大玩家

Robert Altman’s inside-Hollywood meta-comedy THE PLAYER is shot with a shoe-string budget but reverberates with sardonic, rapier-like kicks, and affixed with a chilling frisson that defies ethics and our expectation thanks to Michael Tolkin’s trenchant script which brings Tinseltown's treacherous attributes to the forefront.

Altman’s much eulogized opening gambit, a nearly 8-minute long-take in the lot of a Hollywood studio, vocally pays tribute to Orson Welles’ counterpart in TOUCH OF EVIL (1958), is a coup de maître to be rewound and repeatedly viewed for its sheer coordination of the ensemble and the camera’s agility in motion. Taking the center stage is Griffin Hill (Robbins), a young producer whose job is to listen to screenwriter’s pitches of their ideas and to assess whether they are marketable enough to merit a go, and this producer-writer correlation is put under scrutiny as Griffin is dogged by anonymous, invective-scribed postcards, which he receives on a daily base, and after combing through telephone records, he gets the idea it is sent from David Kahane (D’Onofrio, bristling with ire and contempt), a bitter writer who might be rankled for receiving the short shrift. But gauging from Griffin’s quotidian workload and the ratio of pitches he must disregard (the studio has a yearly quota of 12 to green-light), we don’t get why Griffin is so sure it is David.

Trying to bury the hatchet by renewing his interest in David’s script set in Japan (Sofia Coppola’s LOST IN TRANSLATION arrives a decade later in 2003), Griffin seeks him out and "accidentally" kills him when verbal vitriol escalating into physical violence, here Altman shrewdly predates the occurrence with Griffin calling David’s home, and getting instantly bewitched by the latter’s girlfriend June Gudmundsdottir (Scacchi), an Icelandic painter, under a voyeuristic spell. So whether the subsequent accident is a homicide or manslaughter, the answer is quite out there.

The rest of story is against all odds, how Griffin gets away with the killing and lives happily ever after with June, does it sound like a joke? Yes, but the engagé Altman is in no fickle mood of maxing out Griffin’s quagmire before the anti-climatic reveal: his current post is in a perilous state of being superseded by the new blood Larry Levy (Gallagher), a diligent detective (Lovett) breathes down his neck closely and the relationship with his colleague-cum-girlfriend Bonnie (Stevenson) turns sour as he courts June with tenacious guilt stuck in his throat, in the end of the day, he gets what he wants not what he deserves, and the final turnabout of the fictive movie starring Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis is such a slap in the face of those who harbor an airy-fairy ideology of retaining a writer's integrity in this rotten industry, only tempered by Altman’s tongue-in-cheek mordancy that tactfully keep both industry insiders and outsiders entertained but not miffed, not to mention its effervescent star-spotingg game of umpteen celebrity cameos.

Tom Robbins is the recipient of Cannes’ BEST ACTOR award but unjustly fails to nab an Oscar nomination (the film per se is a 3-times nominee including a well-earned BEST DIRECTOR bid for Altman), who takes us through quite a rollercoaster ride with his portrait of Griffin par excellent, smirky, craven, vulnerable, besotted and careworn, all these facets are contributory to such degree of ambiguity that viewers are inwardly battling against their own conscience in terms of his denouement.Greta Scacchi is given a sizable role to send up the ostensibly exotic, free-spirited type (she might not even hail from Iceland) who just cannot say no to an opportunity of comfort and wealth like anyone else, and whose inner state is tellingly belied in their torrid love-making/confession-denial sequences, a fine achievement. Among the peripheral players, no one stands out significantly in the fray, except for awisecracking Whoopi Goldberg, who duly earns her stripes with tart and hilariouscomedy chops.

In retrospect, THE PLAYER is a thrilling return-to-the-game comeback for Altman after his nadir in the 80s, and is among the most phenomenal works tackling the Hollywood hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness by lending an honest-to-goodness spin salted with tacit irony.

referential points: Altman’s 3 WOMEN (1977, 8.2/10), COOKIE’S FORTUNE (1999, 7.9/10), GOSFORD PARK (2001, 9.1/10).

