Hollywood producer Griffin Mill listens to pitches from aspiring screenwritiers every day. One example is a possible sequel to The Graduate, starring the original cast except Mrs. Robinson has a stroke -- but "it's funny". Another is a Goldie Hawn vehicle where a tribe discovers her and worships her à la Gods Must Be Crazy. And of course, Julia Roberts's name is loosely tossed about with almost every potential project. In a world where movies about the Crocodile Hunter guy on TV or the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers get the go-ahead by major studios, many of these twenty-five-words-or-less pitches that Griffin hears seem just as likely to be green-lighted today as they would seem to be ludicrous.
Robert Altman's deliciously biting feature The Player predicted the sagging state of good films that would plague the rest of the 1990's. It opens with an extended tracking shot that calls to mind Orson Welles's Touch of Evil or Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. The gimmick, of course, is that Altman's characters mention these two specific movies within the first five minutes. So we are aware of his glib homage to Hollywood Past while lampooning its degenerate Present. Someone all too familiar with the ups and downs of being the toast of Tinseltown, Altman pulls no punches in decrying its self-aborbed condition.
A slimy character like Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) makes for a perfect protagonist. He suspects he is on his way down the corporate ladder, plus he has been receiving anonymous postcards by a rejected writer who has theatened to kill him. His anxiety and paranoia draw us into the story. He kills the man he believes to be the author of the threats (Vincent D'Onofrio), only to find out he may have offed the wrong person. Nevertheless, as the movie progresses, Griffin's true colours begin to show through, and rather than see him change for the better, more and more of his cold, cutthroat nature is exposed instead. Will Griffin still emerge with a happy ending even though he has ruined other people purely for his own benefit?
The film stars an enormous cast, some playing fictional characters (Lyle Lovett, Dean Stockwell, Fred Ward, Greta Scacchi, Sydney Pollack, Richard E. Grant, Whoopi Goldberg, Dina Merrill, Cynthia Stevenson, and Brion James), others playing themselves (John Cusack, Bruce Willis, Cher, Malcolm McDowell, Lily Tomlin, Jeff Goldblum, Burt Reynolds, Andie MacDowell, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, and Harry Belafonte, among dozens of others). Peter Gallagher is quite funny as the hot-shot rival producer Larry Levy, a man who goes to Los Angeles A.A. meetings because that's where all the deals are made.
The Player is self-referential and meta-theatrical. It is a Crime and Punishment of our times, where it is conceivable that famous guilty people may be bothered and accused for their crimes but are unlikely to ever get convicted of having comitted them (freshly squeezed O.J., anyone?). Even on the rare occasions when it's not witty or funny, it's always saucy, sarcastic, and cheerfully nonchalant.
