The Big Picture

Film student Nick Chapman (Kevin Bacon) is nominated for an award at the National Film Institute. He's competing against the wacky Lydia Johnson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and spoiled arrogant Jonathan Tristan-Bennet (Dan Schneider). After his win, he has big dreams but Hollywood is more than his naive expectations. There's studio head Allen Habel (J.T. Walsh), his wife Polo Habel (Fran Drescher), and his mistress Gretchen (Teri Hatcher). Allen starts changing Nick's movie. He's infatuated with Gretchen. He dumps his girlfriend Susan Rawlings and old friends like Emmet Sumner (Michael McKean).

Martin Short's bad hair really threw me off for a second. It suggests a broader, sillier comedy than I expected. Luckily, it doesn't go that way but this is not at the later Christopher Guest level. It takes all the standard Hollywood behind the scenes and puts it on the screen. It's quirky but no big laughs. It hits the nails on the head. Nick is not much in terms of rooting interest. This is early in the inside Hollywood satires. It could be darker. The girlfriend role needs a better actress. The most compelling character is actually Lydia who reconnects with the movie for a short while in the last third. The movie gets a lot better with her energy. It would help if his movie idea doesn't look so utterly self-congratulatory art-house. Overall, this is a nice lesser known Christopher Guest film.

This is a good film that is totally stolen by Martin Short. The scenes including his agent character are some of the funniest I've ever seen in a movie. He's absolutely brilliant.

If you can see past the blinding light of Short's performance, there's a likable movie here. Kevin Bacon and his character's storyline are compelling and involving. There are loads of funny cameo-type roles. There's one scene in particular that stands out. It's not funny, it's heartbreaking. I'm talking about the scene where Kevin Bacon picks up Michael McKean in his Porsche, gets a cell phone call, and asks McKean to step out of the car to take the call. Man, that's harsh. It's testament to Bacon's acting charm that his character can be redeemed at all after a stunt like that.

The one thing that seemed consistently not to work here is the fantasy sequences. The movie would play better without them.

This film is a wonderful example of how to get a movie made in Hollywood.

Kevin Bacon stars as a hot new director, with a prestigious award to his credit who has one aim, to make his script his way.

What then ensues is a sequence of events that should serve as a warning to people wanting to make their own movie on what to be careful of.

Bacon's script starts as a simple movie of two couples on holiday together, while one half of them is having an affair, thanks to various obstacles it transforms into a trashy affair of beaches, cheerleaders and very little story, called Beachnuts.

While this happens Bacon's personal life is also falling apart thanks to the lures of Teri Hatcher's struggling young actress.

Finally, an extremely low-budget music video puts Bacon back on the map and this time he sticks to his guns.

The message for young movie-makers is, do not lose sight of what you want and be aware of the extreme fickleness of Hollywood, which this demonstrates exceedingly well.

I was in the midst of my own film career when this movie hit the theatres, and I went and saw it with a friend who in actuality turned out to be an actor (he had been assigned to me).

Nick goes through a typical Hollywood story of succumbing to temptation, and leaving behind all he values for what he believes is success, but finds that he never lost what he thought he had, and winds up a better person and film maker for it.

The movie is a kind of skewering of the Hollywood system, but it's all done in jest. The truth is the indy film maker is noted for his skill level and artistic intelligence based upon his work, and then offered assignments based on that grading. Believe it or not most directors do commercials and industrial training videos, not feature films.

It is a delightful film, and I had a gander at it on bluray since I first saw it at the Kabuki in San Francisco all those years ago, and it holds up well. For the first time in ages I found myself cheering and booing at Nick Chapman (Pee-Wee / Hustler dolly), and for some reason found myself very satisfied with the ending of a movie.

The film is essentially one man's story as an aspiring director, and has lots of funny moments, but doesn't show you some of the regular everyday hard work that goes on and off the set, because making movies is a job like anything else.

I don't have too much else to say about it, other than for the first time in years I actually enjoyed a movie without feeling the need to tear it apart on all levels.

A good watch. Give it a whirl on the player.

After a film student from Ohio (Bacon) wins an award for his short movie at the film institute in Los Angeles, he has to carefully traverse the minefield of the system to get his artistic vision made. JT Walsh plays a manipulative producer and Martin Short a dubious agent.

"The Big Picture" (1989) is an amusing look at the moviemaking process in Hollywood. The humor is mostly droll or quirky and viewers not up on the business might not relate to some of it, which could explain why the flick flopped at the box office. I wouldn't want to blow time & money on seeing it at the theater, but it works well enough for home viewing on a quiet night or whatever.

Winsome Emily Longstreth stands out on the feminine front as the protagonist's girlfriend, Susan. She was a minor female sensation at the time who worked with the likes of Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Rob Morrow, Molly Ringwald and James Spader, but she left acting entirely by the early 90s, reportedly falling into substance abuse, mental illness, and living in homeless shelters. It's rumored she died in early 2015, but factual info is hard to find so I can't verify this.

Teri Hatcher is notable as wannabe starlet Gretchen; it was her movie debut. Meanwhile Jennifer Jason Leigh is on hand as hipster Lydia while Fran Drescher shows up as the producer's wife, Polo.

The film runs 1 hour, 40 minutes, and was shot in the Los Angeles area.

GRADE: B-