"The Player": Movies Within the Movie Quiz

Answer: Touch of Evil

Walter Stuckel (played by Fred Ward), the studio's Head of Security is talking to Jimmy Chase (Paul Hewitt), the post boy. As they talk about films with long takes, "The Player" indulges in its own long take, as director Robert Altman criss-crosses the parking lot and loiters outside of offices where the lead character, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is hearing pitches from writers. Not one cut is made in the movie until just after Griffin is seen reading the first of several threatening postcards, nearly eight minutes in; well beyond the point at which "Touch of Evil" had made its first cut.

Other movies mentioned in conversation with Walter in the opening scene include Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope", Julien Temple's "Absolute Beginners" and Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Sheltering Sky", each of which contains one or more very long takes.

Answer: The Graduate

The first pitch that Griffin Mill hears during the opening scene is being made by Buck Henry, who co-wrote the screenplay of "The Graduate" (1967) based on the novel by Charles Webb.

In the original, Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has an affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father's business partner. Whilst this affair is continuing, Mr. Robinson and Ben's parents pressure him into dating the Robinsons' daughter, Elaine, with whom Ben soon falls in love.

Charles Webb wrote a sequel to his original novel called "Home School" but it does not resemble the story that Henry pitches, most notably in the fact that Ben and Elaine live 3,000 miles from her mother. It is never revealed in "The Player" if the studio decided to take up Henry's script.

Answer: The Gods Must Be Crazy

"The Gods Must Be Crazy" is set in the Kalahari desert, where Xi, a Bushman, lives in peaceful co-existence with nature, unspoiled by Western values. The arrival into their world of a previously unknown object, a Coke bottle jettisoned from an overhead aeroplane, introduces more than just a design classic into their lives.

Xi's tribe have never had to suffer from shortages of anything, but they have only one Coke bottle and its presence causes envy, resentment and anger. Realising that the object that had been worshipped, is fomenting division amongst his people, Xi decides to take the bottle to the edge of the world and throw it off. His encounters on that journey provide the comedic heart of the film, though they also opened the film makers up to charges of racism in their portrayal of the Bushmen and their reaction to the white, Western world.

The film was followed by a sequel "The Gods Must Be Crazy II" in 1989. Three films from Hong Kong, all classed as unofficial sequels, were released between 1991 and 1995 and a South African sequel, also unofficial, called "Jewel of the Gods" that featured some of the original cast but not Xi, was released in 1989.

Answer: D.O.A.

Walter Stuckel, as head of studio security, has been informed about the death of writer David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) when he talks to Levison, the head of the studio, about his concerns relating to Griffin's involvement. Levison's response of "Keep our noses clean, Walter", sums up the rather lax morality at the heart of the film's central characters.

The original 1950 film of "D.O.A." is a tale of a man who knows he is going to die, after he is poisoned, and seeks out his killers. The 1988 re-make shares the same basic concept but the detail is very different and it is this detail that links it to "The Player". In "D.O.A." (1988), Dennis Quaid plays a university professor who ignores the writings of one of his students. The student soon winds up dead outside a bar where Quaid is drinking.

In "The Player", Griffin Mill is receiving threatening postcards from an angry writer. Mistakenly believing that Kahane is the postcard sender, he finds out where he is and contrives an "accidental" meeting with him. The pair go for a drink in a karaoke bar and, as they walk back to Kahane's car afterwards, they get into an argument that results in Kahane's death in a shallow puddle of water.

Answer: Fatal Attraction

This conversation, which occurs at the start of a meeting at the studio the morning after Kahane's death, is an important signifier of the attitudes of the relative participants and reflects their fates at the end of the film. Larry Levy, the new story executive at the studio and the man who many believe will replace Griffin, believes that giving the audience what it wants is paramount, whilst Bonnie Sherow, a story editor, believes in artistic integrity above all else. When the choice has to be made in regard to the studio's own production, "Habeas Corpus", Levy wins the argument and the acclaim whilst Bonnie loses the argument and her job.

"Fatal Attraction" is possibly the most famous film to significantly change its ending, following a negative audience response. The story of the film is the brief affair between Daniel Gallagher (Michael Douglas) and Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). Alex refuses to accept that the affair is over and terrorises Daniel and his family. The original ending to the film had Alex kill herself and attempt to frame Daniel for her murder. Though she was unsuccessful, the test audiences felt that Daniel's wife, Beth (Anne Archer), deserved a more satisfying ending. Though Glenn Close was apparently unhappy with the decision, the ending was re-shot, with Beth shooting Alex dead in the Gallagher's family home.

