And so another film which I couldn’t get along with. This was another one that was actually my first time watching it. I’ve never fancied it, I’m not a fan of Ben Stiller or Janeane Garofalo or their comedy and it always put me off with those two being in it.
(To be fair one of my all time favourite films is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller, he gets more of a pass these days for that, but I’m still not a fan, really)
I zoned so far out of watching this film while I was watching it that at one point I genuinely wondered if I should just start again but I couldn’t bring myself to do it and just tried working it out.
Nobody knows anything is a comedy, in the very loosest sense of the word. I get the impression that it was trying to be *something*, but I don;t know what. I’d guess they were going for a satire vibe with a certain crowd when they were making it?
It’s a film about Hollywood and what it takes to get a film made there. Sarah Wilder (Alanna Ubach) wants to make a film, she thinks it’s going to be easy. Till she tries to get it done. She only has one proper contact in the industry in the form of her Uncle (Michael Lerner) who is has-been Screenwriter back in the day. He tries to help and she embarks on a ride through the weird and wonderful world of Hollywood, meeting various characters and getting into “situations” as she does.
It’s a film with a LOT of “names” in it, I mean, I’ve already mentioned Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo but joining the line up are; Margaret Cho, Kristen Johnston, Robert Englund, Mary Kay Place, Paul Dooley, Stephen Colbert, Tim Meadows,. MIke Myers. Fred Willard, Scott Thompson, Richard Kind, Mike Connors, Ed Lauter and of course Virginia Madsen.
Some are in it for a few seconds, some a few minutes.
It’s that kind of film. Like, it’s something special they all wanted to be involved in. Or, something. Like I said, I guess it’s some form of satire if you know that kind of world enough.
There is surprisingly little to be found on the film online, which is kind of telling. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Any reviews I could find were short and not-so-sweet, mostly, it just seems to have “been”.
I guess almost ironically, the movies title “Nobody Knows Anything” is actually a reference to a quote from William Goldman, an Oscar winning Screenplay Writer responsible for many a film such as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, the full quote is taken from a book he wrote, Adventures in the Screen Trade.
“Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.“
And, if nothing else this kind of proves his point. With all the star power floating around this film, it should, in theory, have been a lot better than it is.
Virginia rocks up to do her bit quite late in the film, she’s a lawyer and doing her best to make the most of what she has to work with. It’s hard to make any real comment, I was definitely only half watching, despite Virginia and I was losing the will at that point.
Meh. Maybe some people will and do like this, I don’t. Not every film is for everyone, I get that, I mean I like Highlander 2 so maybe my opinion really shouldn’t count for anything…
Availability:
Region 1 DVDs are pretty easy to find, should you want to do…
Trailer:
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