Themes: Starting Over, Dancer's Life, Ladder to the Top
Main Cast: Christian Taylor, Lindy Heymann, Marilyn Milgrom, Joe Daley, Erich Miller
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Written and directed by co-stars Lindy Heymann and Christian Taylor, Showboy is a comedic mockumentary about a Hollywood writer trying to make it onto the Las Vegas stage. Real-life British filmmaker Heymann takes her documentary crew into Southern California to report on Britons working in Hollywood. She overhears Taylor (a real writer and producer for the HBO series Six Feet Under) getting fired by executive producer Alan Ball. The documentary crew then follows Taylor to Las Vegas, where he proceeds to follow his dreams of making it as a star under the guise of doing research for a movie script. He rooms with veteran chorus member Erich Miller (then the star of the Vegas show Jubilee) and undergoes a series of dance lessons, auditions, and other humiliations. Features cameo appearances by Adrian Armas, Siegfried and Roy, and Whoopi Goldberg. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Cast
Christian Taylor
Lindy Heymann
Marilyn Milgrom
Joe Daley
Erich Miller
Jason Buchtel; Aaron Porter; Adrian Armas; Billy Sammeth
Credit
Anne Fletcher - Choreography, Blair Farrington - Co-producer, Amy Carelli - First Assistant Director, Christian Taylor - Director, Lindy Heymann - Director, Kant Pan - Editor, Billy Sammeth - Executive Producer, Pam Tarr - Executive Producer, Daniele Luppi - Composer (Music Score), Thomas Golubic - Musical Direction/Supervision, Joaquin Baca-Asay - Cinematographer, Jason Buchtel - Producer, David Wyman - Sound/Sound Designer, Christian Taylor - Screenwriter, Lindy Heymann - Screenwriter, Jason Buchtel - Screenwriter
The film, a mockmentary that we are meant to believe is real, features around real-life screenwriter Taylor. Taylor is solicited by directory Heymann to be the subject in a British television documentary series about British writers working in Hollywood. On the first day of filming this documentary, Taylor is fired from his real-life job as a screenwriter on the dramatic television series Six Feet Under. He is unaware that the documentary crew knows this has occurred.
He then relocates to Las Vegas to pursue a dream of becoming a professional showboy (a chorus line dancer). He lies to the documentary crew, purporting to be doing research for a film project. It slowly becomes evident that he is desperate to find a new career, and at the same time he slowly begins to come out of the closet and pursue romance.
Showboy went on to win Best Directorial Debut at the British Independent Film Awards and Best Film at the Milan International Film Festival.
Credits
(Note: cast is playing fictional versions of themselves)
