HOLLYWOOD CONFIDENTIAL
US, 1997, 88 minutes, Colour.
Edward James Olmos, Rick Aiello, Anthony Yerkovich, Richard T. Jones, Charlize Theron, Angela Alverado.
Directed by Reynaldo Villalobos.
Hollywood Confidential was released the same year as Curtis Hansen's Oscar-winning LA Confidential. This film has a 90s setting, consists of a bureau made up of ex-police and ex-FBI agents who do surveillance and security work amongst the wealthy and the stars in Los Angeles. Edward James Olmos is very serious as the head of the agency, continually having flashbacks to a time when he didn't save a victim when he was a policeman. Anthony Yerkovich (who wrote the screenplay) is Jack, the former FBI agent who went beyond the pale and who then joined the agency in order to write a book. Charlize Theron, in one of her earliest Hollywood films, provides a great deal of glamour.
Needless to say, the stories being investigated have their prurient touch, a famous screenwriter having a lesbian affair, a director who is receiving an award form a women's association because of his treatment of women, has a seventeen-year-old girlfriend whom he has made pregnant and who attempts suicide.
The film is made up of headline stuff, with an attempt to give some kind of depth to the central characters as well as a confrontative moral tone at the end.
1. An enjoyable expose of Hollywood? Security, investigative bureaux? Crime? Morals?
2. Hollywood in the 90s, the studios, the awards? The bureau? The police? Surveillance? The musical score?
3. The title, echoes of the magazines of the past? Gossip? Investigations? Exposes?
4. Stan as the head of the bureau, his own personal integrity, family life? His staff and good relationships? The memories of his police work, the continued flashbacks and his sense of failure? The daily work, the assignments? The routine at the office? The dangers, the moral issues? The surveillance of the screenwriter and the discovery of her lesbian relationship? The pressure from the agent about the director? Stan being given the money to pay off Heather? His interviews with her? His decisions, the surveillance, her attempted suicide? His confrontation of the director after watching the awards on the television? The assault? Throwing the money away?
5. The various members of the team and their work, surveillance, the hotel bar attendant and his assaulting Sally? The cars, the binoculars, the recordings? The personalities of the different characters, Mike and his sternness, Jack and his writing, his own personal bewilderment, Joey and his being tough? Gatecrashing the acting class? Jack and his going to the course, having to read out his diary and the poem? The use of Yeats' poem about civilisation and the centre not holding? Sally and her work at the bar, her being assaulted, in hospital, going to help Heather at the end? Dexter and his assistant, her leaving the police force, her file being secret, her freezing? The surveillance on Heather, not realising she had tried to kill herself? The secretarial staff?
6. The agent, his protecting the director, the seventeen-year-old girl from the country, infatuated with the director, the phone calls? Her being pregnant? Getting Stan to buy her off? Her refusing, her trying to drown herself? Her diary and Stan reading the entries? Her recovery?
7. The material of newspapers and magazines - with a touch of realism behind the scenes?
