This self-effacing comedy about film industry blues stars Robert Wuhl and Martin Landau as a writer/producer duo who must deal with the increasingly fickle demands of their film's financiers (Danny Aiello, Robert De Niro and Eli Wallach).
A comedy about a screenwriter (Robert Wuhl), whose old movie script is read by a producer (Martin Landau) and the search for financial backers begins. But it seems that each money source (Danny Aiello, Robert De Niro, and Eli Wallach) has his own mistress that he wants put into the film. Gradually, the screenwriter is forced to make changes to his script to accommodate these backers, until he finally sees no semblance of his original ideas in the writing.—BOB STEBBINS <[email protected]>
Having had some stage success in New York prior to moving to the west coast, Marvin Landisman once had much promise as a writer/director in Hollywood, that is until "the incident" several years ago which still haunts him and his movie career, he having pedaled several scripts since without anyone showing interest. He is now resorting to directing low budget instructional videos for clients he doesn't much like, and while his wife Rachel Landisman is currently back in New York to try and open a restaurant in her want for them to move back to the east coast where they had a happier life, he generally lives like a poor hermit. So it is with some surprise that he receives a call from Jack Roth, a former studio producer, who wants to produce one of his earlier "post-incident" scripts, the somewhat depressing "The Darkness and the Light", it arguably the most personal of his scripts to him. As such, Marvin's one non-negotiable item is to direct the project himself. Jack is on the downward side of his own career, and as such, in his role of chief fundraiser, does whatever he can to make connections to the established or potential movers and shakers in the business, which includes hiring as his right hand man inexperienced Stuart Stratland, Jr. solely for his connection to "Sr." In terms of the actual investors, Jack finds a disparate group of three who cannot or will not finance the entire project each on his own, they all having a common want in return for their money: to cast his respective mistress in the most prominent female role, each of those three with varying degrees of talent, or non-talent as the case may be, each of the three women who, in addition, brings her own baggage into the process. The question becomes how much Marvin is willing to compromise what was his vision for the project to keep especially the investors and their mistresses happy.—Huggo
Late one night as former filmmaker Marvin Landisman (Robert Wuhl) is watching his own personal 16mm copy of Jean Renoir's Grand Illusions, he gets a call from film producer Jack Roth (Martin Landau) who believe he may be able to get funding to make the film of the script Marvin had sent him years ago called "The Darkness and the Light". Marvin, who is producing instructional videos, is apprehensive as he has gone cold on the film biz after a tragedy occurred on one of his films years ago when lead actor Warren Zell (Christopher Walken) committed suicide on-camera bringing an abrupt halt to Marvin's career. Roth was formerly an exec at Universal and claims he can get the script made and can attach Marvin as director. Marvin agrees to take a meeting and Roth brings with him a young enthusiastic writer Stuart Stratland (Jace Alexander) to do some script doctoring. The trio begins meeting with potential backers and discover that each has his own ideas for the movie, and each has a girlfriend' they want cast in the movie. Marvin attempts to stay true to his story, that of a downtrodden painter who kills himself rather than compromise, but like his own hero character, Marvin begins to realize that his film can get made if he is willing to compromise.
