One can learn any number of things about the five-part BBC-produced series ”Naked Hollywood” by watching its first installment, ”The Actor and the Star,” airing at 7 p.m. Sunday on Arts & Entertainment cable network.
You will, most notably, appreciate how different this is from what normally passes for entertainment journalism in the U.S.
So often, what we get is fluff. As ”The Actor and the Star” correctly points out while examining press tours, members of the press are so wowed or cowed to be in the presence of stars that they often abdicate their responsibilities and can ”function as an extension of the movie`s public relations.”
There is little fluff here, as producer Nicolas Kent contrasts the very different careers and personalities of James Caan and Arnold Schwarzenegger to make his point that the movie business is more interested in box-office stars than actors.
The suggestion is made, clearly, that Caan is an actor. And he frankly discusses how some lousy choices-he turned down starring roles in ”One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest” and ”Kramer vs. Kramer,” which helped Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman, respectively, capture best-actor Oscars-and nonconformist manners scuttled what might have been a solid career.
He is candid and a little bitter, though not abrasively so. Not mentioning Schwarzenegger (or Sylvester Stallone, for that matter) by name, he marvels at those ”who lift weights” and become stars worth $12 million a picture.
His up-and-down career (now up again with the success of ”Misery”)
flies in the face of Schwarzenegger`s calculated, well-documented climb from body builder to the world`s biggest box-office draw; from a ”man who was laughed at when he first came to Hollywood” to a fellow laughing all the way to the . . .
”This is a country that put Ronald Reagan in the White House,” says producer George Butler. ”The sky`s the limit for Arnold.”
And it`s Arnold who gets more TV time than Caan. There are clips from his movies, his body-building career and his marriage to Maria Shriver. We see him in rehearsal for ”Kindergarten Cop,” watch him in makeup and wardrobe, and observe him hobnobbing with President Bush.
”(Bush) calls me Conan the Republican,” says Schwarzenegger, all smiles. We also hear him say, amazingly, ”Moviemakers tell me I`m too handsome.”
Both actors and assorted producers, journalists, agents and such are surprisingly candid. And Kent packages it all into an engrossing hour of rapid-fire pacing and snappy editing.
One small quibble: As interesting as the Caan-Schwarzenegger contrast is, how much more insightful might it have been to feature, instead of Caan, Dustin Hoffman, certainly a maverick actor but one who has managed to thrive? Still, one comes away from this first installment of ”Naked Hollywood”
entertained and enlightened. One does not begrudge Schwarzenegger his success nor Caan his gripes. Hollywood has traditionally valued the buck more than the art, and here we explore that peculiar business of making movies with a journalist`s eye and not the normal ga-ga.
”THE ACTOR AND THE STAR”
The first of a five-part series called ”Naked Hollywood.” A production of BBC Television in association with BBC Lionheart Television. Executive producers are Michael Jackson and John Wilson; directed by Margy Kinmonth and Alan Lewen; produced by Nicolas Kent. Airing at 7 p.m. Sunday on Arts & Entertainment cable.
