90's Watch: Bowfinger (1999)

Watched:  09/21/2024

Format:  Max?  I don't know.

Viewing:  Third

Director:  Frank Oz

Selection:  Jamie

Two things to begin with:  (1) This movie doesn't get discussed enough.  It's really funny.  (2) I have zero idea why they didn't call this movie "Chubby Rain".  It's the funnier, better title.

There were a lot of movies about movie-making in the go-go 90's.  Indie filmmakers couldn't get enough of themselves in the 90's indie boom, and most of those movies were not good.  But at the end of the 1990's, Steve Martin and Frank Oz put together a genuinely funny movie about making movies and the people who scrape by at the bottom of the Hollywood machine of the day.  And while it's silly and I doubt has anything to do with reality, it's good stuff.

Bowfinger (1999) has a great cast, with Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy playing two roles, Terence Stamp, Heather Graham, Christine Baranski, Jamie Kennedy and a shockingly sober 1999 Robert Downey Jr.  I hope filming was as fun as it looks like it was, because it seems like everyone is just dicking around having a good time.  

The film is about small-time indie producer, Bowfinger (played by Martin), who gets a script - from his accountant - he is convinced will be amazing.  It's a sci-fi thriller about aliens coming down in "chubby rain" and turning people into pod people.  

He believes he has a plan for getting his movie made *if* he can land Kit Ramsey (Murphy), but Kit is beyond not interested.  He convinces his team of friends and performers that he's signed Kit, and a, uh, guerilla-filming technique commences.  He also finds a curious look alike in Jiff.

Kit, by the way, is a member of an organization called Mindhead, which is clearly Scientology, and I know this was obvious to many folks watching at the time of the film's release.*  Kit has gone to them (led by Terence Stamp, hilarious and understated) seeking assistance for his beliefs that aliens are after him, and that he *must* flash The Laker Girls.  

There's no particularly deeper meaning to Bowfinger.  It's a love letter to the scrappy folks in Hollywood, to having a dream of making a movie - and the extreme measures folks will go to in order to make something that is of dubious value.  Yes, it's from the perspective of successful Hollywood filmmakers and Universal studios, so there's a bit of a pat on the head for those folks, but...  look.  This isn't making fun of Gas, Food, Lodging.  It's more of a question of "who are the good folks making the goofy sci-fi movies you watch on Showtime at 1:00 AM?"

Curiously, it also accidentally sort of marked the end of the 90's indie boom, which would peter out pretty well by the mid-00's for reasons complex and both good and bad.  

It's a comedy, so I don't want to give away gags, making this a bit difficult to discuss, but I do think everyone in it is really funny.  A more laid-back Jamie Kennedy is a good Jamie Kennedy.  Heather Graham is just great.  I think Christine Baranski is quietly the best part of the film, hysterical in every frame she appears in, even when she's just hanging out in the scene.  This may be the last we see of this version of Steve Martin - and that's okay.  I love Only Murders in the Building Steve Martin, too.  But, holy crap, is Eddie Murphy great in this.  It's insane people don't talk about him more from this movie.  Both his Kit and Jiff are amazing.  (I mean, silly as hell, but really funny)

Anyhoo... a really good weekend watch.  

*even when the film came out in '99, I remember thinking "wow, they went there". And, yeah, they did.  You're allowed to make fun of things, Hollywood.  Especially in a town that seems like it's had problems with religious gurus, mystics and charlatans since the first camera and actors rolled into town