Review 3

Ellie Parker (2005)

Film Review

Movie Info

Taglines: What happens when you become the person you pretend to be?

Genres: Comedy

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language, some sexuality and drug use

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 14 July 2006 (UK) See more »

Also Known As: Elli Parker – Schauspielerin

Director: Scott Coffey

 Writer: Scott Coffey

Produced by      Scott Coffey, Naomi Watts

Stars: Naomi Watts, Jennifer Syme and Greg Freitas

A hilarious comic portrait of a young woman's struggle for integrity, happiness and a Hollywood acting career.

Plot

Ellie Parker is a semi-autobiographical story of an Australian actress struggling to make it in Hollywood. Ellie is young enough to still go to auditions back and forth across L.A., changing wardrobes and slapping on makeup en route, but just old enough that the future feels "more like a threat than a promise". She lives with her vacuous musician boyfriend (Mark Pellegrino), who leaves her just about as dissatisfied as any other part of her life, and has a loose definition of the word "fidelity". Helping make sense of their surreal and humiliating Hollywood existence is her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg), another out-of-work actress trying her hand at design, who attends acting classes with Ellie to stay sharp. When Ellie gets into a fender bender with a guy who claims he's a cinematographer (Scott Coffey), her perspective on her work and the dating world starts to change. Chevy Chase also makes an appearance in this series of Hollywood vignettes, playing Ellie's agent.

Cast

Naomi Watts                     Ellie Parker

                Jennifer Syme Casting Chick

                Greg Freitas                        Rick Saul (as Gregory Frietas)

                Gaye Pope                          Leslie Towne

                Blair Mastbaum                Smash Jackson

                Jessica Vogl                        Trixie

                Box Office

Opening Weekend: $10,299 (USA) (11 November 2005) (6 Screens)

Gross: $34,410 (USA)

Origins

Watts, Coffey, and Pellegrino all worked together on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, where Watts had her breakout performance, and Ellie Parker grew out of the friendship forged between Watts and director/screenwriter Coffey. It was shot on digital video over the course of five years, having begun its life as a series of shorts featuring Watts' character.

Soundtracks

 "Heart of Glass"

 Composed by Deborah Harry and Chris Stein

Performed by Blondie

General impression and conclusion

The hunt for a good job can be tiring, time consuming, and occasionally degrading, which is why Ellie Parker, an actress who wants to make it big in Tinseltown, is a beacon who reflects the hopes and dreams of every person who has the needs to Do Something. When we first see her, she is bright, hopeful, aggressive, albeit a little desperate in her attempts to nab that role, going from audition to audition to audition and nary a successful call-back in sight. Her life seems to be hovering on top of a tightrope where the only way is ahead even when the stakes get higher and her predicaments get worse at every turn.

That is, until one after another, things come unraveled: therapy seems to be leading her no place fast, acting class brings her down, her boyfriend cheats on her with her own casting agent, she loses a part to a younger actress who has a Name instead of a name, and she crashes into a cinematographer who after they finally sleep together decides to give her an unwelcome, demoralizing surprise. Her decision to leave the industry comes not as a shock but as a predictability that is numbing because once a person's spirit has been broken, it's a sign that maybe this is not what they should be doing even though they may have the talent to do so. That is, considering she really wants to leave the industry.

The use of digital media gives ELLIE PARKER a documentary-like feel -- Naomi Watts's performance is too real to be acting, and her Ellie is a woman caught under a grey cloud of bad luck who comes across as fiercely talented, at times mannered, but eager to please to get a part. As a woman she has enormous competition from other women and the one scene where she loses a part to a Name starlet is a harsh punch to the gut. Even more so, when her friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg) gets her own job on a cop show and tells her, on top of that, if it wouldn't kill her to take the trash out as she preens and poses in a policewoman's outfit. It's a devastating blow, and Scott Coffey's camera is unflinching in capturing Ellie's agony.

It's a small film, produced by Watts herself and made by friends Pellegrino and Coffey, meant to be seen by an audience who doesn't want to see a grand film filled with practiced performances. "Ellie Parker" is the sort of movie that you wish you could have made in college. It's funny and somewhat different.

Critical reception BY ROGER EBERT / December 16, 2005

To be a movie star and a good actor and a happy person is so difficult that Meryl Streep may be the only living person who has achieved it. Maybe Paul Newman, later in life. Okay, Tilda Swinton, Catherine Keener and Morgan Freeman. Maybe Frances McDormand.

 I know such speculation is goofy, but it's how I feel after seeing "Ellie Parker," a daring and truthful film by Scott Coffey, starring Naomi Watts as an actress who is trying to get a start in Los Angeles. It is one of the ironies of this film about a failing actress that it only got made because a successful actress (the star of "King Kong" no less) agreed to appear in it. You'd think they could have given the job to someone who needed the job, but then they couldn't have lined up the financing, modest as it is.

This is the movie they should show in college acting classes, instead of tapes of "Inside the Actors' Studio." It is about auditioning for an idiotic Southern Gothic soap opera and then changing your makeup and accent in the car on your way to audition as a hooker in a soft-core sex film. About trying to impress a group of "producers" who are so stoned they don't have a sober brain cell to pass from hand to hand around the room. About suspecting that the only thing worse than not getting the job would be to get it. About being broke. About depending on your friends, who are your friends because they depend on you. About lying to the folks back home. About going to clubs to be "seen" and getting so wasted you hope no one saw you, and about suspecting that while you were in a blackout your genitals may have been leading a life of their own. And it is about having to be smart, talented, beautiful, determined and, yes, lucky, just to get to this  point in your career.

 "Ellie Parker" follows its heroine through about 24 hours of her life. Maybe more. I'm not sure and neither is she. The character is played by Watts with courage, fearless observation, and a gift for timing that is so uncanny it can make points all by itself. Watts, as Parker, is so familiar with her look, her face, her hair, her style, her makeup that she can transform herself from a belle to a slut in the rear-view mirror while driving from one audition to another, and convince us that she really could do that, and has.

 She deceives herself that she might meet a nice guy who would -- what? Does she have time for a relationship if she's really serious about her career? Would a guy that nice settle for the life she has to lead? If he shared it, wouldn't that mean he was as desperate as she was? There's a scene here where a guy has sex with her and then confesses he fantasized that she was Johnny Depp. He should have told her this before they started, so that she could have fantasized that she was Johnny Depp, too, and then both people in bed could have felt successful.

 In between these harrowing adventures, she engages in acting exercises where she dredges up sense memories that are worn out from overuse, and goes to see her therapist, whose occupation, she realizes, can also be spelled "the rapist." She doesn't know where to go with this, and neither does her therapist. We understand why Hollywood is such a hotbed of self-improvement beliefs, disciplines, formulas and cults. I walked into the Bodhi Tree psychic bookstore one day, and saw a big star rummaging through the shelves. What was she looking for? Didn't she know those books were written to help people get to the point she was already at? Maybe the star was trying to reverse the process. Maybe self-help bookstores should have a section named "Uninstall."

 "Ellie Parker" is a good movie, fearless and true, observant and merciless. Naomi Watts was brave to make it and gifted to make it so well. Scott Coffey shot it off and on, as he was able to raise funds. The truth in this movie has been earned and paid for. Young people considering acting as a career should study it carefully. If Ellie Parker's ordeal looks like it might be fun, you may have the right stuff.