There are movies about every experience, industry and feeling under the sun. Relationships, war, video games, meeting a Czechoslovakian cat that wears sunglasses and has magical powers, you get the gist.
Then there are, of course, movies about the movies.
Seventy-five years ago this month, Sunset Boulevard, one of the most iconic films about Hollywood arrived in theaters. It focuses on aging silent film star Norma Desmond, struggling to accept her fade into obscurity, played by real-life silent film star Gloria Swanson.
The film featured other Hollywood figures playing versions of themselves and is chock full of old-school Hollywood melodrama.
The anniversary of Sunset Boulevard (and its wildly successful Broadway run) got our panelists thinking about other meta movies.
NPR's film critic Bob Mondello and Pop Culture Happy Hour host Aisha Harris sat down with All Things Considered host Scott Detrow to discuss some other greats about the film industry looking inward.
Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914)
Mondello, who keeps an extensive record of the movies for his work, says the first meta-movie he can recall (not because he saw it when it first came out!) was Charlie Chaplin's second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice.
It was the first film he did as his notorious character "the Little Tramp."
"And it's about him getting in the way of the camera," Mondello said.
"The director would run into the scene and shoo him away. And you'd see the camera, which you never saw in silent films. And so he was playing with it and that's only the second film he ever made."
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Harris says Sullivan's Travels, directed by Preston Sturges is one of her favorites in this category.
Joel McCrea plays the director of very popular but also very low-brow comedies, who decides he wants to make a more meaningful drama about the less privileged.
"And so in order to understand them firsthand, he sets out to live his life as a poor drifter. You know, it's very classic, like, 'Hollywood, these out-of-touch types trying to make it seem as though they can connect with the average person'" says Harris.
Through this endeavor, the director learns that comedy does have a place among the regular difficulties of life.
"Hollywood has often been kind of wrestling with its own perception and what matters, and what it means to be important versus what makes people happy. And so that's one of my favorite films I love to look back on," she added.
The Player (1992)
Harris says that despite being over 30 years old, The Player feels more pertinent to the entertainment industry than ever.
One show the panelists all discussed was Seth Rogen's Apple TV+ series, The Studio. While they recommend it as amusing commentary on Hollywood, Harris says The Player skewered the entertainment industry first.
"The Studio is sort of heavily indebted to and references The Player — the first is looking at the current space where we have Hollywood just cranking out sequels and cranking out movies about products," Harris says.
"And when The Player opens, Henry — the screenwriter of The Graduate — is pitching Tim Robbins character an idea for The Graduate 2," she added.
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Detrow points to the OG Muppet Movie as his first introduction to the concept of Hollywood.
It's an optimistic view of how movies are made. But it speaks to the magic that so many people love about cinema.
"When it's all going well, the idea of telling a story and all getting together to do something — I think every one has pieces of that."
The Fall Guy (2024)
When the discussion turned to the current angst experienced by the film industry, recent releases like The Fall Guy show Harris the glimmers of vitality that are still capable of telling new stories, like the life of a stuntman in the movie biz.
"There's all of these attempts, I think, for Hollywood to try and save itself. And Hollywood will always be dying. I [just] don't think it'll ever be dead," she said.
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