Hollywood Homicide (2003)

[SlidePocket 707]

Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett star in this action comedy that is the last film directed by Ron Shelton ("Bull Durham", "White Men Can't Jump", "Tin Cup") to date.

 

The movie suffers from having too many subplots regarding the two main characters' other jobs on selling real estate and being an actor respectively, plus it didn't help that Ford and Hartnett hated each other throughout the whole shoot, which could be responsible for the lack of chemistry between them onscreen.

[sillstaw 414]

You also have to give credit to whoever came up with the most generic possible title for this movie. "Hollywood Homicide" could describe at least half the LA-set cop movies over the years.

[RyanSz 3140]

I remember renting this and having absolutely no idea what was happening or who was responsible, only that Josh Hartnett was trying to get an agent or some such bullshit by renting out a theater to crapily perform Streetcar Named Desire for them.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

This movie was made for this podcast. Its so fucking strange. From the weird side stories where Harrison is trying to sell Martin Landau's house to the plot where Bruce Greenwood is trying to fuck over Harrison for sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, who is apparently a psychic.

 

The ending which insanely has Dwight Yoakam as coincedentally being both the main bad guys bodyguard and also the guy who murdered Hartnetts father really blew my fucking mind the first time I saw this movie.

 

This movie feels like an extra long pilot episode for a shitty cop show that just never got picked up so they opted to release it as a movie instead.

[Putney Swope 4]

The interrogation scene, where the director let Harrison Ford "improvise", was really hard to sit through. I like how they shoehorned in Master P as a misguided attempt to reach a younger audience. According to Imdb, John Travolta and Joseph Gordon Levitt were originally slated to star. I really wish we could have had both versions. Also, it was written as a drama, but changed to a comedy at the insistence of Suge Knight. I'm not making this shit up. There's plenty of cinematic feces to sift through with this trainwreck of a movie.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Bump for this crazy movie.

[NundercoverBrother 174]

The resolution with the movies bad guy was awful

[IvyKila_122097 1]

Watching it right now. It definitly need to be on the podcast

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

If this movie doesnt get covered at some point i'm going to be overwhelmingly disappointed. Theres so much to talk about with this movie and despite how god awful it is, Harrison Ford somehow makes it watchable.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Have to bump this movie again, watching it really feels like they filmed the first three episodes of a tv show said fuck it and recut it all into a movie.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Yearly bump for this strange movie. Its just so goddamn weird. Theres so many running threads throughout the movie, theres at least a dozen different plotlines that are followed and each one is more inexplicable than the next. 

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Just have to recap some of the craziness that goes on in this movie who are unaware how insane this movie is. Harrison Ford is a real estate agent/Homicide Detective who is in a relationship with an actual psychic who previously dated another cop in Internal Affairs who is trying to arrest Harrison Ford's character for crimes that the movie seems to concede that he actually committed. 

To the extent that in the middle of an investigation Harrison Ford is interrogating the witness to a murder and mid-way though their conversation tries to sell him a house. Even the climax of the movie has Ford negotiating the price of the house in the middle of the big action scenes at the end. At one point Ford manages to track down a witness because he makes the connection to the witnesses last name to a former back-up singer to Aretha Franklin who by perfect coincidence he just happened to recall offhand. 

Josh Hartnett's character is a Homicide Detective/Yoga Instructor/ Struggling actor. Who just so happens to have a father who was murdered on the job by his father's former partner who by sheer happenstance is the henchman of the villain of the movie. And even more coincidentally is also in in cahoots with the internal affairs detective hassling Ford's character. 

Hartnett's character and performance are both very strange. Its absolutely insane that Hartnett's commitment to being a cop seems as tenuous as a teenager taking a summer job at Hot Dog on A Stick. 

 

[RyanSz 3140]

11 hours ago, Ofcoursemyhorse said:

Just have to recap some of the craziness that goes on in this movie who are unaware how insane this movie is. Harrison Ford is a real estate agent/Homicide Detective who is in a relationship with an actual psychic who previously dated another cop in Internal Affairs who is trying to arrest Harrison Ford's character for crimes that the movie seems to concede that he actually committed. 

