Dream Entertainment, the Los Angeles-based production and international sales company, has acquired international rights to Ellie Parker, produced by and starring Naomi Watts. An official selection of this year's Sundance Film Festival, Ellie Parker is a comedy about a young woman's struggle for integrity, happiness and a Hollywood acting career. The film also stars Chevy Chase, Scott Coffey, Mark Pellegrino and Rebecca Riggs. Ellie Parker was written and directed by Coffey, who along with Watts produced the film with Matt Chesse and Blair Mastbaum.
- 4/19/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- A splendid idea for a film goes largely wasted despite a brave performance by Naomi Watts as a struggling actress trying to figure it all out in Hollywood. Clearly a labor of love for Watts and writer-director Scott Coffey, pic started life as a short and was five years in the making, but closeness to the subject makes it turn out more like a home movie.
Having kicked around the business for years herself, Watts clearly has a personal connection to Ellie Parker, whose professional and personal life is a mess. Nicely observed and honest details about the humiliation and rejection of an actress' life become mind-numbing in their repetition.
The perky Parker, who like Watts is an Aussie, goes from one disastrous audition to another, with time out for a cry with her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg). Her beat up car serves as both office and closet as she changes and does makeup while driving, doing a total emotional makeover for the next character she's going up for. Such is the actor's life that she has to shift from an antebellum Civil War belle to a foul--mouthed Brooklyn slut in the blink of an eye. And Watts does it convincingly, covering a huge range of material here.
But like many actors, Parker is desperately insecure, and all the directors, producers, casting directors and receptionists are not about to give her the modicum of respect she craves. So searching for acceptance, she has become a first-class people pleaser, indulging her slacker boyfriend (Mark Pelligrino) even when she finds him in bed with, who else, a casting agent (Jennifer Syme). When her car is rear-ended she feels sorry for the driver (Coffey) and eventually has a disastrous fling with the guy, who turns out to be a creep.
Parker's life goes from bad to bad to bad. Hollywood has never looked more vile--or cliched.With the possible exception of her manager (Chevy Chase), who is himself having an affair with a younger woman, there is not a decent person in the bunch. Even her new-agey acting coach sneaks off for a line of coke in the middle of class. And Parker never really wins our sympathy either. She tells her shrink she's waiting for her life to start, and so are we. Her ordeal is too unrelentingly one note to have any dramatic impact. This girl is clueless.
So why does she put up with all this? For the sake of her art? She is tearing herself inside-out for B material and people who wouldn't recognize talent if it got up and bit them. Coffey and Watts' answer that she is doing it for self-expression is woefully incomplete
There are no doubt thousands of people like Parker in Hollywood, but even struggling actresses must have a good day now and then. Coffey could have fashioned a biting satire of the business; instead he goes for a cinema verite approach with hand-held video cameras and jump cuts. Coffey and cinematographer Blair Mastbaum do achieve some hard-to-believe shots, such as one between Watts' legs as she changes her clothes in the car. But the script, improvised and largely spur of the moment, could have benefited from more thought and less action. Without a good enough reason to care about her, the problems of a narcissistic actress don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
ELLIE PARKER
Sad Boy Films
Credits:
Director: Scott Coffey
Writer: Coffey
Producers: Coffey, Naomi Watts, Matt Chesse, Blair Mastbaum
Directors of photography: Coffey, Mastbaum
Music: Neil Jackson
Editors: Cheese, Catherine Hollander
Cast:
Naomi Watts, Rebecca Rigg, Scott Coffey, Mark Pelligrino, Chevy Chase, Blair Mastbaum, Jennifer Syme
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 95 minutes...
Having kicked around the business for years herself, Watts clearly has a personal connection to Ellie Parker, whose professional and personal life is a mess. Nicely observed and honest details about the humiliation and rejection of an actress' life become mind-numbing in their repetition.
The perky Parker, who like Watts is an Aussie, goes from one disastrous audition to another, with time out for a cry with her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg). Her beat up car serves as both office and closet as she changes and does makeup while driving, doing a total emotional makeover for the next character she's going up for. Such is the actor's life that she has to shift from an antebellum Civil War belle to a foul--mouthed Brooklyn slut in the blink of an eye. And Watts does it convincingly, covering a huge range of material here.
But like many actors, Parker is desperately insecure, and all the directors, producers, casting directors and receptionists are not about to give her the modicum of respect she craves. So searching for acceptance, she has become a first-class people pleaser, indulging her slacker boyfriend (Mark Pelligrino) even when she finds him in bed with, who else, a casting agent (Jennifer Syme). When her car is rear-ended she feels sorry for the driver (Coffey) and eventually has a disastrous fling with the guy, who turns out to be a creep.
Parker's life goes from bad to bad to bad. Hollywood has never looked more vile--or cliched.With the possible exception of her manager (Chevy Chase), who is himself having an affair with a younger woman, there is not a decent person in the bunch. Even her new-agey acting coach sneaks off for a line of coke in the middle of class. And Parker never really wins our sympathy either. She tells her shrink she's waiting for her life to start, and so are we. Her ordeal is too unrelentingly one note to have any dramatic impact. This girl is clueless.
So why does she put up with all this? For the sake of her art? She is tearing herself inside-out for B material and people who wouldn't recognize talent if it got up and bit them. Coffey and Watts' answer that she is doing it for self-expression is woefully incomplete
There are no doubt thousands of people like Parker in Hollywood, but even struggling actresses must have a good day now and then. Coffey could have fashioned a biting satire of the business; instead he goes for a cinema verite approach with hand-held video cameras and jump cuts. Coffey and cinematographer Blair Mastbaum do achieve some hard-to-believe shots, such as one between Watts' legs as she changes her clothes in the car. But the script, improvised and largely spur of the moment, could have benefited from more thought and less action. Without a good enough reason to care about her, the problems of a narcissistic actress don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
ELLIE PARKER
Sad Boy Films
Credits:
Director: Scott Coffey
Writer: Coffey
Producers: Coffey, Naomi Watts, Matt Chesse, Blair Mastbaum
Directors of photography: Coffey, Mastbaum
Music: Neil Jackson
Editors: Cheese, Catherine Hollander
Cast:
Naomi Watts, Rebecca Rigg, Scott Coffey, Mark Pelligrino, Chevy Chase, Blair Mastbaum, Jennifer Syme
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 95 minutes...
- 1/28/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Participants have been selected for this year's IFP/Los Angeles Screenwriters Lab. The writers and their projects are Scott Coffey and Blair Mastbaum for Jupiter, Andrew Friedman for miss you beast, Laura Hubber for Talk About a Revolution, Kendra Kurosawa for The Hunter, Jeremy Lerman for Central, Katherine Ruppe for A Killing Frost, Beth Schacter for Normal Adolescent Behavior, L. Malaine Waldron for South of Heaven, Garret Williams for Lost Dog and Christopher Young for The Pacific. IFP/LA's scribes lab, which runs for seven weeks with Jeff Stockwell as instructor, is a program designed to help indie screenwriters improve their writing.
- 7/14/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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