Misty Green

If They Could See Me Now

Chris Rock has made a name for himself as a versatile, talented actor and comedian. He’s proven himself time and again with a career that now spans five decades. But he’s struggled with writing and directing features. This, his fourth feature as director and seventh as screenwriter, shows incremental improvements behind the camera, but there’s plenty of room to grow.

A pearl of Hollywood wisdom for aspiring screenwriters is to write about what you know. Rock got that part.

But the follow-on to that wisdom is to – while you’re writing about what you know – elevate the drama and the stakes to make it engaging for audiences. Rock missed this.

Therein lies the problem with Misty Green. It’s a well-made movie, technically. But it offers merely a stereotypical inside look at Hollywood and it’s not very interesting. The biggest problem is it’s really hard to care about any of the characters, including the eponymous Misty Green.

The movie is structured around one week in the life of Misty, a self-destructive Emmy award-winning actress (she’s “the Black one,” notes one remarkably perceptive talent scout) who’s struggling to find her next role. It doesn’t help when you’re fired from a high-profile project for cause (punching your co-star in the face). It blurs that fuzzy line between creative differences and assault.

It also doesn’t help when – the night before a major screentest – Misty chooses to go out with a former fling and co-star to snort cocaine and fornicate in a bathroom stall.

Come on, Green. Nobody’s going to play Misty for you. You’ve gotta stand and deliver. Do the right thing. You have one week to get it together: move out of your posh apartment and memorize your lines!

California Dreamin’

Misty Green starts by defining the slang term “the bag.” The definition is literally spelled out right there on the screen. It’s a verbose definition, essentially boiling down to something taken or secured and it typically includes a haul of filthy lucre. This definition is not really necessary. But Rock calls back to it later in the movie in a way that is also unnecessary. It’s a scene in Dubai. Lots of cutthroat ladies in bikinis and high heels lose all inhibitions as they deck each other while they claw away at whatever cash and jewelry than can grab.

There’s a sense Rock is trying to make inroads into a Tarantino-style world. Even the movie’s “Misty Green” title cards – shown early in the movie and at its end – are in a typeface akin to Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. There’s also – apparently – a desire to add some ‘70s edginess to this drama set in modern times.

But those efforts don’t land on solid ground. Chris Rock gets in his own way.

Rock namedrops various (and completely unrelated) productions, including Cinderella, Dreamgirls, This Is Us, The Devil Wears Prada, Shaft and others, and there are a few notable posters or movie art on view, including Maxxxine, The Seven Year Itch and American Gigolo. That’s all low-hanging fruit.

There’s also a solid cast, including Rosalind Eleazar (Apple TV’s Slow Horses), Adam Driver (House of Gucci), Topher Grace (Buddy), Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out).

It’d be nice, though, if Rock had called in more favors and worked more casual cameos into scenes featuring so many Hollywood, Los Angeles and Santa Monica hot spots. That would’ve helped drive home a smidge – and only a smidge – of grounding into the proceedings. That said, there is one superb cameo; more on that in a bit.

Rock gives himself a major role as a struggling director looking to make his own rebound. Thankfully, he doesn’t take things to M. Night Shyamalan levels of gratuitous self-infatuation. Rock is an established actor and he’s fine in the role. The challenge is what that role represents.

One Night Only

Rock plays Jordan Green; he’s the movie director who tried to direct Misty (Rosalind Eleazar) in a production of Cinderella, a star-turn that ended with the wave of a magic wand, or, rather, that punch to her co-star’s face. Now he’s directing a “reboot” (odd; shouldn’t it be called a “remake”?) of Dreamgirls, to be filmed in Vancouver (not Hollywood) and with the lead role of Deena (portrayed by Beyonce in the 2006 movie version of the Broadway musical) filled by a woman who can’t sing. (Great idea. Not.)

Right off, Rock starts layering details, some helpful, some irritating.

Rock inserts unnecessary confusion as he acknowledges his character has the same name as Misty’s brother, played by Daniel Kaluuya. But you can call Misty’s brother Jay, to keep it simple. Misty reluctantly acknowledges she knows Jordan Green, the director, which isn’t surprising; he’s hard to forget, given their turbulent work history.

But Misty can belt out tunes like a superstar, including a jazzy night club version of Radiohead’s Creep.

