i'm guessing -- and from the available evidence , it's not a great guess -- that burn hollywood burn began life as an insider satire of hollywood excess , stupidity , ego and power-mongering . if so , the film that ended up on the screen ranks as one of the most spectacularly ironic unintentional jokes in film history . it has already been well-documented that the original title , an alan smithee film , became a problem when miserable test screenings forced re-cuts against the will of director arthur hiller , prompting hiller himself to opt for the directors' guild-mandated pseudonym of alan smithee . that left a film satire in the hands of writer joe eszterhas , as humorless a hack as ever put finger to word processor . and you could just smell the disaster brewing . if you're unfortunate enough to sit through burn hollywood burn , you'll still be smelling that disaster long after the lights come up . ostensibly , it's a pseudo-documentary account of a director named alan smithee ( eric idle ) who loses control of a big-budget action film called trio starring sylvester stallone , whoopi goldberg and jackie chan ( all of whom appear as themselves ) . when the only recourse available to him is abandoning the project to be called " an alan smithee film " -- which , of course , it already is -- smithee steals the negative of the film and threatens to destroy it . among the parties interviewed are the film's producer james edmunds ( ryan o'neal ) and studio boss jerry glover ( richard jeni ) , who spend virtually the entire film narrating the story while painfully unfunny things go on around them . it's bad enough that burn hollywood burn has -- literally -- not a single laugh for its entire , blissfully brief 84 minutes . what makes it even worse is eszterhas' insistence upon telling every bad joke not once , but twice or even three times . michael ovitz references , showgirls references , oral sex references , whoopi goldberg/ted danson references -- all show up multiple times with all the subtlety that is eszterhas' stock-in-trade . the reduncancy even manages to turn actively offensive with some frequency , notably with the hilarious use of the word " feminist " as an identifying caption for every single female character in the film . by the time coolio and chuck d show up as black independent film-makers the brothers brothers ( cleverly identified as " bad a-- " and " badder a-- " , among other unprintable things ) , you may be ready to walk out of the theater with your coat over your head to avoid being identified . those documentary captions , for all their leaden obviousness , allow the best insight into what's so hideously wrong with burn hollywood burn . not content to stick any hollywood type with only one jab from his rapier wit , eszterhas fills the screen with bullet points every time a new character appears . the producer is a " liar " who " slept in the white house ; " the media are " maggots " and " leeches " working for publications like " the new york slimes " and " newsleak " ( with the camera zooming in on the altered title to make sure you don't miss the joke ) . it doesn't even matter that eszterhas tags " penile implant " after his own name when he makes a cameo , because it seems like such a desperate attempt to feign self-deprecation . this is a petulant schoolboy's idea of satire -- pictures of hollywood insiders to which eszterhas has taken a pen to draw little moustaches and black out the teeth . the last stomach-churning straw comes when burn hollywood burn closes with out-takes over the closing credits , the kind that show the audience how much fun everyone was having making the film that just sucked an hour and a half of your life away . perhaps it was just a final , desperate attempt by eszterhas to convince himself there was some purpose behind the film , or to convince everyone involved that a few blown lines warranted threatening to blow their whole career . pity everyone involved with this excessive , ego-driven " satire " of excess and ego . it's too bad that only directors can remove their names from noxious material like this . otherwise , you might have seen credits for burn hollywood burn overflowing with alan smithees .
