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Sick Product of a Sick System

Great Film overall

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Starts with a good premise and Martin Landau in the first scene. Pretty soon Eli Wallach shows up. Bit later Robert DeNiro. Things are rolling along nicely when I realize Robert Wuhl, who irritates me at the best of times, was shouting his way through the movie. And then Laurie Metcalf shows up. Is she really this bad an actor or is it just a bad director working with no budget? It's all downhill from there. I just didn't care anymore. Didn't care about Wuhl's character. And why would I care about Christopher Walken's ''Warren'' character? And who is the kid's dad supposed to be? Elmore Leonard? Yelling, yelling, yelling. So tiresome. I bet this movie didn't gross a thousand bucks when it was released.

The info button described MISTRESS as thus " An earnest screenwriter sees his dream mangled in the Hollywood movie machine . Robert DeNiro is a crass moneyman demanding a role for his talentless mistress " Great I thought , this is going to be like THE KING OF COMEDY except it`s set in Hollyloot . Twenty minutes later DeNiro`s still not appeared and I`m aware of one thing - info buttons are never right The info button wasn`t so much wrong but it was rather misleading . DeNiro does indeed play a crass moneyman who is after a role for his mistress but she`s not exactly talentless . The plot mainly revolves around a failed director/screenwriter called Marvin who finds himself having to severly alter his script if he wants it produced , it`s a sort of satire/black comedy on the Hollyloot system of film making and once you get over the initial disappointment of it not being a Scorsese / DeNiro masterpiece it`s an enjoyable film , and one with a lot of scathing truth like a pitch is all down to presentation , casting is down to who the actress is sleeping with and a producer`s vulgarity is only matched by his ignorance . Also watch out for the line " This isn`t BATMAN 3 " which at that time hadn`t been produced yet . I guess someone made BATMAN 3 as a homage to MISTRESS ?

This is one of those movies that I fervently hope gets rediscovered one day. The performances are top notch, especially Landau as the extremely obseqious producer and Ralph as DeNiro's actress girlfriend. What makes this movie so great is that it understands the need of subtlety in satire, something that is often lacking. This film also says a lot about Hollywood and financing that REALLY hits the mark, maybe a little to close to home for some in the industry.

This movie is another over looked gem made awares recently to my consumerized multiplex movie taste. Robert DeNiro acted in this movie for free (according to IFC Channel's little factoid footnotes). It has a low budget feel to it. I dislike Robert "Arliss" Wuhl as an actor. Nontheless I found myself intrigued and enjoying Mistress.The discussions about art, and how they are a reflection of real life: the question posed in My Dinner With Andre: Is the art a reflection of it's artist, or is the artist a reflection of his art ? The discussion and breaking down of some of the tedious aspects of screenwriting and what it means and how one goes about it in the movie industry. The compromises required in movie-making, and art in general, is an intriguing aspect to this movie, making it more than just a run of the mill "dish on Hollywood/Los Angeles" movie. Also, the comprises woman in the movies have to make, and blacks. I think this is a great movie for an aspiring (screen)writer/actor to watch by providing some of the clues to how one has to think or approach writing and also the realistic constraints that get applied by the way the industry is structured.(BTW, I feel as if I am the only one to notice that this seems alot like Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway ((which was released 2 years after this movie)); Woody Allen is the greatest, but the uncredited theft of this movie may be a travesty ((especially provided the knowledge, also courteasy of IFC's footnotes, that the Writer/Director Ron Powlus[sp] spent 7 years running around trying to get this movie made. Which is a sad fact because this is an excellent movie and the amount of work he must have put into it is reflected.))Now looking at this as well, this is sort of a movie about the making of a movie about the real life making of a movie; which in itself is stating something very profound about movie making.