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WHAT JUST HAPPENED Send This Review to a Friend
There could be a fascinating double bill consisting of a revival of “The Last Tycoon ” (1976) based on the unfinished novel about Hollywood by F. Scott Fitzgerald, scripted by Harold Pinter and directed by Elia Kazan, and the new “What Just Happened,” directed by Barry Levinson and written by Art Linson, based on his book. It would be a double header for Robert De Niro, who in the Fitzgerald adaptation played a fictionalized version of Hollywood producer “boy wonder” Irving Thalberg. Then De Niro was young, slim and cast as a powerful producer subjected to a studio coup to replace him. Now, older and heavier, De Niro’s producer character is also fighting for his career, but in a different, contemporary milieu.
“The Last Tycoon” was underrated. Although flawed, looked at today, it survives as a tough view of studio filmmaking tied to the personal story of a producer still mourning the death of his wife and obsessed with a new young woman resembling her. The film is worth revisiting even for just the cast, which includes in addition to De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, Dana Andrews, Anjelica Huston, Ingrid Boulting and Donald Pleasence. The mood was low key in contrast to the types of films popular at the time, but the observations of the rat race were sharp.
Levinson’s “What Just Happened,” has a charged atmosphere—more flamboyant, geared to today’s crassness and ruthless competition. It is often hilarious in its characterizations and brittle in its observations. Like “The Last Tycoon,” the Levinson-Linson treatment also is being underrated, with criticism of it not having anything new to say. True, but it says it wickedly and with a colorful perspective that entertainingly captures the current scene and the desperation on the part of the players trying to survive.
Ben, the character portrayed by De Niro, is banking on the success of what is turning out to be a turkey, and tough studio producer Lou Tarnow, played admirably with icy calculation by Catherine Keener, demands changes that the off-the-wall, egotistical director Michael Wincott (Jeremy Brunell) rails against. Meanwhile, De Niro is trying to keep up a relationship with his newly assertive and uninterested ex-wife Kelly, smartly played by Robin Wright Penn.
Other characters include John Turturro as a hyper agent and Stanley Tucci as a filmmaker who, Ben discovers, is sleeping with Kelly. Sean Penn plays himself, as does Bruce Willis, with Willis causing problems by refusing to shave off his beard to play a starring role in a film due to begin production.
Linson has peppered the film with familiar type gag situations, but they are often extremely funny, and the film picks up the beat of the state of today’s Hollywood world.
But it is also intriguing as an illustration of how De Niro has morphed from one producer role to another, and from one era to another. A Magnolia Pictures release.
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