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What just happened - Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Bruce Willis, Barry Levinson
Threat advisory: Guarded - General risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
In Hollywood, everybody can hear you scream.
What just happened is a winningly sharp comedy about two nail-biting, back-stabbing, roller-coaster weeks in the world of a middle-aged Hollywood producer - as he tries to juggle an actual life with an outrageous series of crises in his day job.
Ben (Robert De Niro) is already in over his head trying to balance the tug-of-war of having two ex-wives and two different families with his latest business venture - the boldly "visionary" movie Fiercely starring Sean Penn (Sean Penn) - when everything that can go wrong goes completely screwy.
Fiercely looks like an audience-offending flop which draws the ire of iron-gloved studio chief Lou (Catherine Keener), who forces him into tangling with the film's rebellious and drug-addled director Jeremy (Michael Wincott). Meanwhile, he's confused and bewitched by his ex Kelly (Robin Wright Penn) who can't make up her mind about him; shocked by his daughter Zoe (Kristen Stewart), who seems to have grown up overnight; infuriated by his screenwriter friend Scott (Stanley Tucci) who's trying to make a deal with him while making moves on his former wife; horrified by a hirsute Bruce Willis (Bruce Willis) and flummoxed by Willis' nebbishy agent Dick (John Turturro), who's scared to death of his own clients.
Somehow amidst all the madness, treachery, deceit, runaway egos, rampant commercialism, personal politics and atrocious behaviour of America's dream-making machinery, Ben has to find a way not just to make it to Cannes with a finished film, but to cope...
Theatrical propaganda posters
Target demographic movie keyword propaganda
- Film comedy satire Hollywood movie filmmaking producer award actor agent ego set Cannes Film Festival studio
Persons of interest
- Robert De Niro .... Ben
- Bruce Willis .... Himself
- Stanley Tucci .... Scott Solomon
- John Turturro .... Dick Bell
- Kristen Stewart .... Zoe
- Lily Rabe .... Dawn
- Dennis Albanese .... Anthony
- Ari Barak .... Aba Peterson
- Alessandra Daniele .... Sophie
- Karina Friend Buck .... Verna
- Logan Grove .... Max
- Marin Hinkle .... Annie
- Mark Ivanir .... Johnny
- Peter Jacobson .... Cal
- Catherine Keener .... Lou Tarnow
- Dimitri Lekkos .... Jack L McDonagh
- Paydin LoPachin .... Mary
- Sean Penn .... Himself
- Remy K Selma .... Jimmy
- Michael Wincott .... Jeremy Brunell
- Robin Wright Penn .... Kelly
- Dey Young .... Marilyn
- Art Linson .... Author: What just happened: Bitter Hollywood tales from the front line
- Art Linson .... Screenwriter
- Barry Levinson .... Director
Cinematic intelligence sources
- What just happened official movie site
- What just happened film production notes
- What just happened QuickTime movie trailers
- Awards and film festivals:
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- Studios and distributors:
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
If you want to find out what a film producer actually does then you need to watch What just happened. If you don't want to go to the expense then I'll give you a list: talks on the phone, worries about inanities, listens to people whingeing, gets divorced, gets paid more than they're worth, turns up on the red carpet. Wag the dog is a much better definition of what Hollywood does.
The comedy, satire movie What just happened is directed by Barry Levinson and stars Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Bruce Willis.
Government security censorship classification
*
Surveillance time
107 minutes (1:47 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
Film: 21 May 2009
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