In the streets below the Hollywood sign, bright-eyed hopefuls work daily to make their dreams a reality. What separates those who succeed from those who don't? Often, it's how well they master the art of the hustle.
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Let's talk chutzpah. In Hollywood, to really make it big requires the ambition of an Olsen twin on caffeine. For every script that finds its way onto the screen, thousands are written. Surgeons, video-store clerks and limo drivers labor at them after-hours. Hopeful screenwriters and producers place them at stars' and directors' construction and remodeling sites. Grocery clerks post their headshots near their cash registers. Waiters are not, as in other major cities, actually waiters. They are taking acting lessons in between shifts, running to auditions on their off-time, chasing the big break. In a city loaded with hustlers, you'd better learn to stand out in a crowd or go back home to Paducah.
Consider: a recent charity polo event at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, some two hours from Hollywood, in which one of the players was a struggling producer many, many rungs down the ladder of access and opportunity. As this bush-league Bruckheimer and his steed staggered off the field during a break in the match, a wannabe screenwriter rushed up and slipped him his latest magnum opus. Gutsy move, but somehow it reminds us of the old joke about the Polish actress who was so dumb, she slept with the screenwriter.
Consider: 1999's Bowfinger, in which Steve Martin plays a desperate showbiz chiseler who badly wants a hot actor played by Eddie Murphy for his big action epic but doesn't have two dimes to rub together--let alone pay Murphy's A-list tab. What's any self-respecting Hollywood hustler to do? He stalks and secretly films Murphy around town--in a restaurant, debarking a limo--until he discovers a nerdy, clueless lookalike (also played by Murphy), who is more than willing to stand in for his famous sibling. Or 1995's Get Shorty, in which John Travolta plays the charismatic, take-charge Mob enforcer who hits Hollywood to collect from a broken-down moviemaker, played by Gene Hackman, who's doggedly pursuing a big star for his breakthrough flick. Flimflam man Travolta lands the star for his own movie and wins the Hollywood hustle game.
Consider: A 15-year-old Steven Spielberg got a suit and briefcase and bluffed his way onto the soundstages of Universal Studios for two consecutive summers, picking up valuable tips on filmmaking when he wasn't getting kicked off of movie sets. More lore: Sharon Stone couldn't convince director Paul Verhoeven and star Michael Douglas she'd be right for Basic Instinct, so she tracked down inside info that Douglas idolized Grace Kelly, then turned up at a screen test all Kelly-ized. Douglas saw her differently from that point on.
We admire such brazenness when it closes the deal. On the other hand, when Sean Young stormed director Tim Burton's production offices in Catwoman drag, only to see the role in Batman Returns go to Michelle Pfeiffer, we want to avert our gaze. We like our hustlers charming, preferably charismatic and, most crucially, ultimately successful. Otherwise, they're just Angelyne, that self-promoting eternal starlet (and now California gubernatorial candidate) whose surgically suspect face and form have adorned billboards all over Los Angeles for decades despite the fact that she's never actually made a noise in the Industry.
Consider: A brand new indie "reality" film--perfect in this era of reality TV. Philippe Caland, writer/producer of 1993's notorious Boxing Helena, has written, directed and stars in Hollywood Buddha, a scrappy skewering of the absurdities of the Hollywood hustle. His little opus re-creates his attempts to sell another little opus of his a few years back, Dead Girl, about a guy who wants to have sex with a corpse. In Hollywood Buddha, his mother plays his mother, his brother plays his brother, his wife and baby play neighbors. And Caland plays a hustling filmmaker who lives in a tent in pricey Mandeville Canyon, spending his waking hours fending off foreclosure, prodding construction workers to keep hammering--despite the back pay he owes--and schmoozing a parade of investors he hopes to intrigue with Dead Girl.
In one scene, there's Caland talking deal points with an Indian moneyman willing to release the film so long as he can superimpose himself into the action to show himself making necrophilic love with the titular character. In another scene, there's Caland, discussing a distribution deal with a lovely, fledgling film distributor whose wealthy Mexican boyfriend has no clue about her past as a porn queen. And when frustration gets to him, he seeks spiritual guidance from one of the town's gurus, who promises inner peace and a positive cash flow so long as he keeps chanting a mantra and kissing a mystical, luck-producing Buddha head, which he rents for $2,000 a month. Thus, the title of the project. And another little joke: Even the guru proves to be a hustler as well--in one scene, he's caught playing a Catholic priest to charm another frustrated wannabe.
What's most impressive about Caland--who shows Hollywood Buddha on the wall of his tent to Industry insiders and will self-finance screenings for four weekends this fall in L.A.'s Laemmle Sunset 5 movie theater, hoping to spark Industry interest--is that he emerges from Hollywood Buddha seeming downright sweet, spiritual and stoic in his pursuit of the big enchilada. And indeed, response from several fronts has been quite good, including a good review in Variety and a very positive response at film festivals.
"What makes somebody suddenly graduate from being a Hollywood hustler to being in the 'right' group," Caland says, "is quite often only a matter of other peoples' perception. The few people who have very strong influence can help by saying something positive or completely bury somebody by saying something negative. The only self-protection is your personal conviction that what you're doing is right."
Also doing something right is 27-year-old Brian Herzlinger. His hustle: The New Jersey-born hopeful, laboring away as a production assistant and trailer editor, got so desperate this past summer that he begged and borrowed to shoot a digital diary, My Date with Drew, all about his real-life obsession to land romantic face time with his lifelong love, Drew Barrymore. Though Herzlinger's documentary is only about 20 minutes long--and though he had to return the camera to a chain store after "buying" it on a 30-day no-questions-asked return policy--it has generated so much buzz that the aspiring moviemaker's landed meetings with top agencies and studio executives, and there's talk of turning the concept into a reality TV series. Who knows, with the way things are going, it might even land him a date with the star herself.
Finally, consider Len Wiseman. The aspiring young filmmaker toiled in the art department on movies like Stargate and Independence Day, eventually achieving some success as a director of music videos and TV commercials. When he still couldn't land a major agent to help him muscle into the features market, he and some friends orchestrated a grassroots hype campaign about how he was the new genius over whom top agencies were fighting. Jump cut to Wiseman, within weeks, getting signed by ICM, which led to his selling one script to Disney and another--a vampire-vs.-werewolves saga called Underworld--to Lakeshore Entertainment. The latter, with Wiseman directing and Kate Beckinsale starring--and with a budget of $25 million--hit multiplexes across the country in September. What's more, Wiseman and Beckinsale are now engaged.
And that, friends, is how to do the hustle, Hollywood style.
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