, a pleasantly ditzy Debra Messing, and, of all people, the ageless, orange-hued lothario George Hamilton. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Tiffani-Amber Thiessen - Sharon Bates; Lu Yue - Cameraman; Barney Cheng - Translator; Isaac Mizrahi - Elio Sebastian; Marian Seldes - Alexandra; Jodie Markell - Andrea Ford; Peter Gerety - Psychiatrist; Mark Webber - Tony Waxman; Gregg Edelman - Galaxie Executive; Kenneth Edelson - Eye Doctor; Fred Melamed - Pappas; Ted Neustadt - MRI Doctor; Rochelle Oliver - Script Supervisor; Stephanie Roth - Barbeque Guest; Joel Eidelsberg - Seder Guest; Steven Hurwitz - Seder Guest; Jeff Mazzola - Prop Man; Ramsey Faragallah - Audition Reader; Neal Huff - Commercial A.D.; Douglas McGrath - Barbeque Guest; Greg Mottola - Assistant Director; Howard Erskine - Carlyle Patron; Bill Gerber - Barbeque Guest; Erica Leerhsen - Actress; Bob Dorian - Galaxie Executive; Ray Garvey - Grip; Maurice Sonnenberg - Banquet Emcee; Aaron Stanford - Actor; Ivan Martin - Galaxie Executive; Roxanne Perry - Barbeque Guest; Barbara Carroll - Carlyle Pianist; Anthony Arkin - Audition Reader; Olivia Hayman - Balthazar Hostess; Peter Van Wagner - Balthazar Couple; Judy Toma - Balthazar Couple; Sarah Polen - Seder Guest; Amanda Jacobi - Seder Guest; Ruth Last - Seder Guest; Robert Lloyd Wolchok - Seder Guest; Reiko Takahashi - Movie Extra; Joe Rigano - Projectionist; Mary Schmidtberger - Galaxie Executive
Credit
Tom Warren - Art Director, Juliet Taylor - Casting, Laura Rosenthal - Casting, Brad Hohle - Consultant/advisor, Helen Robin - Co-producer, Melissa Toth - Costume Designer, Richard Patrick - First Assistant Director, Woody Allen - Director, Alisa Lepselter - Editor, Charles H. Joffe - Executive Producer, Jack Rollins - Executive Producer, Stephen Tenenbaum - Executive Producer, Santo Loquasto - Production Designer, Wedigo von Schultzendorff - Cinematographer, Letty Aronson - Producer, Regina Graves - Set Designer, Gary Alper - Sound/Sound Designer, Woody Allen - Screenwriter, Robert Hein - Supervising Sound Editor, Abby Bailey - First Assistant Accountant, Morgan Neville - First Assistant Editor, Jerry Yuen - Cable Person, Glenn Lloyd - Art Department Coordinator, Paul Brush - Standby Carpenter, Frank Robert Didio - Head Carpenter
Hollywood Ending is a 2002 American film written and directed by Woody Allen, who also plays the principal character. It tells the story of a once-famous film director who suffers hysterical blindness due to the intense pressure of directing.
Val Waxman (Allen) is a one-time prestigious film director lately reduced to overseeing cheesy television commercials in order to pay his bills and support his current live-in girlfriend (Messing). When he is thrown off his latest effort (a deodorant commercial being filmed in the frozen north), he desperately seeks a real movie project.
Out of the blue, Waxman receives a offer to direct a big-budget blockbuster movie to be set in New York City. However, the offer comes from his former wife (Leoni) and her current boyfriend (Williams), the studio head who stole his wife from Waxman several years ago.
Pushed by his agent (Rydell), Waxman agrees to the project, but a psychosomatic ailment strikes him blind just before production is set to begin. The movie plays out with an aging director struggling to regain his vision, both metaphorically and literally. It is easy to envision the movie as a not-so-subtle metaphor for Allen's real-life struggles during the 1990s to regain (or retain) his early momentum in the film-making milieu.
Note: Treat Williams's role as a studio head might be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the actor's previous one as Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz in The Late Shift.
This is not the first film to use the gag of a blind film director. Terror Firmer, a Troma film directed by Lloyd Kaufman in 1999, had Kaufman also performing in the role of the director of a film-within-a-film (the entire production itself referencing several previous Troma films spanning Kaufman's career) and is also blind throughout the whole film (with many related sight gags and gaffes).
Reception
The film received mixed reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that the film received 47% positive reviews, based on 130 reviews.[1]Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 46 out of 100, based on 37 reviews.[2]
The film was a failure in American theaters, with ticket sales under $5 million. As with most later Woody Allen films, it had more success internationally, with a worldwide gross of $14.6 million (oddly mirroring the plot of the film).[3]
In the United Kingdom, it was the first of Allen's films not to receive a theatrical release.
Film critic Bryant Frazer thinks it suffers from poor editing. He writes, "What's most frustrating is the sense that Hollywood Ending could have been quite a bit better than it actually is. At 114 minutes, it's decisively lacking in the brevity that used to characterize Allen's pictures -- even the super-serious, Bergman-inspired stuff. Worse, his timing seems to be off -- the filmmaker who was once notorious for cutting his films to the absolute bone now gives us rambling, overlong shots featuring performers who almost seem to be ad libbing their dialogue. I ran to the Internet Movie Database to investigate, and discovered what may be the problem - Susan Morse is gone. Morse, the editor who had worked with Allen since Manhattan in 1979 and who turned into a real soldier by the time of the jazzy montage that characterized Deconstructing Harry, was reportedly a victim of budget-cutting within the ranks."[5]
