13 Great Movies That Are About Movies

If the best advice a storyteller can follow is indeed to “write what you know,” then no one should be offended any time there’s a movie made about the movie industry, or about the experience of watching movies, or about some period of movie history. Filmmakers are understandably primarily concerned with film, and as their main area of interest, it should be no surprise that it’s a subject that a large number of films are deeply interested in, or at least touch upon. The result is an inflated number of stories being told about writers, or actors, or aspiring artists, potentially giving off the false impression that any attempts to make it in the industry will likely be met with success. But it also often results in movies being made about movies themselves turning out rather well—it is, after all, an area in which the creators are exceptionally well-versed. It’s understandable for the more cynical among us to be turned off by the masturbatory sense that movies about movies can often exude, similar to any professional going on and on about the hardships of their particular profession (you know who you are). It’s especially irritating for us outside the industry when the seeming trends indicate that exploring Hollywood-focused stories will bring about an excess of praise from those within the industry, as though these folks are so deeply narcissistic that they can only appreciate and relate to stories that are thinly veiled versions of their own. Nevertheless, there are a number of great examples. Here are 13 movies about movies that rank among the best of this specific inward-looking genre. Continue reading on the next page... 1) Tropic Thunder I share Terrence Malick’s enthusiasm for Zoolander, Ben Stiller’s 2001 satire on fashion, stardom and stupidity. While perhaps not as uproariously funny as that film, 2008’s Tropic Thunder is an equally biting and more stylistically poignant comedy, sending up some of the absurdities of the movie business through its characters and smartly employed narrative clichés. The most surprising and pitch perfect spoof of Hollywood turns out to be right at the opening of the movie, which introduces the main characters through trailers for their respective brands of film vehicles. Not only does this create a moment or two of not realizing you’re watching a spoof (or longer, reportedly, for some viewers), but it reproduces the familiar tropes and rhythms we’ve come to associate with specific genres of movies and movie trailers with beautiful precision. There are two brilliant and hilarious aspects of the movie that stand out for most people, I imagine. The first is Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Kirk Lazarus, the Australian method actor who incites controversy by donning blackface to become Lincoln Osiris (seen in the video below) in the movie-within-the-movie. It’s an example of smartly and conscientiously exploiting stereotypes where the humor comes from the acknowledgement of the absurdity of such stereotypes, and as a reward for this enlightened perspective on racial taboos, Downey gets to play around as multiple characters, and we get to enjoy watching it. The second best performance is of course that of Tom Cruise, playing the studio exec Les Grossman, completely altering his appearance and stealing the movie while satirizing a number of actual Hollywood higher-ups. Continue reading on the next page... 2) Barton Fink Some filmmakers, perhaps most popularly Christopher Nolan, seem to make all their movies about their relationships with movies. For Nolan, it’s comparing movies to experiences like dreams, or magic tricks, or false memories. For someone like Martin Scorsese, every movie is a conversation with film history, of which he has a reputedly encyclopedic knowledge. The Coen brothers are more subtle in their conversation with movie history, at least with the movies that have influenced them, such as those by Alfred Hitchcock and Preston Sturges. Barton Fink is perhaps the Coens’ most abstract movie, taking their taste for mythic storytelling to new heights while combining it with their typical absurd humor and punchy dialogue. Through the titular character played by John Turturro, the movie seems to be a kind of journey recreating the impressions of a new writer navigating the strange waters of the Hollywood studio system. The bizarreness of such a place is bewitching yet bewildering to an awkward writer like Barton, and it’s tempting to consider how much of these impressions of Hollywood correlate with the Coens’ own experience of the industry, which would paint a picture of alienation and impatience with social nonsense that could explain their tendency to remain at an arm’s length from it all. Continue reading on the next page... 3) The Purple Rose of Cairo While Barton Fink is (among other things) about the writer’s relationship with movies and the movie industry, Woody Allen’s 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo is primarily about the audience member’s relationship with the films they watch, or more specifically the difference between relationships with fictional characters versus those with people in the real world. As someone who regularly develops unhealthy relationships