Movies About Making Movies

The Stunt Man – 1980, Richard Rush

The Player – 1992, Robert Altman

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang – 2005, Shane Black

How many movies about making movies can you name (without including parodies or spoofs or documentaries)? Not many I’ll wager. Not because there aren’t many of them, there are so many that they constitute a sub-genre all of their own. Most are thrillers or otherwise dramatic films, often with comedic elements, the basis for which are either in-jokes about the film industry or satirising cinematic clichés. Movies about making movies can therefore come across as inherently smug. Maybe this is why they don’t make much money and don’t reach a wide audience.

There’s a wikipedia page titled ‘List of Films Considered The Worst’ which makes interesting reading. One of the films in the list, under the section ‘Star Vehicles’ is a film called ‘Burn Hollywood Burn’ about a director making a movie that is so bad he wished to discredit himself from it. BHB was so bad that the director discredited himself from it. This ironic affair highlights the difficulty in making a self referential film that is not self indulgent or uninteresting, and explains why when such films are made, they tend to be labours of love for those involved. The Stunt Man is one such heartfelt and earnest production.

The Stunt Man took at least ten years to get made. It was director Richard Rush’s magnum opus, such was his obsession with the film and it’s legacy that he eventualy financed and filmed a documentary about it’s production; The Sinister Saga of The Making of The Stunt Man. The Stunt Man is quite a good film, but it doesn’t warrant the devotion that Rush has for it. Sadly, the lack of success his great work achieved put Rush off directing, he only made one more film, and that was after a gap of fourteen years.

When it was released in 1980, The Stunt Man provided a somewhat groundbreaking insight into the world of film making. Rather cleverly the stunts and action sequences of the film-within-the-film that are being taken so seriously by the fictional director, are presented as screwball, madcap affairs played out to a comedy Buster Keaton style score. The satire is well layered and Rush probably deserved his Best Director Oscar nod, and Peter O’Toole wholly deserved his Best Actor nomination for his portrayal as the manic director. Unfortunately for them both, Raging Bull was also up for a couple of awards that year.



The Stunt Man is let down by a poor supporting cast, which is something that you could never say about The Player, with over 40 cameos by big names from over thirty years of Hollywood history. This one was also a labour of love; Robert Altman had made critically successful films without much financial success for years, and The Player, a film about a ruthless and paranoid movie studio executive, was drawn from the personal experience of many movie makers. It’s quite an average thriller really, but it stands out in the way it ridicules the people decide which films get made. It’s also clearly been made by a man who loves films, the famous 7 minute opening shot can be considered a short film in itself.



I love the way movie pitches are mocked. “It’s Out Of Africa meets Pretty Woman.”
The rest of the film doesn’t really live up to that shot. The Player has a deliberately unconventional ending and originality should be applauded, but ultimately it comes across as a little too pleased with itself.

The best movie about movies that I’ve seen is Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It was written and directed by Shane Black. Shane Black wrote the screenplay for Lethal Weapon when he was in his early twenties and sold it for a quarter of a million dollars. He went on to command extravagant fees for a few lacklustre movies including a reported million dollars for a mere re-write of Last Action Hero (another movie about movies).

In a sense, all of Blacks screenplays were movies about movies because they adhered so rigidly to movie conventions (specifically action movie conventions). I once read the first act of Lethal Weapon online and it’s an excellent script, a masterclass in structure and narrative description, but it is far from revolutionary. Black’s style of writing ‘blockbusters’ eventually became boring to even him and he took a ten year break before returning with KKBB.

This one is the least explicitly about moviemaking (although the film industry does provide a background) yet it does the best job of holding up in front of the audience all the formulaic ingredients of Film (in this case Film Noir) and saying “This is how a film is written”. Yet at the same time, the satire and exposition is all part of the plot. The tone is perfect, it’s very clever without being smug and features excellent performances by Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.

Movies about movies seem to be made by experienced directors toward the end of their careers, maybe because they feel they’ve got nothing left to lose. I reckon George Lucas is considering one to get back at the most obsessive of all the Star Wars fans.