The film was a huge worldwide success, becoming the second highest grossing film of 1987.

Answer: Sunset Blvd.

By the time Griffin receives this message, he is already aware that he was mistaken in his belief that Kahane was sending the postcards. Not only have the postcards continued to arrive but there is also now the added threat of blackmail attached to them. The postcard writer clearly knows that Kahane has been killed and that Mill is, at the least, a suspect, hence his evocation of Joe Gillis.

"Sunset Blvd." is another film about the darker side of Hollywood, directed in 1950 by Billy Wilder. The movie opens with a corpse floating in a swimming pool (an echo of Kahane's watery death). We soon discover that the corpse is that of screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), who continues to narrate the entire film despite the inconvenience of his own death. We discover that Gillis had come to be in the swimming pool after bolting up in the mansion of silent film star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) to escape two men who are looking to repossess his car. Desmond is clearly deranged through years of isolation and begins to hook into Gillis as a means of getting her way back into the movie-making business. The ultimate result is Gillis's unfortunate and unwanted swim.

Answer: Habeas Corpus

"Habeas Corpus" makes its first appearance in "The Player" when Griffin goes to meet the postcard sender at the St James's Club. He is ambushed by English writer, Tom Oakley, and his agent, Andy Civella. Andy convinces Griffin to hear Tom's pitch whilst he waits.

The story is about a D.A. who believes in the death penalty but is concerned about the number on death row who are "poor, disadvantaged, black." He determines that the next person executed will be rich and white. He settles on a wife from an upper class neighbourhood convicted of killing her husband. The D.A. falls in love with the wife but goes ahead with the execution anyway only to discover that the husband faked his death.

Despite the earnest demands of Tom that his story "is too important to risk being overwhelmed by personality" and that "she has to die! No Hollywood ending", when the rushes of the ending of "Habeas Corpus" are shown at the end of "The Player", Bruce Willis rushes to the gas chamber and saves Julia Roberts's life. The ending had been re-shot in response to the test audience's reaction to the original.

Answer: Freaks

Griffin has been invited to the Pasadena police station to take part in a police line-up, as a witness to Kahane's killer, who has been found. By now, Mill is dating Kahane's former partner, June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), further cementing in the minds of Detectives Avery and DeLongpre that he is the guilty party. However, the witness fails to identify him, letting Mill off the hook.

Tod Browning's "Freaks" (1932), set in the world of the circus performer, is another tale of murder and deceit. Cleopatra, one of the "normal" performers within the circus has married "freak" Hans, a dwarf who has come into a significant amount of money. She, in cahoots with lover Hercules, poisons Hans in order to claim the inheritance for herself.

When she marries Hans, she is inducted into the circle of "freaks" with a ceremony in which the other performers proclaim her acceptance into their ranks as "one of us!" When her deception is uncovered, the "freaks" punish her by gouging out her eyes and amputating her legs so that she can no longer perform as a trapeze artist and can only perform as a "human chicken" as part of the freakish circus sideshow.

Quite who director Robert Altman is intimating are the freaks in this scenario is open to interpretation.

Answer: The Player

Ah, the joy of the self-referencing film. Is this a simple plot device or a clever hidden message for the viewer to attempt to unravel? There are many ways it could be interpreted. Has what we have been watching, merely been a fleshing out of a pitched idea, playing through Griffin's head? Alternatively, is it playing as straight as a die and what you are seeing is what has been happening? Griffin is being blackmailed and has agreed to pay off the disgruntled writer to keep him quiet.

My own personal interpretation is that it is blackmail. Altman is suggesting that behind the scenes, a real life producer has agreed to produce the film that the blackmailer has just pitched and "The Player" is the result, with Tim Robbins playing the real life producer in the guise of Griffin Mill. This is how it really happened folks. It's the only way that Robert Altman could be allowed to direct a Hollywood film again (it was his first in more than ten years).

The cynicism of this position is that the script suggests that writer's attempts at blackmail had not been in defence of the writer as artist, as the eulogy at Kahane's funeral might have suggested. Instead it was, and always had been, about money and becoming a Hollywood player himself. The suggestion is that ultimately, this is all that Hollywood cares about.

Answer: Rosemary's Baby

Griffin really has got it all. He has gotten away with murder, thanks to an incompetent witness, he has risen to head of the studio on the back of Habeas Corpus. He has married June Gudmunsdottir and they are expecting a child. Though you should hate him, Altman has made you cheer the bad guy and root for him throughout the film. Now at the film's conclusion, Altman reveals the truth; Griffin Mill, like all studio executives, is the devil.