"Tinseltown" is a misfired comedy about talentless show-biz wanna-bes trying to hustle their way into the Hollywood movie game.

Based on the play "Self Storage" by director Tony Spiridakis and Shem Bitterman, the no-budget movie indeed spends a lot of time inside one of those high-rise, concrete structures where people lock up their excess stuff. These warehouses make singularly ugly movie locations.

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, homeless would-be screenwriters Tiger and Max (Tom Wood and Arye Gross) break in to one of the buildings to spend the night. They're surprised to discover many other people living in the cramped unit.

And wouldn't you know it? The storehouse manager, Cliff (Ron Perlman) is a failed actor who reads one of the guys' awful scripts and loves it. He also may be the serial killer who's terrorizing Hollywood by dressing up his victims' corpses in silly costumes. But, hey, Tiger and Max figure, that only makes their new friend a great source of screenplay material.

Assorted other lowlifes - Kristy Swanson's amoral film-school careerist, Joe Pantoliano's producer who sleeps in the park - try to horn in on the action. Like the bad writers, they're all fairly well-acted, but they never transcend the show-biz cliches they're built to represent.

The black comedy idea here, that these bums are so desperate they'll let a killer run amok if it gets them a movie deal, isn't exactly cutting edge, either.

We all saw "The Player." It was crueler. And smarter.

"Tinseltown's" one saving grace - and he is a substantial one - is Perlman. He puts his imposing form to frightening good use here, but he also exhibits the film's only compelling emotions and genuinely cagey intelligence. While most of "Tinseltown" is lazy satire that seems to have come from a dusty old trunk, Perlman's performance is like a treasure found at a yard sale.

________________________

[Note]: Ron Perlman originally played the role of Cliff in "Self Storage," the stage version of "Tinseltown," which was directed by the eminent actor, Dan Lauria, and performed at the Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles in May 1990. Joe Pantoliano also starred in the stage version along with Tony Spiridakis and Richard Zavaglia.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

KILLING THEM SOFTLY

"Tinseltown" gently pokes fun at would-be Hollywood players

By Andy Klein (New Times Los Angeles )

Directed by Tony Spiridakis. Written by Tony Spiridakis and Shem Bitterman, based on their play "Self Storage". Starring: Arye Gross, Joe Pantoliano, Ron Perlman, Tom Wood, Kristy Swanson, and David Dukes.

Someone once said there's a broken heart for every light on Broadway. (Someone else said there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway, but that's another story.) Big deal: There are a hundred broken hearts for every light--or star--on Hollywood Boulevard. Despite what New Yorkers would like you to believe, life is tough here in L.A.

Unfortunately, ever since a different piece of dubious conventional wisdom--"Write about what you know"--achieved the status of Fundamental Truth, there have been innumerable movies made about Hollywood's crushing effect on show-biz wannabes, including such first-rate efforts as "Get Shorty" (1995) and "Hearts of the West" (1975), neither of which, curiously, is blatantly autobiographical.

Slipping into theaters shortly after the appearance of the film version of David Rabe's Hollywood play "Hurlyburly" comes "Tinseltown," first-time director Tony Spiridakis' adaptation of his and Shem Bitterman's 1989 play "Self Storage." Presumably, "Tinseltown" is at least metaphorically autobiographical, and at moments literally so: Early on, one of the protagonists pitches a movie idea that bears more than a little resemblance to Spiridakis' script for the 1991 film "Queens Logic." However, the central story, which involves a serial killer, is fictional.

The movie opens on Christmas Eve. An upbeat holiday song accompanies a quick tour of seedy Hollywood locations, culminating in the latest murder by the so-called Costume Killer. Simultaneously, struggling screenwriter Tiger (Tom Wood) prepares to leave town in frustration. At the last minute, however, he is convinced to stay by his frantic, manipulative partner Max (Arye Gross), although just what Max brings to the partnership is never quite made clear.

With the promise of a pitch meeting the next day with a producer named Arnie (Joe Pantoliano), the destitute duo decides to spend the night in the storage facility where Tiger's belongings are stashed. To their shock they discover the building already houses a thriving population--almost all of whom are impoverished performers, writers, and artists. This notion of a colorful, eccentric night world hidden in the bowels of a personal-storage building is the movie's cleverest conceit, though Spiridakis uses it only as a backdrop. (One of these days someone will film John Collier's wonderful short story "Evening Primrose," which takes a similar premise to a nasty, logical conclusion.) The lord of the manor is Cliff (Ron Perlman), the facility's hulking super, who is, not surprisingly, an out-of-work actor. But Max and Tiger begin to suspect that Cliff has yet another identity--the Costume Killer.

