:: September/October 2004 Volume 3/Number 5

Hollywood Buddha
Opens September 24,
Laemmle Sunset 5
www.YBG.com

Watching 8 out of 10 Hollywood movies makes me feel like some kind of entertainment consumer or special effects sucker. Watching “The Day After Tomorrow,” for example, I felt like an idiot. Watching the independently produced “Hollywood Buddha” however was, well, a completely different story. And when the movie was through I felt proud to be a film-maker, I felt like I was part of a unique occasionally ditsy creative enclave, like I led or could be leading a spiritually gutsy life in an adventurous Hollywood community.

Written, produced, directed and starring Philippe Caland, creator and producer of “Boxing Helena”, “Hollywood Buddha” tells the story of a producer/
director, also named Philippe, holed up in Beverly Hills with his still unfinished home, complaining neighbors and a five year old movie about necrophilia called, appropriately enough, “Dead Girl”, which he has been unable to get distributed. From frame one, it is an ill wind that blows thru Philippe’s back lot as he is faced with foreclosure on his property and one dismal mishap after another. Through it all Philippe maintains the kind of stoic grace usually not known to filmmakers in his position. Life is, after all, just one thing after another, sometimes good, sometimes bad and in this film they are almost always unexpected.

At the advice of his guru, Philippe rents a Buddha statue for $2000 a month and casts his fate to the winds - which takes him from the beach and back to solvency. Along the way he stumbles up against a cast of Hollywood characters – would be backers and financiers unlikely to turn up in any other Hollywood film you’ll see.

Philippe Caland in the leading role shines, giving his character a kind of solid unperturbed –in-the-face-of-dire-consequences constancy. Everyone else is up to the task of being who they pretend to be and keeping the light focused on our hero. The script is daring in its loopy simplicity, it asks us to believe it, and after some opening scene hesitations we leap right in – take me where you take me it’s a fine day for a drive through the Hollywood Hills and the independent filmmaker’s edge of the magic kingdom.

Through it all I felt like someone actually made this movie, created it, instead of supervised some big time celluloid extruding machine. It speaks, as I said, in an unexpected language. Where the sex scene is supposed to be, it isn’t. Where the quick cut should appear, it doesn’t. The reprisals, anger and the blows are no shows.

Its spiritual message is less than classically holy, and therein lies its spiritual strength – for no one here is holier than thou, or holy at all – yet it nearly sings with serendipity, interconnectedness and the power of getting out of the way of your dreams. The movie is about letting go, “When you speak your truth the Universe listens,” Philippe tells us.

Set to open at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Sept. 24th, this is no perfect movie, it doesn’t even try (that’s why it works). But blessing of blessing, as a filmmaker this movie made me feel like I wasn’t alone. And isn’t that the function of art?