Confidências de Hollywood

This expose of a Hollywood heel plays like a bush-league attempt at the baroque language of SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, but man, does it work. Stephen Boyd is the absurdly mannered amoral punk who'd screw over his mother and steal her shoes to make it to the top. Among those with his shoeprints on their neck are Milton Berle (horny, melancholy, used-up agent), Jill St. John (tragic "roundheels broad"), Tony Bennett (as Hymie Kelly, the tragic Jewish-Irish second banana) and Elke Sommer (Swedish zaftig-bomb with a conscience). As directed by Russell Rouse, THE OSCAR has the feel of Sam Fuller doing overbright TV. The movie is way beyond "campy" or "good-bad;" nearly every scene is a diamond-plated jaw-dropper.

The Academy Award. The Oscar. Hollywood's token of prestige and honor. Many try for it. Many fail. Some succeed. A lot of films have been made about the Oscars. Some good. Some bad. This one is completely off the map!

This movie is the story of an actor up for an Oscar. Sounds simple right? That's what the name says on the movie poster. We then spend the entire movie watching his slow struggle to the top, going through the ranks, overcoming adversity, and finally achieving the nomination. Sounds pretty good, yes?

But when your hero is Stephen Boyd, an actor who majored in overacting and vein-popping, when the script uses every movie cliche in the book, when the directing is at best horrible, you're in for a rough voyage.

Throw in Milton Berle as Boyd's agent and it gets ugly. Uncle Miltie plays it straight, trying to garner a real Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. An hour into this movie, you're praying Berle will dress in drag just to lighten things up. His whole performance screams "Nominate Me!"

However, this movie was doomed when Tony Bennett was given the role of Boyd's best friend/narrator of the film. This was Tony's only starring role and after 10 seconds, you'll know why. Acting just wasn't his forte. Bennett remains emotionless and motionless when others speak in the film. But when his cue comes up, you can see the twinkle in his eye, his arms flail, and he delivers the line. He wisely stuck to his day job after this movie.

Look for Hedda Hopper in this film, just months before she died.

This obscure, sublimely over-heated film is a second cousin to "Valley of the Dolls" in terms of pure, unadulterated Hollywood camp. The film is like a massive wad of cotton candy for those who enjoy a two hour trip to movie hell. Opening at the ceremony for the title statuettes, we see that Boyd is the front-runner for Best Actor. But first, the audience must step back in time to discover how he got there. It falls to Bennett to narrate the with the most dry delivery of horrendous socko '60's scripting. Looking like a Dean Martin wax figure that's been left in the sun for two hours, he is a stumpy, squatty disaster in this film. Billed as "Introducing Tony Bennett", he has zero charisma, receives corpse-lighting, doesn't sing even once and forever after (thankfully) played only himself in films. At any rate, as the film flashes back, lean, mean Boyd (in a performance that ensured he'd never see another "Ben-Hur") is instantaneously irredeemable and agonizing as a big mouthed roamer who's joined by his stripper girlfriend (St. John) and a passive buddy (Bennett.) In these early scenes, St. John actually manages to come off as sexy despite a crazed tigress costume and the tacky surroundings. Soon, though, she's chewing one end of the scenery while Boyd chews the other. They meet in the middle where hapless Bennett is sitting like a bump on a log. Soon Boyd is trying to make it as an actor with the assistance of love-starved talent scout Parker (in a typically dedicated performance) and agent Berle (solid, also, in a non-comedic role...at least it is meant to be non-comedic!) Boyd's eternal bad attitude and horrible personality continue to inflict pain on all those around him and the viewing audience. In the film, he has a magnetic presence that draws everyone to him and causes them to embarrass themselves repeatedly. This charm is invisible to the film's viewers. One of his victims is the lovely Sommer, who looks stunning in an array of Head gowns and intricate hairstyles. His rise to the top of his profession is spoiled by his own ego and eventually he gets tripped up. He even gets one of those hilarious dreams with smoke swirling and actors dully repeating their lines. The movie is jam-packed with bits by stars who should have known better, some of them even Oscar-winners themselves (Crawford, Brennan, Borgnine.) Other cameos of people playing themselves lend a faux verisimilitude to the proceedings (Hopper, shortly before her death, Head, Hope, Oberon, even James Bacon appears at a press conference looking pouty because Archerd got all the lines.) There's a great little part for Hale as a snotty, demanding starlet and it's one time when Boyd comes off well. Lawford has a bit as a fallen star who works in a restaurant. Sadly, his own career would soon hit the skids as well. Adams adds a bit of verve as Borgnine's showy wife. She has one unfortunate scene, though, in which her behind is spread right in front of the camera. The film is a feast of kicky '60's production design, fun clothing and enormous hairdo's. There are a few clever touches in the film. At least twice, scenes involving different people are duplicated to show the parallels. The film has one of the all-time hilarious "surprise" resolutions...one last cackle before the credits roll. A MUST for any connoisseur of bad films!

