Every now and then I’ll come across a random show that I never would have guessed had such powerful storytelling and characters. Hollywood is one of those shows. In this post I will cover some of the things I wished the real Hollywood was like.
What I saw:
Hollywood follows a plucky group of young dreamers in the 1950’s who want to work in the Hollywood movie industry. There are the actors: Camille, Jack, and Rock. The creatives: Archie the writer and Raymond the director. Each of them struggle in their own way to be seen and put into the movies. The owner of Ace Studios suffers a heart attack and goes into a coma; with his trust leaving his wife, Avis, in charge. Through backdoor channels and the whole “I know someone who knows someone” game they are given a chance by the more progressive Avis to make a film starring Camille, risking backlash from the racist south that could place the studio into bankruptcy. By following their dreams and not compromising, they are rewarded with numerous Oscars.
What I saw:
I’ll start off with what seems to be the more interesting part of the show, and that is fictionalizing history. There are many real life characters sprinkled about, and the main characters are an combination of other real world figures. This mini-series sets out to ask: what-if Hollywood wasn’t so racist and bigoted?
But the answer to that question in this fictional history still needs to be somewhat believable. The group of young dreamers are only given an opportunity because the director, Raymond, is half white and half Filipino who is able to pass as white. Since he is passing, he is able to trick the white people into giving him an opportunity and bring along others with him. Not only that, but the only reason the movie was greenlit in the first place is because a woman was in charge who could recognize a great story and judge it on it’s merits alone.
Each character has their own struggles and challenged to overcome, some from the outside, some from within, and others with both.
Camille is constantly stereotype-casted as a comedic foil because she is a black woman. Camille plays along at first because you can’t use your principles alone to buy food to eat and keep a roof over your head. But she is not afraid to put herself out there to get the kind of roles that she deserves. She is mentored by (real life Oscar winner) Hattie McDaniel, who despite her success and acting skills was never given another significant role again. Hattie tells her it’s not enough for Camille to put herself out there, but she also needs to demand she be treated as an equal. It was great to see Camille put that into practice when the Academy Awards producers tried to segregate her despite her prominent nomination of best actress.
Archie struggles to get anyone to buy his script once the studio producers realize he is black. He starts off warped by the system, writing a script based on a famous white actress tragic suicide at the Hollywoodland sign as a way to show that black people can write about white people too. Then later when Camille has the idea to change the lead character from white to black, Archie comes around and realizes its the white producers that should be the ones to accept and promote more diverse stories. Not the other way around.
But that’s not the only hill Archie has to overcome. He shares an arch with Rock about being homosexual in Hollywood. Rock ends up being sexually abused by his agent, and is so desperate to succeed that at his lowest point he was willing to offer himself to shot caller Dick Samuels for a role. Luckily Dick rejects the offer, and Rock finds himself realizing he should be treated like a human being and not just as a sexual object. And as we learned from the Me Too movement, women were subjected to the same type of treatment not just then, but for practically all of time. But, Archie and Rock eventually find each other and arrive as an openly gay couple to the Academy Awards. The reporters reaction to stop taking pictures shows a small bit of reality, but the show holds back on them actually being harmed by this public display of affection.
Avis Amberg has to overcome her lifelong role on the sidelines to being the one in control. She starts off timid and bored, but once she comes across a story that has never been done before, she quickly jumps on the opportunity to make history. Like many human beings, she questions what legacy she might leave behind; and she knows that once her husband recovers, she is unsure if she will ever be able to achieve something like that again.
Final Thoughts:
This slice of alternative history is showing the audience that history didn’t have to be as cruel as it was. In the fictional world we have openly gay producers/actors, a woman of color lead, and a woman of color winning Oscars decades earlier than in real life. It helps to bring vision to an industry that has such a large role in shaping mainstream culture at large. Imagine how much more easily desegregation could have been normalized during the civil rights period if there were more TV shows and films that had equal numbers of people of color in the cast?
I think the producers chose to set the show in the past to soften the criticism of modern day Hollywood. Like they were trying to show that racism, sexism, and bigotry was a real problem back then; even though those same issues still continue to this day. It was only a few years ago where #OscarsSoWhite was blowing up the internet. And it was only this year in 2020 did a film made outside of the USA win best picture in the Academy Awards in its entire 92 year history.
Another criticism I had was in the storytelling. The show felt like it was missing one more episode to show the passage of time. One minute they were barely rescuing the film, Jack and Claire were flirting at a diner, and Ellen and Ernie were barely giving each other a sultry look. Then suddenly it was Oscar time, everyone was deep in love and dating for a long time; but for the audience steaming it on Netflix it was instantaneous. There was not even any dialogue like “wow, has it really been 6 months already since we saved the movie from the fire?” Nothing!
But, despite the flaws, it was still a decent show to watch. I just wish a lot of the progress made in the show happened in real life. It would have been interesting to see how much further the world would have progressed today.