Okay. Sniff it? There’s a rebound opportunity in the air.

Now it’s Misty getting in her own way.

Never mind the clock is ticking. She was given seven days to leave her luxe Santa Monica apartment with a stunning view of the beach and the pier. She’d been living there for the past four years under some cloudy arrangement with a guy who’s now deceased and with the property now in the hands of his less than mirthful widow.

And yet time and again Misty takes an adversarial stance against success, undermining her own best interests.

Time’s Up

The layering piles on at this point.

There are numerous comments on racism that aren’t particularly insightful. They’re simply there. A layer that doesn’t add depth to any of the characters.

Of course, there’s also sexism.

And the classic Hollywood scene of sex and drugs (and restrooms).

Naturally, Misty – a Black woman – is subjected to all of the above. But the dramatic element still falls flat. She hurts herself more than anybody else.

And out of nowhere is a riff on bi-polar disorder. It turns out Misty’s brother (the “other Jordan Green,” the one played by Kaluuya) is bi-polar. But that’s not enough. Jordan endures a nasty, brutal sexual assault back during their childhood even as Misty turns away. There’s a semi-strained dynamic between the two, but it’s oddly muted. Given their harsh past, what’s there doesn’t work as intended.

Making Kaluuya’s character all the more problematic is a strange affectation (for lack of a better term): he likes to shock people by throwing rubber spiders at them. Once, it’s by appearances a ploy to skip out on a bill (which is also a point of racist allegations when the bill is placed in front of the white guy at the table, allegedly randomly). And it gets worse: when pulled over for a second time by the same (Black) patrol officer (Anthony Anderson), the spider trick sends the officer jumping back, right into an oncoming truck.

It’s not black comedy.

In any sense.

One last element is a murder case that flashes across various TV screens throughout the movie. It involves college co-eds. There’s no tension around the murderer running free or that more murders might be in the offing. Instead, a simple comment is made: a white guy did it. Guaranteed. A white guy did it. And, of course, Jordan Green (the brother, not the director) is implicated in the case and held on $600,000 bail.

That’s when those layers stop piling up and start rotting away.

Points are made with all the eloquence of a pile driver and yet leave none of the impact, aside from a dull headache.

Much of the dialogue is cringey, but there is one line that smacks of smarts. After meeting with her agent, Misty is asked by his assistant, “Misty, do you need validation?” It’s worded perfectly to suggest a double meaning: both validate her parking ticket and Misty’s life itself.

Local Color

Rock works in a lot of insider lingo as he crafts this insider look at Hollywood. But the movie’s slim, low-budget logistics are a little embarrassing. Rock films scenes – such as Misty’s lounge act – in the spacious lobby of the Roosevelt and in Twenty-Five Degrees, then tries to make those locations two distinct and separate areas of Hollywood blocks away from each other.

They’re in the same building

Or they were. Twenty-Five Degrees, once upon a time a high-end 24-hour burger joint found at the Hollywood Boulevard entrance of the Roosevelt, closed earlier this year. This author has fond memories of the place; late nights for some beer and a burger and early mornings for some coffee and eggs.

It’d be a great spot to slip in one of those cameos. Maybe bump into Adam Sandler (Rock’s co-star in The Longest Yard remake) for a moment of comical shop talk.

Enter the one great cameo: Ice-T makes an appearance as himself in a very quirky commercial being directed by Jordan Green (the director, not Misty’s brother). It’s the kind of scene that should’ve filled Misty Green from start to finish. It packs some satire with some social commentary.

Ice-T walks down an alley serving as a homeless camp site (Mel’s Diner, the Hard Rock Café, TCL Chinese Theatre, and the Roosevelt, all seen previously and only a block or two away). He’s got his CarShield persona running hot as he pitches a new product: Ameri-Tents. He notes that society has yet to contend with its responsibility in dealing with mental illness. It doesn’t make complete sense, but it’s conceivable to interpret it as an interesting hook to all that’s preceded it.

At their core, Jordan Green (the brother, not the director) and his sister, Misty Green, suffer from mental illness to some degree or another.

With that, those final few minutes offer the most thought-provoking ideas and elements in the movie, so at least it ends on an oddly strange high note. Albeit one that gives a Hollywood ending to and puts a neat bow around this tale of sex, drugs, mental illness and murder.