Current Date:March 28, 2024
The Player

Movie 4 d week : The Player (1992)

Review by Vinoo
Language : English
Director : Robert Altman

A Studio Executive, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins), is being hounded by a writer whose script he has supposedly rejected. Griffin claims he has approved only 12 of the 50,000 pitches that he received. He gets threats through cards that say ‘You promised you’d get back’ etc etc and from the messages you know the blackmailer is lurking real close. The only problem is that Griffin Mill doesn’t know who this writer is, cos like most Studio Executives he might not even have read all the scripts that were pitched to him. Griffin can’t handle the pressure anymore and he draws up a list of writers who have met him with their scripts. He tries to trace the writer so he can settle the issue by paying him off. In his hurry to get rid of the threat, Griffin offers the writer, David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), who he suspects of being the blackmailer, a script.  Kahane rejects his offer and calls Griffin a failure and in the altercation that follows Griffin ends up killing Kahane seemingly putting to rest the stalker and the blackmailer. Meanwhile his job as a Studio Executive is at stake and the police are watching him closely too. You can’t miss Whoopi Goldberg who plays Detective Avery.

Life goes on as normal for sometime and Griffin gets married to June and then one fine day he gets a script, titled ‘The Player’, that is about a Studio Executive who is being stalked, and by a Screenwriter who has been rejected. The plot seems familiar. Griffin realizes he has given fodder to the blackmailer and has no choice but to give the writer a chance. It will now be the script that will be the pay-off for the writer he rejected and will ironically bail Griffin out of a bad stint as a Studio Executive. I quite loved this flick and it gives a good insight into how the Hollywood industry works. I am sure our own industry works pretty much the same way. This one is surely a writer’s delight. This is a must watch even if I have given away most of the plot. Believe me there’s enough I have left out J.
Quoting from the film :

Griffin : Larry I didn’t know you had a drinking problem.
Levy : I don’t. That’s where the deals are being made these days.

Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Peter Gallagher, Brion James and Cynthia Stevenson make rest of the cast.

Also watched Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps’ but to me sequels don’t really work. It has a surprise in 95-year-old Eli Wallach, whose voice is a give-away. The sequel is very timely and might just make you want to go back and watch ‘Wall Street’. There are moments that Oliver Stone carries off amazingly though. Not a great movie but worth a watch among what is on now. Hope to catch ‘Eat. Pray. Love’ and ‘The American’ and ‘Enthiran, The Robot’ sitting in Row One. Anyone getting me a ticket?

Got my hands on ‘Nine hours to Rama’ (Nathuram Godse and the hours before the assassination of Gandhi) and ‘Saragossa Manifesto’. Also watched ‘The Telephone’ with that amazing woman, Whoopi Goldberg, in it I mean. I know for sure Ramgopal Varma has seen this flick. Reviews coming soon.

Useless trivia : About 60 Hollywood stars make cameo appearances in ‘The Player’. Most of them were supposedly not paid to appear in the film. James Coburn, John Cusack, Robert Carradine, Nick Nolte, Marlee Matlin, Julia Roberts, Rod steiger, Bruce Willis, Jeff Goldblum, Cher, Susan Sarandon are part of the list. This film won for Tim Robbins the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
The tribute to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock is ‘un-missable’.

Book 4 d week : The Player
Author :  Michael Tolkin

‘If you get away with murder, is it murder?’ Quoting from the book. The book is a good read. One of the better screenplays. The film works well but every writer must read this book. Quoting from the book again ‘ The waiter asked him if he wanted another drink. Griffin looked at the empty glass with suspicion, as though someone else finished it’. I know lot of people who do that, I included. Also remember a scene where he is desribing how Griffin is being chased while he is in his car and gets shot at. Tolkin says ‘The bullet was in the car with him, a passenger’ J.
Here is a quote by Michael Tolkin “Where the Writer leaves off, the Director begins. Where the Director leaves off, the Actor begins. And where the Actor leaves off, the audience begins. And so when you finally see the audience it’s theirs now – it’s theirs to reinvent, it’s theirs to make up. The audience tells the story along with the film. And something happens, and actually it changes. And that’s why as the writer it’s not mine anymore. It’s theirs.” Aye!

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