To the extent that in the middle of an investigation Harrison Ford is interrogating the witness to a murder and mid-way though their conversation tries to sell him a house. Even the climax of the movie has Ford negotiating the price of the house in the middle of the big action scenes at the end. At one point Ford manages to track down a witness because he makes the connection to the witnesses last name to a former back-up singer to Aretha Franklin who by perfect coincidence he just happened to recall offhand. 

Josh Hartnett's character is a Homicide Detective/Yoga Instructor/ Struggling actor. Who just so happens to have a father who was murdered on the job by his father's former partner who by sheer happenstance is the henchman of the villain of the movie. And even more coincidentally is also in in cahoots with the internal affairs detective hassling Ford's character. 

Hartnett's character and performance are both very strange. Its absolutely insane that Hartnett's commitment to being a cop seems as tenuous as a teenager taking a summer job at Hot Dog on A Stick. 

 

It seems like there were re-writes for this and the final writer lost his mind trying to tie up every storyline. Also it's amazing that even after his horrible performance in this, Hartnett was the lead choice for Superman in Superman Returns, only for him to turn it down. Just imagine the level of HDTGM that movie could have been with him in the role.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Yea Hartnett is kind of a trip in this movie his performance is bizarre and all over the place. Harrison Ford's wasn't much better but for him it was definitely more obvious that his was due to poor writing and dialogue. 

Like even taking into account that he's playing someone who with zero irony thinks that a self-funded production of A Streetcar Named Desire is a legitimate launchpad into acting stardom, his character is incredibly weird. 

If someone told me that Hartnett's character and storyline were written based on the life of Tommy Wiseau i'd have a hard time disbelieving them.

They were also not overly fond of each other throughout filming which explains why they are so awkward together onscreen. 

[RyanSz 3140]

10 hours ago, Ofcoursemyhorse said:

Yea Hartnett is kind of a trip in this movie his performance is bizarre and all over the place. Harrison Ford's wasn't much better but for him it was definitely more obvious that his was due to poor writing and dialogue. 

Like even taking into account that he's playing someone who with zero irony thinks that a self-funded production of A Streetcar Named Desire is a legitimate launchpad into acting stardom, his character is incredibly weird. 

If someone told me that Hartnett's character and storyline were written based on the life of Tommy Wiseau i'd have a hard time disbelieving them.

They were also not overly fond of each other throughout filming which explains why they are so awkward together onscreen. 

I kinda understand the reasoning for renting a theater to showcase your acting ability and that you're so dedicated to the craft because you're willing to do so, but it seems like something that would have been common in the 30s and 40s when there wasn't things like demo reels that a person could submit to a casting agent. It's like Hartnett's character had read acting books but none of them were recent ones so he was going off out of date, decades old guides.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

I don't even understand the logistics of it, so he's renting out the theater, producing/starring/directing a play. Then he invites a bunch of talent scouts/agents to take time out of their schedule to watch an entire production of a play that even by that point has already been mocked endlessly in a variety of mediums. 

Couldn't he have just taken that money and just hired an agent. Like if he has money to fund his own production of a Streetcar Named Desire, he has enough money that a number of talent agents would be more than pleased to represent him if only to relieve him of that money even if they don't believe in his talent as an actor. 

[RyanSz 3140]

6 hours ago, Ofcoursemyhorse said:

I don't even understand the logistics of it, so he's renting out the theater, producing/starring/directing a play. Then he invites a bunch of talent scouts/agents to take time out of their schedule to watch an entire production of a play that even by that point has already been mocked endlessly in a variety of mediums. 

Couldn't he have just taken that money and just hired an agent. Like if he has money to fund his own production of a Streetcar Named Desire, he has enough money that a number of talent agents would be more than pleased to represent him if only to relieve him of that money even if they don't believe in his talent as an actor. 

It is a real Hollywood-centric trope because they did a similar thing in La La Land where Emma Stone emailed a bunch of agents/casting directors and invited them to her one woman show. Yet as Emily Heller pointed out and Cracked later reported on, she didn't BCC the emails and made this mix of fairly big industry names and mid-level guys all the recipient, so everyone could see each other's email address which is a business no-no and makes you come of as an idiot and not worth hiring, which leads to the scene where a small fraction of the recipients showing up to her show.