Plot summary (with spoilers): We begin in media res--which is a pretentious hipster phrase I like using--two men are fighting on top a moving train. One man shoots the other several times in the chest and the second man falls onto the first, making him stumble back and they both fall off the train and into the water. "The End" comes onscreen, for we are indeed watching a movie. Movie director John L Sullivan (Sacramento shout-out!) is screening his new movie to two studio executives. They don't like it because it's not funny and that's why people come to see movies nowadays. They need escapism. Sullivan says he's tired of making shitty comedies from the Olden Times, which immediately makes him my new hero. He's clearly seen Yankee Doodle Dandy, Swing Time, and A Night at the Opera. He wants to make socially conscious art and adapt from Sinclair Beckstein's new novel, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? while the studio heads want him to make a sequel to last summer's big hit, Ants in Your Plants. Heh. But Sullivan's no sell-out. He wants to make a movie about pain and suffering and the human condition. The studio heads scoff at him and tell him he knows nothing of human suffering, having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He realizes they're right, and sets off to become a hobo for a few weeks until he can learn what it's like.
He has his butler get him some shabby clothes. His second butler tells him it's a really bad idea, and not only is he kinda making light of real homeless people (called hobos or tramps in this movie, so I'll just go with that, don't hate me), but he's also risking a lot. The studio heads convince Sullivan to put his business card in his shoe, should be ever need to identify himself, and to let his staff follow behind him in a big motor home.
Cut to Sullivan walking down the highway with the classic hobo outfit, including a stick with a bag tied to the top while a giant motor home follows behind him by about twenty feet. Heh.
But then a little kid in a...motorized go kart? Mini-car of some kind? Dunno...offers him a ride. He jumps in and the kid goes barreling down the highway at top speed and the motor home is forced to catch up with him and all the staff in the motor home go crash boom bang and fall on top of each other and the negro chef falls into some batter and looks like he's doing whiteface and blah blah shitty comedy shitty comedy and in the end the motor home crashes and Sullivan gets out of the kid's car and tells them he's going off on his own and will meet them in Las Vegas in a few weeks.He meets up with a lady and asks her for a dime for dinner but she's a lonely old widower who takes him home and changes his clothes and takes him out to dinner and a movie and it's his movie and he's super bored watching it while a kid behind him kicks the seat, someone else loudly unwraps candy, and a baby cries. Wow, some things really do never change. Anyway, that night he sneaks out of her house through the window and falls into a barrel of water and then is freezing cold. He hitches a ride from a trucker who lets him sleep in the back, and when the trucker wakes him up the next day he discovers he's right back in Hollywood. He goes into a diner and buys a cup of coffee with his last remaining dime. A beautiful blonde woman there buys him ham and eggs. They chat for a bit, and he learns she's a failed actress who would like to go back home to the East Coast, but can't because she has no car and is broke. What he doesn't learn, ever, is her name. She's known only as The Girl in the credits, which is a pretty refreshing bit of honesty, really. If all Hollywood movies did this, more than half of them would include a token female character named "The Girl". He tells her he can borrow a car from a friend and gets his own car and starts driving her back, but his butlers report the car stolen and he and The Girl are thrown in jail. He must call his butlers to get him out, and soon he's back home at the mansion with The Girl. Once she learns who he is and his plans, she says she wants to go with him on his next "pretend you're a hobo for a day" experiment. He puts up a token protest, then goes along with it. They hitch a ride on a train and find themselves staring at a couple of other tramps. Sullivan says, "hey there, fellas. How do you feel about the current economic condition?" and the tramps hurriedly stand up and step outside and start working their way to the next car. Ha, nice! Anyway, by the next day, Sullivan is sick and sneezes super big and "comically" over and over, and The Girl is starving and when the train slows down, they jump out and make their way to a little diner. They beg for food and the diner owner takes pity on them and gives them coffee and donuts. Sullivan asks what city they're in. Las Vegas, of course. Las Vegas! Have you seen a large motor home around here? Why sure, right over there to your right. (Oh, fucking come on).
Yes, Sullivan's whole staff are right there, so Sullivan and The Girl board the motor home and get fresh showers and food and Sullivan's personal doctor says he's too sick to continue pretending to be a bum for at least a few days so they all hang out in the motor home until then.
A few days later, Sullivan the The Girl set out to play Tramp House once again, and there's montage of them walking through Tramp Cities, eating scraps cooked on the bonfire, until one day they're just sick of it and go racing back to the motor home which had been following them. Total time elapse: three days.
The studio heads reveal they've been taking notes and photos of Sullivan's scary walk on the wild side, and are very excited to make the Oh Brother movie, now. Sullivan asks The Girl what she's going to do now, and she hints that she wants to stay with him and have his babies of course, but he reveals that he's already married. DUN DUN. Actually, they revealed that at the beginning, but I forgot to throw that in there. Anyway, he tells her it was a marriage of convince that his business manager suggested to save on taxes (traditional values FTW!) but now his "wife" who lives elsewhere makes him send her money every month to keep the marriage a secret and won't grant him a divorce. He can't get one without her permission because whatever 1941 laws or maybe the movie is full of it, who knows. The Girl is sad. Sullivan says he's going to go around one last time to Hobo City and give everyone five dollar bills in a gesture to make him feel okay about exploiting them. He does so at night, and one of the tramps sees him and decides he wants more than five bucks. He hides behind a corner, and ambushes Sullivan, bashing him on the head with a bottle. They're right by a rail yard, so he drags Sullivan onto a railcar and leaves him there. Sullivan's out cold, so the tramp steals the rest of his money and his shoes, then goes running through the rail yard. He trips on a rail and the money goes flying. As he starts to desperately scoop it all up, a train comes barreling down on him and for some dumb reason he tries to outrun it instead of getting out of the way and he's smashed.
