Top 5

Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

Here's an interesting list I came upon.  The top 10 movies within a movie

http://filmbabble.blogspot.com/2007/07/10-definitive-films-within-films.html

I'd like to make a different kind of list.  What are your top five movies about the process of making movies?  Here are mine.

1.  Barton Fink - ok yeah it's cliche enough to make a movie about movie making, but they say never make a movie about a writer.  Well, this one pulled it off excellentlly I'd say.

2.  American Movie - now this is passion!

3.  Ed Wood - maybe a good companion piece for American Movie

4.  The Player - it's all about the money

5.  Sullivan's Travels - a good lesson for movie makers, just don't get confused by what the message is

I came up with a LOT more.  Are movie makes the most vein of all artists?  I know there are books about writing, and plays about plays, but do movies have the highest percentage of stories about themselves?

I'll hold off on naming any more for now so some of the rest of you can get a chance at naming some of your favorites first.

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

All 5 of those are great choices so I'm going to try to go with 5 different ones. 

1.  Day for Night - "What is a film director? Someone who's asked questions about everything. Sometimes he knows the answers."  Classic, plain and simple.

2.  Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One - (If this doesn't spell out how much of a Criterion Collection whore I am, nothing can.)  I think it's cliche at this point to refer to a film as a Moebius strip but it kind of works here.  If not, you get the idea.  An incompetent director (or is he?) has a camera crew film scenes for a film in Central Park.  A second crew is filming the first crew.  It's really one of the most creative films I've ever seen.

3.  The Five Obstructions - I love Lars von Trier but I feel like I should hate him.  But I can't.  In this film, he challenges his mentor, Jorgen Leth, to remake his own renowned short film, The Perfect Human, five times, each time with different rules.  This film made me aware for the first time of the possibilities of filmmaking, likening it to mathematics almost.  How mathematicians create difficult equations, simply to solve them (honestly, it's over my head)... that's how I viewed this film.  You can have a single concept and express it in an infinite number of ways.  Really opened my eyes.

4.  8 1/2 - The first film I ever saw about the making of a movie and one of my favorites ever.  I'm not going to go on about it because you've all seen it, and if not, you should.

5.  Bowfinger - Yeah, you're reading that correctly.  Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin's last great movie and it's so sadly underrated.  But if you've ever made a film, or tried to, you can't help but relate to and admire Bowfinger's spirit.  He will do anything to get his film made because he believes in it so much.  It's all he has to hold onto.  Kind of like Ed Wood in a lot of respects.

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Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

indieabby88:

3. Lost in La Mancha: I loved this, and thought it was very well done. It was a good story and also an interesting study of Gilliam's history of problems with studios. This movie made me wish Gilliam's project had worked out, since the footage I did see was pretty darn good, and I really did feel sorry for the guy.

I've been pretty interested in seeing this one.  I don't know why I haven't yet.  Maybe because I always wanted to read Don Quixote before I saw a movie of it.  Then again this isn't even a movie of it.  It's about trying to make a movie of it.  Ok I'm anal.

Going along with this sort of type of movie, I'm also very VERY interested in seeing Burden of Dreams.  I'm not sure why I haven't gotten to that one yet.

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

strangeframe:

and Ed Wood , but add Living in Oblivion to the duo.

I'd say In The Soup is sort of like a precursor to Living in Oblivion.  One with Steve Buscemi as a prospective indpendent filmmaker, the other where he's in the middle of making an actual film.  Although I'm not a huge fan of either movie.

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

A few not mentioned here:

8 1/2 (edit: already discussed)

The Stunt Man

Swimming with Sharks

Boogie Nights

The Blair Witch Project

Cecil B. Demented

This Is Spinal Tap

RKO 281

While not a "masterpiece" I thought "A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 7: Wes Craven's New Nightmare" was interesting in the way Freddy went after Wes Craven and the creators and actors from the previous films.

PS

Hello 

PSS (edit)

I forgot to list the one film that made me respond to this post.  The film Roger Ebert called "one of the best movies I've seen about the making of a movie": Baadasssss!

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies

Re: Top 5 Movies About Making Movies