黑色讽刺喜剧。

好莱坞自己讽刺自己，还挺到位的。

主演Tim Robbins，曾出演《肖申克的救赎》，演技在线。配角也都不是一般人，包括胡皮-戈德堡这样的奥斯卡奖得主。

共有65位明星跑龙套，雪儿、布鲁斯-威利斯、茱莉娅-罗伯茨、安迪-麦克道威尔等自己出演自己，苏珊-萨兰登等出镜，甚至都没有名字，不过就像电影中那场群星聚会一样，“脸就是名片，用不着身份证”。

聚会请柬上明确说明衣着要求“White or black"，雪儿还是穿了一身红色礼服，先讽刺了一下演艺界的特立独行。而现实生活中，雪儿从来没穿过红色。

希区柯克在本片中以照片形式出现在墙上。

此外还有大量电影海报。

台词中也调侃了许多电影。如一个自称是Joe Gillis的人打电话找米尔。

米尔： Never heard of him. Anybody know who Joe Gillis is? 【从没听过这人。谁认识？】

Levison: He's a character William Holden played in "Sunset Boulevard." The writer killed by a movie star. 【Joe Gillis是威廉-霍顿在《日落大道》里的角色。那部电影说的是一个电影明星谋杀了一个编剧。】

米尔开始笑： Oh, that guy. Last week he said he was Charles Foster Kane. A week before that it was Rhett Butler. 【啊哈，那个人啊，上周电话里他说他是Charles Foster Kane（《公民凯恩》），上上周自称Rhett Butler（《乱世佳人》）。】

是我这个年龄的人喜欢的电影，都是熟脸，说的也大多都是看过的电影，颇有怀旧之功能。对那个年代的电影不熟悉的年轻人大概不会喜欢。倒也合理，如果有一部五六十年代影星合拍的类似电影，我看着大概也会打哈欠。

影片讽刺了电影制作的套路。蒂姆-罗宾斯饰演的Mill负责审读剧本，每年大约要听五万个故事，从中选出十二个，有潜力有希望成为好电影的。疲劳轰炸下，对电影是否能够卖座已经有了成熟的公式，比如在下面这段对话中，Mill枪毙了一个故事。

米尔：It lacked certain elements that we need to market a film successfully.【这个故事缺乏市场成功的元素。】

琼： What elements?【什么元素？】

米尔：Suspense, laughter, violence. Hope, heart, nudity, sex. Happy endings. Mainly happy endings.【悬疑、搞笑、暴力。希望、内心。裸露、性。大团圆结局。尤其是大团圆的结局。】

琼：What about reality?【那现实性呢？】

因为每年都要枪毙无以计数的剧本，米尔树敌无数。他不断收到恐吓信。慌张之下，米尔错杀了编剧David，并与David的女朋友June慢慢产生感情，最后不但逃脱法网，还与June喜结良缘。这也算是happy ending了。影片米尔听到的最后一个剧本就是他自己的这个故事，包含了他在上面这段对话中列举的所有成功因素——Suspense, laughter, violence. Hope, heart, nudity, sex. Happy endings。

在影片中提到了另外一个剧本中：检察官最后没能救下自己心上人的性命。几个人信誓旦旦，不用明星，只用有才华的人，坚持悲剧结尾。而最终成片中，检察官是布鲁斯-威利斯演的，心上人是茱莉娅-罗伯茨，紧急关头他还是救出了她。

现实中，《大卫-戈尔的一生》就是一部因悲剧结尾而票房惨败的电影。确实挺讽刺。

不公式不成活啊。

结尾米尔回到家中见到June，两人的对话与公式电影中一模一样：

June/Julia Roberts: What took you so long?

Mill/Willis: Traffic is a bitch.

这种片中片，movie in a movie，看了会心一笑。June的姓和她的其他台词也都是Laughter的来源，如：

June: I don't go to movies.

Mill: Why not?

June: Life is too short.

影片开始长达7分47秒的长镜头，其他评论说的够多了，我的建议还是有机会的话亲自去看一眼。