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Hollywood
How many times have we thought about how our life would have changed if
we had made a certain choice? And how many times has the game of
thinking about an alternative road moved on the history of the World? I
don't know about you, but I think about it almost daily.
And even in "Hollywood", Netflix's TV series created by the prolific
Ryan Murphy with Ian Brennan, the question of a different world takes
on a central role, and does, as the title tells us, in Hollywood. In
1949.
Therefore cinema is back as a means of freedom and emancipation, this
time in a comedy series, which follows the old Hollywood films’
stlye, where everything fits perfectly and there is the inevitable
happy ending.
Murphy mixes real situations and characters with fiction, to bring us
to a final situation that overturns reality and shows us a better world
(which would be), without hypocrisy, without fear. A more balanced
world.
Hollywood and its vices, the secret realities, the hidden ones, those
behind the facade of the American dream and respectability. Situations
that are not limited to those times but have (and probably still do so
even after the Weinstein’s case) embraced the whole history of
the glossy world of the stars.
Behind the dream, the reality bites, and not surprisingly this series
tells us about the production of a film called "Peg" which tells the
story of Peg Entwistle the actress who committed suicide by launching
herself from the famous writing.
Over time, "Peg" turns into "Meg", a story that tells the almost broken
dreams of a black actress, played by Laura Harrier. Not only equal
opportunities and racism, because everything is accompanied by the
character of Rock Hudson, a central figure, but not a protagonist, who
declares his homosexuality, falling in love, among other things, with
the fictitious black author of "Meg", Archie Coleman (Jeremy Pope).
Hudson, as we know, is probably the most striking case of Hollywood
hypocrisy. The handsome actor who hid his homosexuality in various ways
during a career full of successes and awards, before shocking the world
in the eighties with his positivity to HIV and dying of AIDS in 1985.
"Meg" thus becomes a film that overwhelms the status quo and the "ACE
Studio" the company that produces it is led by a Jewish woman, Avis
Amberg (Patty LuPone), who has lived a life in the shadow of her
husband.
Boycotts, racism, protest do not block the production of the film,
which becomes a great success and triumphs with its interpreters at the
Academy Awards. A triumph that returns to Anna May Wong, another real
case, the right role in history. A talented actress who has been
unfairly relegated to a character in stereotypical Asian roles.
There is also Henry Wilson (played by an excellent Jim Parson, that is
Sheldon of "Big Bang Theory") who was really a powerful and
controversial manager of the stars (he invented the figure of Hudson)
who tries to change his life here, contrary to reality who saw him
protagonist of a life gone down the drain.
On the side-lines and as a lightening of the situations we find the
life of Jack Castello, a boy from the outer States who arrives in
Hollywood in search of glory and who starts doing the gigolo at a gas
station (another true story, that of the gas station), before transform
from bad actor to excellent performer and become the male protagonist
of "Meg" and find the love of life.
"Hollywood" has the aesthetics of the world in those days. An elegant
series that takes care of every detail making it very pleasant to see.
A cast appropriate to the circumstances with actors who have often
worked with Murphy in the past, such as Darren Criss, the great Andrew
Cunanan, of the second season of "American Crime Story", who plays the
director of "Meg" here.
Of course, it is not always easy to grasp the references to reality,
the many characters of the time (Cuckor, Vivien Leigh and even Lon
Chaney, among many) mixed with fiction, sometimes create a little
confusion. But this is not a biographical series and absolutely does
not want to be. And it is a pity that some did not understand it, given
that some criticism that I have read, complains about the fact that
history is invented.
Criticisms, it must be said, discordant, but I ask myself: when you
watch a movie, don't you enter a world that is a dream? And what does
it demand to you to dream about a better world with "Hollywood"?