The next day, Sullivan's staff and The Girl go around town to all the hospitals, police stations, and morgues. At the morgue, they say a man was brought in last night, too obliterated to identify. But they checked in his shoe, and....uh oh.
Meanwhile, Sullivan wakes up groggy in another city. He wanders off the train, which is stopped at a railway station. The rail employee gives him shit and starts pushing him. Sullivan is still really put out by his head wound and can barely stand. The guy pushes him again, and Sullivan falls to the ground. He jumps back up, pissed, with a rock in his hand and starts hitting the guy with it.
The next scene, he's on trial for assault with intent to kill. He's still too groggy, can't remember his own name, and can't defend himself. So..the trial was later that day? The Olden Times were really fucking efficient when they wanted to be. He's sentenced to six years hard labor at some weird work camp/jail hybrid place where Sullivan, now coherent, tries to tell people who he is, but of course no one will believe him. He tries to get a phone call or write a letter, but the Evil Warden (is there any other kind?) doesn't like his shitty attitude and won't let him. So all day, he must break rocks with his shirt off and get treated like shit by the other inmates. He sees one guard with a newspaper that says "Hollywood Director Sullivan Mysteriously Killed" and knows no one is even looking for him. His goose is well and truly cooked. The warden announces that that night the prisoners are getting a special treat, a field trip to a local church to watch a movie.
Turns out, it's a black church, and the pastor tells his parishioners to not be judgmental and that all have sinned etc and they nod and agree and sing a sweet gospel ditty as the prisoners are brought in. The movie they screen is a dumb Disney cartoon where Pluto gets into all kinds of wacky trouble, and Sullivan notices with awe that all the prisoners and the black churchgoers are laughing their asses off. And soon, he is too. Nice twist. Did not see that coming. Though of course the bit players have to ruin it a bit by hamming it up huge and doubling over and almost literally rolling in the aisles at fucking Pluto falling down.
So, the next day Sullivan comes up with a great idea. He "confesses" to the "murder" of famous Hollywood director John L Sullivan. His picture is in the paper, and The Girl sees it and she tells everyone else. Soon, Sullivan's rescued from jail because also famous Hollywood directors are free to hit whoever they want with rocks, duh. Why do you think Lily Tomlin hates David O Russell so much?
The Girl tells Sullivan that his "widower" married his business manager when they thought he was dead, which means they're now divorced (uh...okay) and so now he and she can get married and she'll become Mrs. Girl Sullivan. Yay! The studio heads excitedly tell him that his story got a ton of great publicity and now they can definitely make Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? into a monster hit. But Sullivan doesn't want to do that anymore, because he still doesn't really know about suffering. He only now knows what he doesn't know.
And what he does know, is people need shitty comedies. Now more than ever. Onto Ants in Your Plants 2!
Review: Well, not bad at all. Lots of great twists, I really didn't know where the movie was going at all, which was fun. At first I thought we were just going to see Sullivan and The Girl try and fail to "suffer" over and over, which was cute for a while, but then the third act manages to get Sullivan in real trouble which generally played well. The "insta-trial" was super dumb and embarrassing. They were clearly straining really hard to make it believable that Sullivan would be unable to contact any of his friends and they don't quite make it, but whatever. Also, some of the early "comedy" scenes were as horrible as they have been in every Olden Times movie I've seen save for Bringing Up Baby, although there was some smart stuff, too. It's actually kind of frustrating that a movie with some really sharp lines and a knowing grasp of what's absurd about the shallow Hollywood elites would resort to cheap "people falling down" crap at all. The twist at the end with Sullivan realizing the power and value of the silly comedy was pretty neat and I totally didn't see it coming. Personally, I find engrossing dramas of human suffering to be as much or even more a form of escapism. But I seem to very much be in the minority on this. I appreciated that the black churchgoers were portrayed with dignity and respect, something that was so rare back then, that the President of the NAACP wrote director Preston Sturges and thanked him for it. (I guess the President politely overlooked the earlier scenes with the dumb black chef).
And yes, the Coen Bros titled their movie based on the fake book in this one.
I'd like to see this remade. Drop the shitty comedy stuff, amp up the smart satire, make the third act more realistic and dangerous for Sullivan, and you've got yourself a movie. Maybe even get a real director to star in it. Ooh, I know! Starring Martin Scorsese. Written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonez. Done.
Stars: Three and a half out of five.
Next, the fucking "comedy" "geniuses" known as the Marx "Brothers" assault my eyes and ears again with "Duck Soup" and then one I'm really looking forward to; Robert Altman's "Nashville".
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