When Superman Cashed His Check- Ben Affleck’s “Hollywoodland” (2006)-A Film Review 

DVD Review          

By Sarah Lemoyne

Hollywoodland, starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins, 2006    

[Sometimes this film reviewing business which is really all the cutthroat, take no prisoners, you are only as good as your last review, the last word in your last review really, that everybody who has kept their ears and eyes on the industry has exposed although lot of good it did them. Which is surprising since the film industry, Hollywood in the old exclusive days and now Bollywood and beyond as well, had paid generations of flak-catchers, press agents, strong arm men if need be, hit men if that doesn’t work to make itself and its adjunct film critic cohort look like bosom buddies. That of course is hooey.

The cutthroat and other stuff mentioned above about the profession such as it is got a good workout a while back when one Sam Lowell, a name well-known in the industry if not well liked since he has in the course of a forty plus year career pushed some pretty wrong buttons, has panned more movies that maybe God, and I ran what he called a cold civil war between us over our “different” interpretations of films we were jointly reviewing to give the readership our “takes” on the series of films we were given to toil over. No question despite my youth, my having only a couple of years before I started working here just finished graduate school at NYU, that I whipped Sam’s butt and really did leave no prisoners. I will grant he did beat meet on a retro-review of American Graffiti but that one was strictly from his own youth and he could have been in the cast of the film and not embarrassed himself. Moreover I was pretty clueless about Valley boys out in California and their wet dreams about what Sam called “boss” cars back then and about hanging out in some drive-in restaurant which today as a gag only exist in places like San Francisco where there is a chain of Mel’s Diners.       

I might have whipped Sam’s butt as most of the younger writers here (some like Will Bradley who had his own “competition” with Seth Garth over the fake legend built-up by the publishing and film industries of punk private eye, gumshoe really, Sherlock Holmes from over in England, who helped me slay the nasty old tiger Lowell) and a sample polling of the readership attested to but I forgot the first rule of the profession really of the whole publishing industry. That cutthroat part which came home very soon and very clearly. As a result of my good work I was given a cherished by-line by the site manager and for a while I was writing material weekly if not more, especially helping Will Bradley get his own byline (which he did get over that debunking Sherlock Holmes and about ten other overblown legends not all of them that I was personally aware of).   

Then the roof fell in. Many very good films came out in 2018 and I was “overlooked” on all of them. Same thing with the treasure trove of older films which are the staple of this publication as far as paying attention to the history of film and what the old-time films bequeathed to the industry today. Finally, I was “pieced off” with a long series I was, am scheduled to present on B-films from the 1940s and 1950s. But no present or current work to keep my name before the public, and before the other rats in this business looking to cut any, my throat to get ahead. I went to the site manager, Greg Green, the one who hands out the assignment including what should be a very good one on those B-films if it ever gets published. That is when I learned that “cutthroat” had a name.  

That name one Sam Lowell. See Sam for having betrayed his old-time growing up friend and at that time site manager Allan Jackson with the decisive vote for his ouster got to be the chair of the new Editorial Board set up in the wake of the vote to insure “one-man” rule never sees the light of day again in this publication house. Sam had put the hex on me with the site manager strictly due to his defeat in our duel. Nothing else can explain my wash-out. I threatened to quite (taking maybe one thousand pages on that B-film project with me and let them sue me if they liked) and to keep the peace I am now back in the public prints. Here is the real beauty of the story though I grabbed the review below from egg-on-his-face Sam Lowell who practically begged Greg for the assignment. See, cutthroat business, right.   

