When William H. Macy decided to make a film about making a film -- and everything that can go wrong in the process -- he certainly didn’t expect so much to go wrong in the process.
Almost three years ago, after adapting Peter Lefcourt’s Hollywood satire “The Deal,” Macy and his director/co-writer Steven Schachter sent a skeleton crew to Bucharest to begin early filming because their female lead, Lisa Kudrow, had a scheduling deadline. Once there, they discovered that the Canadian company who promised to help finance the project didn’t have any money.
“Maybe they just liked to talk to actors?” Macy wondered in an interview with MTV News.
Even getting to Bucharest was a challenge. To meet his $8 million budget, Macy had to wine and dine “people of means” at cocktail parties across the country. When their Canadian backing fell through, Macy called up his cocktail party investors.
“I told them, ‘Forget it, it’s over. You can have your money back,'" said Macy. "And they said to me, ‘Keep the money and go make your movie.’”
They regrouped, replaced Kudrow with Meg Ryan, and headed to South Africa to begin the shoot. In an uncanny way, these ups and downs mirrored much of the craziness in the plot of “The Deal,” with its cast of boneheaded actors, insecure creative-types and heartless studio executives.
Macy stars as Charlie Berns, a washed-up Hollywood producer about to commit suicide when his nephew (Jason Ritter) shows up with a script for an art house film about 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Berns decides to give producing—and life—one more shot, turning the Disraeli script into a big-budget flick staring mega-action star Bobby Mason (LL Cool J) and eventually falling in love with a studio exec (Ryan).
Of course, problems crop up almost immediately, including Mason getting kidnapped and thus dropping out of the film and the studio being bought by a Canadian company that decides to pull the plug on the movie. Any of this sound familiar?
Said Macy, “Charlie is a guy who decides, ‘Screw it. I’ll give it one more shot, I’ll do whatever I have to do, I’ll say whatever I have to say, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just walk away.”
While Macy doesn’t typically play the romantic lead, explained in these terms Charlie bears more than a passing resemblance to other back-against-the-wall Macy characters like Little Bill in “Boogie Nights” and Jerry Lundegaard in “Fargo.”
Despite all the initial production problems, Macy and Schachter ended up coming through with an entertaining send-up of Hollywood. Macy himself proves to have a way with the deadpan one-liner, delivering a typically spot-on performance. However, the film never found a theatrical distributor and was released on DVD on January 20.
Now you’ll have a chance to judge "The Deal" for yourselves; Macy and his enjoyable labor of love certainly deserve as much.
Have you seen "The Deal"? Planning to pick it up? What do yo think about his adventures in filmmaking?
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