Movie parodies are a pretty common fallback for porn filmmakers, but the ludicrously titled EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO SEE IN A Hollywood MOVIE BUT THE CENSORS WERE AFRAID TO SHOW YOU does the genre one better by parodying at least five (six, if you count the title as an allusion to Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK)!
The set-up features two Hollywood agents (a couple of schlubs sitting at the far end of a dining table) alternately pitching movie ideas to the off-screen "CB," whose point of view is embodied by the static camera. Each of their proposals apes a different 'Hollywood movie from the '60s (CLEOPATRA, MY FAIR LADY, LOLITA, etc.), but instead of any plot merely features a couple of the characters having sex.
What sets EVERYTHING apart is that it's so threadbare it goes past the point of being a lazy porn parody and enters a realm of cultural subversion redolent of the '60s underground. As Radley Metzger's THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN has demonstrated, properly parodying (or paying homage) to a lavish Hollywood production takes a great deal of time, resources and effort. Attempting to do the same in one corner of a dumpy San Francisco apartment (and in 10-15 minutes' worth of screen time) is a task approaching lunacy.
Instead, the filmmakers opt for a strange kind of high camp, stripping their "homages" so thoroughly of anything resembling proper acting, costuming, or direction that the scenes themselves become exercises in counter-cultural parody. After all, what is MY FAIR LADY, really, beyond a stuffy upper- class man and a street girl bickering as he tries to get into her pants? Some may argue "a lot," and they're not wrong, but there's something oddly captivating about the film's willful irreverence toward its sources. The set-ups are so threadbare, with actors in dumpster-dive approximations of period garb sitting on a bed chattering incessantly, that, like early Warhol, the very film begins to subvert the idea of cinema as art or culture. The camera-work consists almost solely of zooms and pans from a single stationary angle, and in the spirit of early John Waters, the actors improvise inanely, spewing forth reams of ludicrous nonsense that sound like an 8th grader's Cliff's Notes digest of the source material as delivered on a healthy dose of controlled substances.
Special awards go to CLEOPATRA for costuming (great thrift store Egyptian get-ups evocative of the Kuchar Brothers) and camera-work (the film's only bit of non-stationary cinematography, during a sexy Cleopatra dance); MY FAIR LADY for most ludicrous overacting; and LOLITA for most thorough engagement with the source material (the actors really seem to remember their Nobakov!). THE GRADUATE knock-off has good costuming, but unfortunately seems barely interested in engaging with its source. I couldn't quite figure out what the last segment was supposed to be, and despite featuring the most attractive bodies, it's a dud due to terrible camera angles that obscure the action (the cinematographer is so rigorous about maintaining his fixed camera position that the film starts to resemble some kind of formalist exercise).
Much gets made of the "so bad it's good" school of ironic film watching, but less is said about films so willfully awful they approach a form of cultural subversion. EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO SEE IN A Hollywood MOVIE provides exactly the opposite of what its title promises, compressing sweeping Tinseltown epics into temporal and physical spaces so small they suck every last drop of life from the material. If all this is the price to pay for a penetration, the film seems to suggest, it's too steep. Still, while not a particularly entertaining watch, I can't deny the movie has a weird train-wreck fascination, mainly as a result of its complete willingness to desecrate some of the greatest classics of American filmmaking. Less a parody of any one (or five) of these films than of the very notion of cinema itself, it's a movie I can't say I recommend, but I'm strangely glad I've seen.
The set-up features two Hollywood agents (a couple of schlubs sitting at the far end of a dining table) alternately pitching movie ideas to the off-screen "CB," whose point of view is embodied by the static camera. Each of their proposals apes a different 'Hollywood movie from the '60s (CLEOPATRA, MY FAIR LADY, LOLITA, etc.), but instead of any plot merely features a couple of the characters having sex.
What sets EVERYTHING apart is that it's so threadbare it goes past the point of being a lazy porn parody and enters a realm of cultural subversion redolent of the '60s underground. As Radley Metzger's THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN has demonstrated, properly parodying (or paying homage) to a lavish Hollywood production takes a great deal of time, resources and effort. Attempting to do the same in one corner of a dumpy San Francisco apartment (and in 10-15 minutes' worth of screen time) is a task approaching lunacy.
Instead, the filmmakers opt for a strange kind of high camp, stripping their "homages" so thoroughly of anything resembling proper acting, costuming, or direction that the scenes themselves become exercises in counter-cultural parody. After all, what is MY FAIR LADY, really, beyond a stuffy upper- class man and a street girl bickering as he tries to get into her pants? Some may argue "a lot," and they're not wrong, but there's something oddly captivating about the film's willful irreverence toward its sources. The set-ups are so threadbare, with actors in dumpster-dive approximations of period garb sitting on a bed chattering incessantly, that, like early Warhol, the very film begins to subvert the idea of cinema as art or culture. The camera-work consists almost solely of zooms and pans from a single stationary angle, and in the spirit of early John Waters, the actors improvise inanely, spewing forth reams of ludicrous nonsense that sound like an 8th grader's Cliff's Notes digest of the source material as delivered on a healthy dose of controlled substances.
Special awards go to CLEOPATRA for costuming (great thrift store Egyptian get-ups evocative of the Kuchar Brothers) and camera-work (the film's only bit of non-stationary cinematography, during a sexy Cleopatra dance); MY FAIR LADY for most ludicrous overacting; and LOLITA for most thorough engagement with the source material (the actors really seem to remember their Nobakov!). THE GRADUATE knock-off has good costuming, but unfortunately seems barely interested in engaging with its source. I couldn't quite figure out what the last segment was supposed to be, and despite featuring the most attractive bodies, it's a dud due to terrible camera angles that obscure the action (the cinematographer is so rigorous about maintaining his fixed camera position that the film starts to resemble some kind of formalist exercise).
Much gets made of the "so bad it's good" school of ironic film watching, but less is said about films so willfully awful they approach a form of cultural subversion. EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO SEE IN A Hollywood MOVIE provides exactly the opposite of what its title promises, compressing sweeping Tinseltown epics into temporal and physical spaces so small they suck every last drop of life from the material. If all this is the price to pay for a penetration, the film seems to suggest, it's too steep. Still, while not a particularly entertaining watch, I can't deny the movie has a weird train-wreck fascination, mainly as a result of its complete willingness to desecrate some of the greatest classics of American filmmaking. Less a parody of any one (or five) of these films than of the very notion of cinema itself, it's a movie I can't say I recommend, but I'm strangely glad I've seen.