There is no other way to concieve of this film getting made other than being the by-product of extraterrestrials intercepting tv signals of DYNASTY, MELROSE PLACE and the like and recreating them as a realistic depiction of the way Earthlings behave. This gets my vote as the most unintentionally fall-on-your-ass hilarious movie ever made; you simply can't write comedy this good! The dialogue must have turned John Waters chartreuse with envy, and the performance by Steven Boyd is akin to what if one of the THUNDERBIRDS marionettes had been cast in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLFE?. His body language is quite like some poor puppet being randomly jerked around while the puppeteer tries to shake off LSD-conjured spiders. And the incredibly strange dialogue from a knife-wielding strip joint owner:(attempting to be intimidating, with a crazy gleam in his eye and tossing his switchblade between both of his hands) "Pretty? Pretty?" No one in the history of civilization has ever talked like any of the characters in this film. If you are fortunate enough to have this unjustly out-of-print film at your local video store, not only should you rent it immediately, but you should invite over all of your friends and let them stare at this mess in slack-jawed amazement. A solid 10 on the laughs scale! And you will pee your pants at Tony Bennet's narration/ performance!!! RENT IT RIGHT NOW, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

Perhaps the most notable thing about "The Oscar," aside from the fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences probably wishes it didn't allow the filmmakers to use its award as a part of their turkey, is that the opening credits of the film give away two key elements that really shouldn't be revealed, one of which laughably gives away the ending!

This really goes to the point that nobody in this film seemed to know or care about the process of making it and were more enamored with the concept of setting their film on Oscar Night than in having the story make any sense, and were more about getting names to list, hoping to increase the Box Office receipts. Bad move.

I was hoping for an over the top, completely ridiculous, scenery chewing melodrama, and I was rather disappointed. Granted, Stephen Boyd definitely does have some ludicrous dialog and plays bigger than he should for what he's doing, but it really isn't "fun" to watch. Even more to the point, there's no one in the film who can challenge him.

Milton Berle comes the closest as his agent. But Berle doesn't get to crack wise, as we would expect him to do with a knucklehead client like this one. He plays it straight up. What was the point of that? And Elke Sommer is such a conflicted character, it's difficult to understand what she brought to the film, aside from the obvious eye candy intended.

The other oddity is in seeing Tony Bennett play his one and only acting role. Clearly, he wasn't ready for this sort of challenge and I can't blame him for begging off film for the safety of his music career after this disaster.

Wasted were Oscar Winner Ernest Borgnine who plays some two bit private eye and Edie Adams who actually seems the most realistic character in the entire film. Also, Edith Head, the multiple Oscar winning Costume Designer, who was seen on screen in three different scenes, and uttered half a word.

But I'm seriously still reeling over the credit spoilers. If you do watch this film (and I don't recommend you do because it definitely isn't good and it unfortunately isn't bad enough to be amusing) don't read the opening credits!