with the men and women appearing on screen, this movie felt like it was speaking to me personally, as I’m sure was the experience of the many who adore it. Plenty of films will come up with a terrific premise and then squander its potential (I thought that way of Warm Bodies a little bit). Purple Rose certainly has a superb premise: a waitress who frequents the movies to escape her troubles becomes infatuated with one particular actor, and one day he walks off the screen and declares his love for her. It becomes a great movie when we see the other characters on screen reacting angrily to their castmate’s behavior; it becomes masterful with further logical developments such as the “real life” actor who plays the character in this movie to investigate this strange occurrence, and a bizarre love triangle forms between the three characters. The choice between a fictional character who is without flaws versus a real person is one we should be glad we never have to make in the real world on a literal level, but a fun and interesting perspective on truth in our capacity for relating to other people. Continue reading on the next page... 4) Adaptation Another movie focusing on a neurotic screenwriter with surreal elements is the 2002 film adaptation, directed by recent Academy Award winner Spike Jonze and written from an apparently deeply personal place by Charlie Kaufman. The first giveaway that the movie is about Charlie Kaufman himself is that the name of the movie’s protagonist is…Charlie Kaufman. Indeed, the whole movie is a twisted retelling of the story behind the movie itself: Kaufman is hired to write an adapted screenplay for the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, can’t come up with a suitable script for it, and writes the story of his inability to adapt the book into his screenplay. Charlie Kaufman Incepted us almost ten years before Inception came out. Through the character of this actually-fictional twin brother character of Donald (even though the made-up “Donald Kaufman” received a screenplay credit and Oscar nomination IRL), Charlie Kaufman seems to be exploring two sides of his own ambition. On one hand he feels at times as though he’s achieving some kind of truth and authenticity in his storytelling, and on the other hand, he is potentially sacrificing career success for the sake of artistic integrity and a stubborn notion of righteousness that may not even be worthwhile. It’s a delicious exploration of that age-old dichotomy of art and commerce, with added flavors of general misanthropy and self-loathing. Continue reading on the next page... 5) Ed Wood/Be Kind Rewind Two movies come to mind when thinking about directors expressing their unfettered joy at being able to make movies for a living, coming from filmmakers of two very different times and places. One of the first that emerges for me is Tim Burton’s 1994 film Ed Wood, a biopic of the late great director of some of what are considered to be the absolute worst movies ever made, the most famous of which is Plan 9 from Outer Space. Unlike such auteurs as Tommy Wiseau, who hasn’t made a movie since his disastrous The Room, Ed Wood made a number of films, and in the movie we see that his primary concern was with the sheer enjoyment he got from creating these movies—to him, they were all as precious as Citizen Kane. Johnny Depp in the lead role captures this weird vivacity and complexity of the real life figure. When it comes to no-budget effects-driven filmmaking, Michel Gondry is a master. The style employed in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind gave that film a unique look and feel that made it one of the most treasured movies of the 21st century. His 2008 film Be Kind Rewind may not have been of the same quality, but through its portrayal of friends and community members coming together to make these creative visions come to life on screens, it offers one of the sweetest (or swedest) examples of the joy of collaborative filmmaking. Continue reading on the next page... 6) Mulholland Drive David Lynch is the Coen brothers if all they ever did was the surreal stuff from Barton Fink. I appreciate the exploration of dreams by Christopher Nolan very much, particularly on an intellectual level, but on the level of the visceral weirdness that entails the common experience of dreams, there may be no one better at capturing such a feeling than David Lynch. Fittingly, 2001’s Mulholland Drive saw him turn his attention to a strange story involving an actress moving to Los Angeles in hopes of making it in the film industry. A large portion of audience members are of course occupied with figuring out the puzzle of this complicated and confusing story, urged on by Lynch himself, who has stated that the movie is perfectly coherent if you pay close attention. That’s not really how I watch. The experience of the movie, its dreamlike feel that is always on the border between dream and nightmare, and some of its show-stopping moments like Betty’s audition, gives a distinct impression of this Los Angeles setting where dreams are dashed daily, and there seems to exist a deep darkness in the fantasies the industry and culture perpetuate. Hence J. Hoberman’s apt description, that Mulholland Drive is a “poisonous