Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland is a 2006 biopic/docudrama directed by TV alum Allen Coulter (his feature directorial debut) about a down-on-his-luck detective, Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), investigating the suspicious suicide of actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck), the star of television's Superman. Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), the wife of MGM studio executive Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), had been in a long romantic relationship with Reeves, who had ended the affair and had become engaged to a younger woman, an aspiring actress Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney).

Ben Affleck was nominated for a Golden Globe for best supporting actor but lost to Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls.

Plot

George Reeves has a long, successful career from the late 1930s, starting with a small role in Gone with the Wind and ending soon after Adventures of Superman. Despite his fame, he is discontent with being typecast as Superman and cannot find major roles. Reeves is also having drinking problems and has engaged in an affair with Toni Mannix, the wife of MGM VP Eddie Mannix.

When Reeves is found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in the early morning hours of June 16, 1959, the police rule it a simple suicide, but Reeves' mother becomes suspicious and hires private detective Louis Simo to find out what has really happened. As Simo learns Reeves' life story and tracks down details of the case, he finds that the evidence is much more ambiguous than most of the police are willing to admit.

The film presents several possible scenarios for Reeves' death, but it does not introduce any new theories, resolve the murder, or point to any particular theory as being "right."

Cast and characters

Box office and critical reception

Hollywoodland received generally positive responses from viewers and critics, garnering a 69% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.8 on the Internet Movie Database. Ben Affleck earned the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance as George Reeves. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls.

Hoskins and Lane (who was willing to be made to look considerably older than her actual age, 41) have also been applauded for their performances. Critics at The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair called the film 2006's Brokeback Mountain and an Oscar contender, but the film failed to receive any Oscar nominations.

The film debuted at #2 at the box office. However, due to the film's niche audience, the box office plummeted quickly. Shot on a budget of less than $14 million, 'Hollywoodland' grossed $14,426,251 in the United States as of October 26, 2006. A further foreign gross of $1,878,000, plus $9,140,000 in DVD rentals and a spot in the top ten DVD sales for its first three weeks of release (ref. Rentrak Corporation, 3-3-2007) seem destined to push the film into the slight profit.

Historical inaccuracies

Hollywoodland takes liberties with actual historical events for dramatic purposes. Several events and places are condensed to fit into the film. Some examples follow:

• During a personal appearance on a children's western show, George Reeves meets a boy with a loaded gun, who almost shoots bullets at him. Reeves talks him into giving up the gun while saying that they would bounce off him but hurt innocent bystanders. Reeves researchers have never been able to find anything to corroborate the story. Some speculate that Reeves may have offered the situation as a "What if--?" possibility, and the story was taken as fact to become urban legend. Certainly, he was hounded by small children who would test "Superman's" invinciblity, which is briefly touched upon during his depression over his identification with the character.
• After Reeves' death, Leonore Lemmon is shown at the reading of his will, stunned when everything he owned in his estate goes to Toni. In reality, she was not included in his last will and testament, so she was not invited at all. She did, however, make public statements akin to the dialogue in the film.
• Reeves is shown asking Toni to ask her husband to use his influence to get him a role in From Here to Eternity, and later his agent thanks her, which she returns with, "For what?" He actually won the part on his own, but it is true that he tried to use her husband to get him more film roles, without much success.

Warner Bros. rights issues

During its production, Hollywoodland went through many rounds of getting clearance from Warner Bros. Pictures to use different aspects of George Reeves's "Superman" persona to reflect the actual nature of his career. Time Warner is the parent company of both Warner Bros. and DC Comics and as such WB has all final say in the depiction of characters or indicate relating to their properties.

At first using the title, Truth, Justice, and the American Way, Superman's well-known patriotic catch-phrase, Warner Bros. threatened legal action unless the film's title was changed so as not to associate the classic slogan with Reeves' death--especially as they were banking on their own Superman reboot, Superman Returns, for that summer. The film-makers changed the title to Hollywoodland, not as a reflection of the ailing Hollywood Sign, but in reference to the general milieu of "movieland" itself.

The film makers wished to use the familiar filmed opening of Adventures of Superman in context within Hollywoodland but Warner Bros. refused to license clips from the show itself. The movie recreated the show's opening and substituted a re-recorded version of the opening theme.

Arguably, the largest hurdle for the production was over the usage of the Superman "S" symbol, one of the most iconic of superhero symbols, and a seemingly obvious requirement for the costume Affleck had to wear when portraying Reeves shooting Adventures of Superman. Originally reported that the Superman costume in the film would be missing the "S" because of Warner Bros. ownership, on July 6, 2006, the website Ain't It Cool News broke the news^[1] that while Focus Features couldn't use the logo in promotional materials, the costume would sport the iconic letter "S" in the film, which it does.

DVD

The DVD was released on February 6, 2007. In addition to the film, it contains commentary by director Allen Coulter, as well as featurettes on the making of the film. Included in these featurettes are interviews with the cast and crew and also original TV Jimmy Olsen actor Jack Larson, film historian Rudy Behlmer, Hollywood columnist James Bacon, and actor and George Reeves biographer Jim Beaver (who served as biographical consultant on the film). A HD-DVD version of the film is also available.

See also

• Competing films with similar plots (See: The Black Dahlia.)

References

1. ^ Ben Affleck will be SUPERMAN, not UPERMAN in HOLLYWOODLAND!!!. Ain't It Cool News (2006-06-06).

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