Hollywood, Netflix review: Ryan Murphy rewrites Tinseltown for the woke era
Purple, manipulative, shameless – the old-school Hollywood of Ryan Murphy’s dreams might hustle like the real thing, but it doesn’t much look like it. After the true-life diva combat of Feud, which focused on the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Murphy’s Netflix period piece is heavy on statement. Back in 1947, Tinseltown was a tantalising closed shop, those glittering gates barred to any number of talented contenders – black people, gay people, women of a certain age.
But what if they all stood a chance? Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan have fantasised an outfit called Ace Studios, where regime change opens a sudden chink of opportunity. Before we know it, an unthinkable film has been green-lit. It’s called Peg, then Meg, and it’s based on the tragic true story of aspiring actress Peggy Entwistle, who jumped to her death off the Hollywood sign in 1932.
Real-life studio heads would have spluttered merely at the subject, let alone confronted with a screenwriter, Archie Coleman (affable Jeremy Pope), who’s both black and homosexual, and has even been turning tricks to pay the rent. Studio boss Ace Amberg (Rob Reiner) is aghast, but illness removes him from the throne – and not only is his long-suffering production chief (Joe Mantello) a fan of Archie’s script, but Ace’s wife Avis (Patti LuPone) is made night watchman with all-important casting power.
Hollywood could certainly have improved on its cringey scene-setting with armies of acting hopefuls at the studio gates. (Someone has to explain that “helmer” is insider-speak for director, etc.) With its bevy of bright-eyed ingénues scrabbling to get spotted, it plays much like a sugar-coated, dumbed-down Mulholland Drive, peddling the well-worn thesis that making it in this town is tough beyond belief – even for a strapping pin-up-in-waiting like Jack Costello (David Corenswet), let alone if you’re African-American, like Camille Washington (Laura Harrier), and only get to play the help.
Jack, who’s married with twins on the way, turns to the same solution as Archie, posing as an attendant at the gas station used as a front for prostitution by the dapper Ernie (Dylan McDermott). And then there’s Roy Fitzgerald (Jake Picking), one of the series’ small crop of real-life figures. Fresh off the boat, this awkward sailor boy catches the eye of notorious monster-agent Henry Willson (Jim Parsons, gnashing on the scenery), who built a stable of malleable hunks and coaxed many into sex in return for masterminding their careers, starting with a name change. Roy Fitzgerald duly becomes Rock Hudson, and fancies a role in Meg as much as the next guy.
With his hammed-up bad acting, “sissy” walk and pout, this isn’t the real real Rock Hudson, who was famously promiscuous, and banned (by Willson) from ever living with another man. Roy and Archie get loved up, at a historical moment when that would have meant career suicide. Camille’s unlikely breakthrough is to test for the lead role of a dead white actress. The show can’t find anything about 1947 it doesn’t shudder at and fix retroactively, fast-tracking these strides for representation that had to wait decades, in reality, to sneak in by the back door.
The problem with this woke lens on the era is that it begs applause for itself – not just for the mutually supportive team who get Meg off the ground. And the upshot can be thuddingly literal-minded. A climactic Oscar ceremony is all but unabridged, and if you think it’s beneath Murphy to have a title sequence with newcomers clambering their way, greasy-pole-style, up the H, O, double L, and so on, you may be mistaking him for David Lynch. (“Skip intro” is a blessing.)
Still, it's legitimately touching along the way. The dry, outstanding Mantello has a stellar scene at one of George Cukor’s infamous pool parties, when his character admits to the inward shame of being closeted. He’s more believable than any of the show’s striving wannabes. McDermott gives a charmingly roguish turn, with a sad twinkle in his eye about an acting career that fell away. LuPone is a hoot, vamping up the pathos, and Holland Taylor is delightfully warm as the studio’s veteran acting coach.
The younger lot, including Darren Criss as Meg’s tyro director, struggle more, because their dreamer roles are too formulaically sketched, with their Adversity-101 backstories and doe-in-the-headlights joy at newfound fame. Only Samara Weaving, as LuPone’s ice pick of a daughter, gets to be funny. Gosh, though, if Corenswet, who broke through in Murphy’s The Politician, doesn’t manage to shine in his potentially stolid role, like some kind of Acting Edition of Henry Cavill (The Witcher). 1947’s casting agents would have clawed each other to sign him – and Rock Hudson might have found it even tougher to catch a break.