You can see the next development coming. Rather than turn in Cliff to the authorities, Tiger and Max scheme to negotiate exclusive rights to his story, which they plan to parlay into a "project" and careers. Their initial meeting with Arnie having been a colossal failure, they pin their hopes on Arnie's reaction to their "The True Adventures of the Costume Killer."

With the exception of the idea of Public Storage World, Tinseltown doesn't come up with anything particularly fresh, but it does provide a crisp and clever variation on its familiar elements. The plot never entirely makes sense, but the performances are on the money, particularly those by Perlman and Pantoliano, the latter a veteran of the original L.A. stage production. (Wood, Gross, and Kristy Swanson are less well used, but David Dukes does terrific work in a very small role near the end.) Pantoliano has long been a master at grasping, ambitious weasels like Arnie--"Bound" (1996) probably boasts his best version of this type--but Perlman does stuff we haven't seen from him before. When he first came to the public's attention as one of the less human-looking cavemen in "Quest for Fire" (1981), it was easy to assume that the same unusual physiognomy that made him such a natural for the role would also limit his future parts. But since then he has shown his versatility in projects as diverse as the Mexican horror film "Cronos" (1992), the transcendent, French fairy-tale movie "City of Lost Children" (1995), and TV's "Beauty and the Beast."

The surprise here, however, is that he's genuinely funny, albeit in a scary way; it's in some ways an arch, stagy performance, but it's hilarious nonetheless. As Cliff seemingly swerves from insane to coolly ironic to show-offy, doing rapid-fire, Robin Williams-like impressions of Walter Brennan, John Wayne, and Marlon Brando, Perlman grabs the screen in a way we've never seen him do before.

________________________

[Note]: At the Austin Film Festival in 1997 writer Shem Bitterman and writer/director Tony Spiridakis were nominated for the Best Feature Film Award for "Tinseltown."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TINSELTOWN (1997)

Reviewed by Lynn Wright, April, 2000

Director: Tony Spiridakis. Screenplay: Tony Spiridakis, Shem Betterman Starring: Arye Gross, Joe Pantoliano, Ron Perlman, Kristy Swanson, Tom Wood, John Considine, David Dukes.

"Tinseltown" is a satirical comedy about Hollywood, the lengths to which aspiring filmmakers will go in order to "make a deal", and the depths to which they can fall in the effort. It's also about a serial killer who puts plastic bags on his victims' heads, and injects them with window cleaner. Funny, huh?

Actually it is funny. Very funny indeed. You see, it's like this. Our two heroes (?), Max (Arye Gross) and Tiger (Tom Woods), said aspiring filmmakers, are in reduced circumstances. Very much reduced: they have no money and no place to sleep. Max, being the "Idea man" decides to break into the Self Storage facility where Tiger's "stuff" is stored, because "Your stuff has a place to stay, and we don't!"

The place has a manager, Cliff (Ron Perlman) who magnanimously decides to let them stay; ("seeing as it's Christmas and all"). So they join a little community of artists, hippies, and out of work actors who live in the storage bins.

Shortly our heroes become convinced that Cliff is the "Costume Killer" who has been on the front pages of the papers for some time. They pitch the idea that Cliff's life story is a really fresh storyline for a film to the deal maker guy, Arnie, (Joe Pantoliano), who lives out of a men's room.

The rest of the story revolves around the effort of these three to get their serial killer together with the "Money Guy" (John Considine), who they hope will finance their film. The plot is full of twists, and the end is outrageous, and uproarious.

The real joy of this film is in the beautifully realized comic performances of Arye Gross, Joe Pantoliano, and especially Ron Perlman. Arye Gross's belligerent little rooster of an idea man is a hugely amusing portrait; and you have to believe that Pantoliano's Arnie can make the deal, even when you know he lives in a toilet!

But most of all, Ron Perlman's Cliff is a comic knockout. He's never the same person for two scenes in a row; one minute a menacing bully, then a total lunatic who hears voices, then a quiet mannered nice guy, and all of them outrageously funny, owing to Perlman's outstanding ability to play anything at all.

The first encounter between Arnie, the deal make,r and Cliff, the serial killer, is a comedy classic, with Perlman's eye-rolling nutcase killer vying with Pantoliano's terrified but hungry producer for comic honors. I give Perlman the nod, but Pantoliano is not far behind.

According to Tony Spiridakis, director of the film, Ron Perlman is "a national treasure". Spiridakis continues, "He did 'Beauty and the Beast', the TV show; and when we did the play ('Self Storage', now 'Tinseltown') in LA, it was never less than standing room only because of Ron Perlman. He has this unbelievable following."

Mr. Spiridakis also had some words to say on the subject of making a comedy about a serial killer. "It's not making fun of serial killers. What this film makes fun of is Tinseltown's propensity to capitalize on serial killers." And it certainly does, very successfully. I liked this film.

________________________

Tressa's Review