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Horrible Hollywood: Difference between revisions
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When you think of Hollywood and other places within the entertainment industry, as well as the stars that inhabit them, you think of glamorous men and women who create the magic you see in movies and television, right?
Essentially, it's the entertainment industry depicted as a [[Crapsack World]] populated solely by horrible [[Jerkass]]es.
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In the world of ''[[Nana]]'', assorted record companies are evil and probably Yakuza, all performers have issues ranging from [[Parental Abandonment]] to being in teenage prostitution rings to drug addiction, and they are surrounded by stalkers.
* This is lampooned in the [[Gag Dub]] of ''[[Duel Masters]]'':
{{quote|'''[[Arc Villain| Prince Maurice:]]''' Okay, so I'm not really a Hollywood producer, I'm [[Card-Carrying Villain| an evil P.L.O.O.P.]] from Los Angeles, which is one and the same, really.}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In ''[[X-Men]]'' comics, Mojo - an obese, disgusting, ''ugly'' alien overlord who is also his dimension's biggest film producer - is a villain whose purpose seems to be making fun of corrupt officials in the television and film industry.
== [[Film]] ==
* [[David Mamet]]'s film ''[[State And Main]]''.
* Film Quarterly, describing Lynch's vision of Hollywood in ''[[Mulholland Drive]]'': "Human putrefaction ... in a city of lethal illusions."
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* Discussed at length in ''Hollywood Paparazzo''. It is explained that the rise of tabloid journalism and the paparazzi has led to celebrities becoming [[Artist Disillusionment|insular, screwed-up and totally alienated]] from the rest of society, who often go down a self-destructive path. In turn, the paparazzi are self-obsessed people who run and hide from anyone they don't know to conceal their identities, people in a position of power are vain and power-hungry, and the fans are crazed lunatics who will stop at nothing to harass celebrities. The film highlights the absurdity of this culture with a well-adjusted young boy who acts just as cutthroat as the paparazzi when it comes to getting celebrity photos.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* ''Money: A Suicide Note'' is a [[Martin Amis]] book about a really unpleasant advertising man writing a movie script and getting it published. He is a truly horrible character, and so are most of the other people he meets.
* Nathanael West's novel ''[[Day Of The Locust]]''
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* [[Clive Barker]]'s ''[[Coldheart Canyon]]'' starts with this trope, and proceeds into more supernatural territory...
* All the characters of ''[[Imperial Bedrooms]]'', the sequel to [[Bret Easton Ellis]]'s ''[[Less Than Zero]]'', are members of the Hollywood machine.
* [[Raymond Chandler]]'s fifth novel, ''The Little Sister'', is all about this. Story features a producer named Oppenheimer, because Chandler's subtle like that.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Californication]]''
* The ''[[Supernatural]]'' episode "Hollywood Babylon".
* The ''[[Law &
* The 70s ''[[Ellery Queen]]'' episode "The Adventure of the Sinister Scenario" had the Queens, father and son, witness this for themselves when they go on the set of an adaptation of one of Ellery's books. This being an Ellery Queen mystery, this trope's horrible aspects culminate in murder.
* ''[[
* ''[[Made in Canada]]'', except it's about [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|the Canadian industry]].
** And yet, universally believable enough to be exported south of the border (as ''The Industry'').
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* ''[[The West Wing]]'', of all things, touches on this every so often. C.J Cregg's backstory involves her working as a publicist for a selection of spoilt and neurotic Hollywood types who throw tantrums if they get placed lower on a magazine's 'who's most influential in Hollywood' list; a job she hates and considers meaningless (and eventually gets fired from). Another episode has the President go to a fundraising event in Beverly Hills swarming with these types; he doesn't have fun. A few other episodes also have mentions of this kind of thing.
* Played with in the ''[[Castle]]'' episode "One Life To Lose"; the behind the scenes environment of the popular soap opera isn't exactly free of intrigue, bitchiness and people sleeping with and / or hating each other and playing their own agendas, but it's no worse than some of the other walks of life the characters have entered.
* ''[[30 Rock]]'', while more sympathetic than the others, does
* In one episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', Eric goes to Hollywood be a cast member of the [[Self-Parody]] show ''Kid Gets Acquainted with the Universe'', he finds out that the actors on the show are either [[jerkass]]es or highly neurotic, the so-called "best writers in town" are actually small children, and the scripts are [[Recycled Script|recycled]] many times and full of [[Stylistic Suck]].
* In ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'', Hollywood, Broadway and the TV industry are all full of people lying, cheating, sleeping around to get ahead, and above all, plotting to kill each other. Admittedly, this doesn't distinguish them from ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]''{{'}}s portrayal of newspapers, book publishing, computer firms, toy companies, or people from small towns in Maine...
== [[Music]] ==▼
▲== Music ==
* [[The Decemberists]]' "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41ygKJ3ABk Los Angeles, I'm Yours]" is more about the city of Los Angeles, but elements of Horrible Hollywood creep into the lyrics.
* [[System of a Down]]'s "Lost in Hollywood."
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* [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]]' "Californication" includes some of this, as it celebrates the good and the bad.
== [[Theatre]] ==▼
▲== Theatre ==
* The protagonist of the musical ''[[City of Angels (musical)|City of Angels]]'' encounters elements of this kind of Hollywood when trying to adapt his crime novel into a movie.
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* The ''[[L.A. Noire]]'' case "The Fallen Idol" shows this at its worst, with a sleazy pedophile movie producer who rapes pre-teen girls and films it. Interestingly averted in the rest of the game: Despite being assigned to the Hollywood division at one point, you rarely investigate anyone in the entertainment industry.
* Johnny Cage makes quite a few jokes about this in the ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' franchise. For instance, in pre-fight dialogue between him and Kabal:
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* Lazlow Jones in ''[[Grand Theft Auto V]]''. [[Author Avatar| (Not the real one, the fictional version in the game.)]] This guy is pretty much the stereotype of the sleazy Hollywood agent, a selfish, egotistical, condescending misogynist and pervert, kind of like [[Howard Stern]] or [[Jerry Springer]] minus ''any'' of their decent qualities. [[Even Evil Has Standards| Even Travis is disgusted by him]], and it seems he's ''already'' dealing with quite a few sexual harassment lawsuits before he and the protagonists even meet. Of course, seeing as his VA is the real Jones, this is very much [[Self-Deprecation]] humor on his part.
== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[[The Onion]]'' ran an advice column called [http://www.theonion.com/articles/ask-a-faulknerian-idiot-manchild,12248/ "Ask A Faulknerian Idiot Manchild"]. In one, he recounts the night he spent with a bitter, drunken writer who had a case of this trope.
{{quote|"He was talking how he never should have done gone to Hollywood to write for them picture-shows. He was saying how California was like a demon straight from hell, a burning flapping devil beast that ate up everything it saw, and that it even ate his soul. When he stopped talking I tried to shake him to wake him on up, but he weren't moving. He weren't waking on up at all."}}
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
▲==Western Animation==
*''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'':
** In "Bart Gets Famous", Bart becomes the "I didn't do it" kid and is exposed to the full force of showbiz and a hideous bitch goddess.
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* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' episode "Film Flam" had hack director Bernie Bernstein. He convinced the Girls that he wanted to make a film about their heroics, when in reality, his goal was to keep the trio occupied so he could rob a bank without them noticing. Which in retrospect, [[Stupid Crooks|was a pretty dumb idea.]] He was a pretty big jerk towards his film crew, too.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* [[Truth in Television|Truth in...Hollywood?]] The inspiration has to come from somewhere.
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