It’s a nudie picture with a two-thousand-dollar budget. No script, a ten-hour shooting schedule, and it opens in twenty-two cities at the end of the week.
Hollywood
Boulevard
(1976)
(SPOILERS) Joe
Dante’s debut, co-credited with Allan Arkush, came courtesy of his training
ground as an editor (cutting trailers) for Roger Corman’s New World pictures.
It was producer Jon Davison (later of Paul Verhoeven sci-fi classics Robocop and Starship Troopers) who got Dante and Arkush the gig, suggesting to
Corman “Let the trailer boys make a
picture”. Corman agreed, on condition what became Hollywood Boulevard was a 10-day shoot and the cheapest picture New
World had ever made. The idea was to churn out a “found-footage assemblage”, with newly shot scenes linking existing
studio archive material, but the duo, fashioning a ramshackle riff on low
budget filmmaking that more or less was
their low budget film, pulled together enough of a movie in its own right that
only 10 of the 83 minutes ended up that way. Cult status followed, but Hollywood Boulevard is more interesting
as a career footnote than as a picture in its own right.
It would be
fair to say the movie is replete with longueurs, Danny Poatoshu’s screenplay
having an understandably make-it-up-as-you-go-along (or can fit in existing
footage) quality that brings naĂ¯ve wannabe actress Candy Wednesday (Candice
Rialson) to Hollywood at the rear end of the food chain.
Along the way she
meets useless agents (Dante instant-regular Dick Miller on tremendous form as
Walter Paisley, the name of his character in Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, an excerpt from which we see at the drive-in as
Miller reminisces he “could have been a
contender”), pretentious directors (Paul Bartel stealing every scene he’s
in as Erich Von Leppe, the name of Boris Karloff’s character in Corman’s 1963 The Terror) and, in what Bill Krohn
points out is an early example of the slasher movie, jealous film star Mary
McQueen (Warhol friend Mary Woronov, who showed up in Nomads the other month) offing her potential pretenders to the
throne by way off giallo-inspired stabbings, sporting a cape and surrounded by
dry ice. There are also a couple of music montage interludes, and being a
Corman film, copious quantities of breastage (Corman wanted to call it Hollywood Hookers), and that found footage, which includes excerpts from Battle Beyond the Sun, The Big Bird Cage, Crazy Mama and most visibly Death
Race 2000.
To suggest Hollywood Boulevard wears the era in
which it was made on its sleeve is to understate matters. Its dubious regard
for women makes Sam Raimi’s early pictures appear the model of progressive
representation. One might – if one was really pushing things – argue that a
trio of topless actresses discussing the movie business (“Movie guys are all the same. All they care a bout is tits and ass”)
is sharp commentary (Bartel concurs: “This
is not a film about the human condition. It’s a film about tits and ass”).
But any
leniency falls by the wayside amid the wet t-shirt hosings and, in particular, the
just-for-laughs rape scene in which Bartel “directs” Candy in a “sensual scene of sexual depravity”; when
that movie is shown at the drive-in, she opines, as Sharon Stone would
following her career-making snatch flash, “They
promised not to use that scene”. We then see it played and replayed until
Candy confronts the projectionist, who then
begins a comedy assault on her himself, accompanied by an enraged father who
just can’t help himself. This isn’t so much contributing to the debate on
whether movie violence influences behaviour as reflective of an era when getting
comedy mileage out of rape was the norm. Dante’s treatment of such matters
could leave something desired even up to The
Howling.
Still, it’s
instructive that, right from the off, Dante’s approach to moviemaking was
entirely self-reflexive. Miller, whose lousy agent gave up acting because “I had a lousy agent” is on the phone at
the start advising “It’s a nudie picture
with a two-thousand-dollar budget. No script, a ten-hour shooting schedule, and
it opens in twenty-two cities at the end of the week”. A parody of the
Corman approach, but only a little. Screenplay writer Pat (Jeffrey Kramer)
comes to the rescue of Candy at the end; the writer saving the movie? He also cheerfully
takes the piss out of Miracle Pictures (“Sure
is, if it’s a good picture, it’s a miracle”).
In a sign
of things to come, the skydiving death that begins Hollywood Boulevard (the footage comes from Night Call Nurses) leaves a Looney
Tunes skydiver-shaped hole in the ground (see also the Bat Gremlin in Gremlins 2, the shed roof in The ‘burbs). Robbie the Robot will show
up a few times more too. The drive-in sequence, with Miller reminiscing, before
it gets all rapey, shows the kind of affection and nostalgic warmth that would
typify many of the director’s later pictures. And, never one to miss an obvious
gag, ketchup is used to humorously suggest blood at least twice.
Hollywood Boulevard worked well enough that it got Dante a
“proper” directing gig with Corman, a Jaws
rip-off that did very well at the box office, thank you, and brought him to the
attention of the wunderkind Jaws director
himself. So, while it may be the least of his features, although no doubt some
will staunchly claim otherwise, it proved vital to his subsequent career.