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Review: 'Burn Hollywood Burn' is 86 minutes of pure torture

Idle

March 13, 1998
Web posted at: 9:13 p.m. EST (0213 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- Without trying to prove a point or cause a big commotion, I think I can honestly say that "An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn" is the single worst movie I've ever paid to see. Understand that I'm not counting low-budget trash films made by openly untalented people for no reason other than to rake in a quick dollar. I'm talking about established "artists" participating in something so obscenely awful that they practically deserve jail time for their trouble.

Joe Eszterhas wrote this thing, and a little bit of background is needed to properly convey just how inappropriate it is for this guy, of all people, to be attempting a black comedy about how pathetic and bottom line-worshipping the L.A. movie-making scene is. Eszterhas, as far as I'm concerned, is a pretend-talented screenwriter who's as responsible as anybody in the business for helping lower the expectations (and standards) of modern movie-goers ... and he shows no signs of slowing down. Think about it -- does the person who wrote "Flashdance," "Betrayed," "Basic Instinct," "Sliver," "Jade," and "Showgirls," amongst others, have any room at all to be pointing fingers? It's like David Hasselhoff mocking breast implants.

Stallone, Goldberg and Chan

I'm tellin' you, folks, you wouldn't believe this one. Eric Idle, who sure doesn't deserve it, stars as Alan Smithee, a movie director whose latest work, the $200 million action film, "Trio," has been drastically re-cut by the studio. His stars, Sylvester Stallone, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jackie Chan (playing themselves, although it would've been more fun if Stallone had played Goldberg) are shown as egotistical dopes, overpaid prima donnas who do exactly what they want to do on a set, whether that involves rewriting the script or actually calling the directing shots.

It's been a fairly well-kept secret for years now that when a director is unhappy with what a studio has done to his movie, he can have his name taken off the credits by The Directors Guild of America and replaced with the catch-all pseudonym, Alan Smithee. Idle's character, of course, can't do this because his name already is Alan Smithee. So, in order to give Eszterhas' unbelievably smug characters an opportunity to rattle on about the industry, he loses his mind and kidnaps his own movie, threatening to burn it so that it'll never be seen by the public.

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Okay, that's a plot, I suppose. The biggest of this film's many, many problems, though, is that you never actually see any of this stuff happening. Nothing. The movie (directed by Arthur Hiller, who, believe me, we'll be getting to) is shot as a mock documentary in which endless streams of clichˇd movie insiders, many of whom play themselves, turn to the camera and tell you what's been taking place.

Ryan O'Neal, as Smithee's producer, does the fully expected suntanned, coke-snorting, skirt-chasing routine, but you never see him snort any coke or (outside of receiving anonymous oral sex from a bobbing head in his sports car) chase any skirts. You get to hear people refer to him doing it, though. Then there's Leslie Stefanson as a bimbo who services the harried director as a favor to O'Neal's character. Smithee is married (his wife, in a highly-amusing graphic, is described as a "bitch"), so you might expect this to be a moment of some importance, but you don't actually see it happen. You do, however, get to hear all about it, courtesy of Stefanson.

Those are just two randomly selected instances of that kind of foolishness. I'd literally have to type out the entire screenplay to establish just how much of the movie is simply spoken by seated, incredibly unlikable, unamusing characters. I'm not kidding when I say that 95 percent of the screen time is taken up by people telling you what, in a properly written script, you would actually be looking at with your own eyes. I know I'm repeating myself, but there's nothing else that I could describe to you. This is pathetic stuff, even by Eszterhas' anemic screenwriting standards, and it's truly embarrassing to watch. Thank God nobody's gotten around to producing his "legendary" script about a political candidate who gets caught having sex with a cow.

Even more wretched are those graphics that pop up beneath the characters as they're being introduced. One black assistant director is described as an "Oreo" and several women are noted to be "feminists," because, I suppose, there's nothing more ridiculous than a female who wants her own identity. Eszterhas also calls members of the media "liars," "maggots," "sluts," "lowlifes,"and "scum." As long as we're being so creatively pithy, Joe, I'd just like to say, "I know you are, but what am I?" (Now I'm sticking my tongue out.)

As for Arthur Hiller: Supposedly he was so disgusted with this movie that he had his name removed from the credits and replaced with, you guessed it, Alan Smithee. Everybody claims this isn't just a desperate publicity stunt, but you have to wonder. If Hiller didn't see fit to have his name removed from "The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder," "W.C. Fields and Me," "Nightwing," "Author! Author!," "Making Love," or "Beverly Hills Cop III," for God's sake, why would he bother this time?

This one smells, and never should have been released.

"Burn Hollywood Burn" is full of bad language and sexual situations. It's presented in as vile a manner as possible. Rated R, which is supposed to restrict children under 17 from seeing it, but human beings in general should consider staying at home. 86 minutes of sheer torture.

Related sites:

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• The Alan Smithee Home Page
• Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, An (1997)

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