Little
about What Just Happened?, Art
Linson's brief, episodic memoir about trying to survive in the mine-filled
trenches of Hollywood, screams "movie!" But at least one element of his book
hearkens back to Diner, Barry Levinson's wonderfully talky directorial debut
about guys kibitzing, coming of age, and enjoying a nosh in Baltimore. The
book's framing device has Linson telling his blackly comic Hollywood anecdotes
to a former studio executive over dinner, to make him feel better about getting
booted out of the industry. So it's a little perverse that in taking Happened to the big screen, Levinson removed that framing
device, instead focusing on the Linson character's attempts to stave off a
midlife crisis and/or nervous breakdown while juggling family and career.
Longtime Linson pal/collaborator Robert De Niro stars
as Linson's surrogate, a producer struggling to maintain his place in the
ever-shifting Hollywood hierarchy following a string of flops. While De Niro
struggles to win back estranged wife Robin Wright Penn, he's forced to put out
fires on two of his troubled productions. In a subplot partially based on
Linson's experiences working on Fight Club, De Niro must convince hotheaded auteur Michael
Wincott to edit out the audience-alienating murder of a dog in a moody,
big-budget thriller, while at the same time trying to convince overweight,
heavily bearded Bruce Willis—playing a savage, almost feral parody of
both himself and the book's sullen, hairy, paunchy Alec Baldwin—to shave
off his facial hair for a role.
De Niro's family troubles prove an unedifying
addition, in spite of another fine performance from Wright Penn—De Niro
is more of a reactor than an actor, more a straight man than a forceful
protagonist. Thankfully, a plethora of juicy supporting performances give him
plenty to play off of. John Turturro is a hoot as a bow-tied agent terrified of
the world in general and his clients in particular, Catherine Keener exudes icy
authority as a tough-as-nails executive, and Willis has tremendous fun playing
himself as an out-of-control egomaniac. Happened deviates greatly from Linson's winning little book in
its particulars, but retains its sustained melancholy mood of low-key
existential dread and dyspeptic wit. In Happened, solving silly little problems involving beards and
dogs is all part of the grand gestalt of making entertainment, and sometimes
even art.