Juan Wayne - Hollywood Superstar (2004)

D. Roberto Martinez (although, disappointingly, not the one who now manages Everton)
Colour


I like ‘Juan Wayne – Hollywood Superstar’, a film which exists in bright sunshine but also manages a harsh grittiness that Ken Loach would actually salivate over. It’s a film with dreams of Hollywood stardom (could that title scream ‘wannabe’ anymore?) but also has its fingers dirty with the drudgery of hard low paid work. It’s a film which very much positions itself as lying in the gutter and staring at the stars – although these aren’t the kind of stars you’d generally see from Griffith Observatory.
Part expose of the underclass that exists in the shadows of the bright lights in Beverly Hills; part satire of Hollywood and the fame hungry; part raucous sex comedy: the micro budget ‘Juan Wayne – Hollywood Superstar’ is not short of ambition, it has bags of ambition, sacks of ambition, bulging suitcases of ambition. Unfortunately that’s way too much ambition for such a small film and so it frequently overreaches. But then a film which has too many ideas is always more fun than a film meandering along on too few.


Juan works three jobs, one as a pool boy for a wealthy Hollywood producer who seems to be on the skids, one as a tour guide driving people to the outside of houses he can only dream of going into, and one as a barman in a gay club. His ability to juggle these jobs, the stoic way he accepts every insult and piece of shit that's thrown at him is the best of the film. Hector Gonzalez, who plays the lead, carries it off with a great deal of charm and panache, smiling a never dented grin even when clearly aware that he’s clinging onto the scabby underside of the Hollywood dream.

Less successful are the Hollywood satire sequences, with Juan going for auditions for crap looking acting roles and suffering embarrassing incidents in front of casting agents. I'm sure these scenes come from a real place, the kind of place where jobbing Hollywood actors sit around and discuss the sheer living hell of their existences, but really they're the kind of thing Joey on ‘Friends’ used to get up to every four weeks or so. We've seen it all before (and can see it again and again on Comedy Central, who make E4’s use of ‘Friends’ seem sparing) and really YOU CAN have too much of a good thing.

The worst though are the sections devoted to his illicit and snatched liaisons with the wife of the Hollywood producer whose career may very well be on the skids. If for whatever odd reason you wanted to see a bawdy low-stakes comedy with plenty of nearly being caught with the trousers down moments, then you've come to the right place. It’s tedious and disappointing in a film which elsewhere is so very much alive. But then I suppose even this is representative of Hollywood as a whole: there may just be a market for social expose, there sometimes is a market for satire, but sex most definitely sells.