(Allan, now returned as what they call a contributing editor after a hoary story of exile and banishment working for newly elected Utah United States Senator Mitt Romney’s election campaign in 2018, partnering in a high-end whorehouse with an old flame Madame La Rue out in San Francisco and M-Cing the famous drag queen show at the KitKat Club with his old friend Timmy Riley aka Miss Judy Garland in that same city if any of the rumors are to be believed. This all before current site manager Greg Green hired me when he took Allan’s place.) Sarah Lemoyne]    

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No question Hollywood knows how to make good noir films ever since they put classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Out Of The Past among others together back in the 1930s and 1940s. And that genre gets a modern workout here in the film under review, Hollywoodland, centered on the death of actor George Reeves who won a certain amount of fame as Superman in the hit television series in the 1950s (a series that I watched faithfully early in the morning on rerun television when I was a kid although I don’t think I took the news of his death all that personally unlike the boy in the film but that death had occurred later when I had stopped watching the series). The noir part is the intrigue that builds up over the possible ways he might have died although for the record everybody wanted the thing put down as suicide-just another guy who couldn’t hack the fact that his show had been cancelled and that he had been type-cast as a guy in tights and a muscle shirt with funny lettering, maybe gay but nobody publicly said anything about that until Rock Hudson’s AIDS time blew the lid off the whole thing. Yeah a has-been guy who had only the acting range for such kid-appropriate roles.     

Let’s see where the trail leads here. George Reeve, played by Ben Affleck, committed suicide in 1959 by shooting himself in his bedroom while his fiancé (as you know that status did not preclude a little gayness in those uptight times when guys would seek marriage for cover against the “light on your feet” charges) and others were downstairs. That hard fact is part of the historical record, the police record. But there were enough contrary statements and allegations to, well, fill a book which in fact happened and allowed a fictionalized film to try to fill in the blanks-or create a nice noir story about the prizes and pitfalls of Hollywood in the 1950s.    

Naturally, although a noir can survive without one, murder always spices one up. As does having a fictionalized shoulder to the wheel private detective look for leads on a dead-end trail after the “too busy” cops have thrown the case into the cold files. Enter one Louis Simo, P.I., nicely understated played by Adrien Brody, a been around the block once too many times down at the heels divorced father of a young son who was  a Superman series devotee (and a kid who took the death of the super hero pretty hard including almost burning the house down trying to get rid of his Superman costume since suicide was not a manly way to solve any problems among the young). He takes the case when Reeves’ mother is unhappy with the Los Angeles Police Department’s work on what happened to her son.  

Brother Simo might have been a two-bit, second-rate private detective but he was tenacious, was committed to seeing what was to be seen to the end which placed him in the company of guys like Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. Ready to take a fist or too, a slug in his body if need be, to see if there was a way to grab some rough justice in the world. See if the rumors of a planned “hit” by some high movie executive doing the deed to poor George for some unknown agent or if that lovely fiancée accidently pulled the trigger. The three theories mix and match in flashbacks throughout the film, although in the end that suicide seems the most likely answer.   

But along the way there was enough confusion about motives, enough questions about who in Reeves’ life might want him out of the way to keep things moving. The prime “evidence” for the hit-man theory was the woman scorned always a good choice when murder, murder most foul is in the air. The woman scorned, an older woman scorned, Toni Mannix, played by Diane Lane, the paramour of Eddie Mannix, played by Bob Hoskins, had plenty of reason to have done the deed, or had it hired out. She had picked Reeves up one night at a party and they quickly became lovers (it was okay old Eddie had a mistress so “no foul” as they say). Including her setting up house with Reeves (she paid, or rather Eddie paid). They went along for a few years, years when Reeves became a big television hero among the younger set (and later me).     

After the Superman show was cancelled though our George was at wits end, needed a project (interesting he accused Toni of not lifting a finger to help his career even though she was well-connected through Eddie). He headed to New York where he met his fatal mistake-his- Lenore who wound up as his fiancée as they headed back to the cesspools of Hollywood. Needless to say, Toni was beside herself when Superman fel down and it is that fact that drives the hitman theory full force. And our man Simo is living proof since as he digs deeper into the cold, cold case he is warned off about seven different ways by various private dicks and security guys who work for guess who-Eddie Mannix who whatever else he might be does not want to see Toni bothered.

In the end we are left with nothing but pure speculation just where we started about what happened the night of Reeves’ death. But you know with the gritty feel of this one, the familiar menacing background music and period piece cars and costumes made me think that Hollywood still knows how to put a noir together when it wants to. Thanks Adrien, Ben, Diane and company.