We don’t care for grindhouse films, B-movies or Australia (except for Baz Luhrmann), so why did we go see “Not Quite Hollywood”? Well, on a lark mostly. Why the hell not. It’s good to push yourself out of your comfort zone and see how the other half lives.
But you know you’re in trouble when a director insists before the film begins that the picture is a “rockumentary,” not a documentary.
So yeah, we don’t like exploitation films, why are we here? Trying to remain objective, we tried to judge the film based on its merits and sure, we did learn a bunch about Ozploitation and the fact that a lot of the garbage Quentin Tarantino grew up with came from Australia which loved to make gory, slasher, car-chase films with lots of sex and pubes on the cheap cause they could.
Featuring interviews with the aforementioned genre-fetishist/motormouth, Stacey Keach, Aussie director Fred Schepisi, Jaimie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper and a host of local trash cinema “talent,” we did get an education in Aussiesploitation and what we learned is we’re pretty glad we haven’t wasted our time with this sub-genre of corny-gore, gratuitous sex and ridiculous stories.
Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where the family goes to visit down under and the people are depicted as dunderheaded, boorish oafs? Well, “Not Quite Hollywood,” is sort of a celebration of that culture and the types of coarse loats and does nothing but reinforce this broad stereotype. Was it bad filmmaking? Not at all; perhaps a little too loud and garish, but it handled it storytelling and information fairly economically (though it was too long and repetitive after a while). File under: for the die-hards only. [-B]
Watch: Dodic and The Playlist discuss “Not Quite Hollywood?
Have you seen Dolemite? or The Human Tornado? They are mentioned in that Film Snob book. I haven’t gotten it yet, but I found excerpts online and I love those movies. If you haven’t seen them, check out clips on Youtube. Great for a laugh, but that doesn’t even come close to the laughs you get when you watch the movies.
Dolemite was fun trash when i was a kid, but I just can’t waste my time or ironically produced garbage anymore. Exploitation is generally time and place type thing that everyone goes through and can enjoy for a laugh, but it was 15 year ago when i discovered it and I’ve moved on.
No love for George Miller or Peter Weir?
Peter Weir was mentioned briefly, but obviously he did more of art films than exploitation films.
B-Movies and other odd (and unique) film types that are not in the main Hollywood "niche", have to get some credit for their contribution to the cinema, even if they're not as mainstreamed as other.
Great insight, I like that way of doing it!
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