valentine to Hollywood.” Continue reading on the next page... 7) The Artist/Argo Two very recent movies, two consecutive Best Picture winners at the Oscars in fact, offered stories that were based in historical truth in strikingly similar stylistic ways, specifically their representations of their respective settings through the use of visual recreation of the time period. For Argo, Ben Affleck and company achieved a 1970s cinematographic feel, while The Artist employed both black and white photography as well as the bold choice to make it nearly dialogue-free in the spirit of 1920s Hollywood. Despite the numerous opinions to the contrary, I find both these movies deserving of their high praise, even if their Best Picture wins may not have been the strongest picks for their given years. Nevertheless, Argo offers a slick and entertaining portrayal of a true story in which Hollywood movie producers come to the aid of stranded Americans in Iran, and does so with admirable style and tempo. The Artist, the more ambitious and charming of the two, is also more closely tied to movie history, depicting the crisis of a silent film star watching as the sound era arrives and seems to be passing him by. Both quality films, but AMPAS’ awarding Hollywood-centric movies Best Picture two years in a row certainly comes off as a little circle-jerky. Continue reading on the next page... 8) Hugo I mentioned earlier that Martin Scorsese’s movies all seem to revel in their love of film history, but none has done so more explicitly than Hugo (it was another Oscar favorite in 2012 but was ultimately beaten by The Artist. Oh, Hollywood). He has stated that he made the movie for his daughter, particularly the decision to film it in 3D, and this motivation seems to explain both the departure in style and subject matter from his previous work, but also many of the historical elements. It would appear that he wanted to make something that would entertain young people but also educate them about some important figures that were responsible for them being able to see the very film they were watching. Scorsese’s knowledge and love of film history is well documented, and he has stated multiple times that movies saved his life. So it’s as much of a joyful experience watching Scorsese himself in a cameo role as a photographer, and imagining his delight in recreating the famous scenes of George Méliès, as it is experiencing the adventurous story of Hugo Cabret ourselves. Continue reading on the next page... 9) Day for Night/Singin’ in the Rain Then there are two older films, in addition to the likes of Sullivan’s Travels (by the aforementioned Preston Sturges) and The Bad and the Beautiful which I still need to watch, that are notable for their portrayals of filmmaking in the earlier days of Hollywood. François Truffaut, a pioneer of that French New Wave we all vaguely remember hearing about in Film 100, directed Day for Night in 1973. It’s a terrific and comedic movie about the madness that surrounds the work that goes into making a movie, with the players’ personal lives often taking a backseat to the filmmaking and the toll this can take. It functions on a meta level that would probably be even more appreciated today, with Truffaut himself playing the role of the fictional movie’s director. It also stars Jacqueline Bisset, whom you may remember from the Golden Globes as that weird lady. Singin’ in the Rain is essential viewing for anyone who appreciates being happy, as well as perhaps one of the greatest movies ever made. It shares a lot of similarities with The Artist, and was undoubtedly one of the largest influences on that film, but the key difference is that it is filled with loud music and bright colors and magnificent dancing that delights the senses and tickles the mind. Also dignity. Always dignity. Continue reading on the next page... 10) The Player The Player is known mostly for its famous opening tracking shot, which stylistically as well as through the dialogue serves as a reference to long takes from film history as seen in Touch of Evil or Rope (as well as others less famous that the sequence also nods to), but like those films to which it refers, it is more than a mere technical cinematic achievement. It sets the tone for a movie that is self-referential and satirical, drawing attention to the fact that it’s employing a long take as it does so, and later drawing attention to the plot of the movie itself by having characters pitch the story of the film to executives within the movie (a little bit like Adaptation). It features a celebrity cameo every minute or so and paints a portrait of the two-faced nature of movie industry players, sort of like if Entourage was a little smarter. Making movies about movies can be a bit of a catch-22, wherein detailing every little feature of the life of the filmmaker (in the broadest sense of the term) may be only interesting to those in the know and alienating to the general audience, while at the same time showing too much disdain for the people making up the bulk of your potential future collaborators could, well, affect your work prospects in the years to come. Then again, I have no idea. Pretty much everything I know about the process of making movies I learned from the movies.