The continuing story of high-pressure Joel Silver-type movie producer Peter Dragon's battle to produce a make-or-break actioner called "Beverly Hills Gun Club" in view of obstacles from financing through to the writer (who in true Hollywood fashion is nearly always at the short end of the stick) to his cast, with hilarious consequences. Seriously.
Shot on film without a laugh track and with enough strong language and adult content (such as Sandra Bullock berating our hero for making a tape of the two of them having sex and selling it as "While You Were Sleeping On My Face") to irritate America's Bible Belt and get it dropped after eight episodes - at the end of one episode our hero mentions that a show like this could be a big hit in a good time slot (in Britain it was given an even worse slot; Channel 4 never showed it before midnight. Isn't it ironic, don't you think?) - "Action" is often crude and continues Hollywood's apparent unwillingness to glamourise itself as much as everything else, but it's very, very funny if you can get all the references, with a nice line in caustic insults from Dragon. My favourites: Dragon seeing the pretty but overweight blonde MAW Reagan Busch (a funny name in itself) and pointing out to the writer, "Yeah, she's got a cute face... ON TOP OF BRIAN DENNEHY'S BODY!!!" (This can be seen as a comment on Hollywood body fascism, because she isn't really that fat. Which is not to say that when we see her post-liposuction it isn't nice...), and his suggestion that Matt Damon winning an Oscar was the first sign of the Apocalypse.
Harlan Ellison said of "Bracken's World," "It has the evil fascination of rotting fruit. And smells about the same." I think he'd have kinder opinions of this short-lived gem. And remember, Silver may have produced "The Matrix," but he also did "Xanadu"...
