Mondo Hollywoodland (2021)

Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Audacity isn’t dead, thank God.

Though they’re far more complicated and expensive to produce, movies, culturally speaking, have been on the same mass-market conveyor belt as cheeseburgers and USB cables for as long as I can remember. When mediocre comic book amusements like Shang-Chi are heralded as “triumphs”, you know we’re in the deepest of shit.

It’s refreshing, then, to be reminded that there are filmmakers chipping away at the margins of entertainment to make art that is fearless, inventive, and really about something—despite the risk of some of those qualities triggering the “Offense” response that many viewers seem to have forgotten was once one of the pop landscape’s key features.

Watching the first few minutes of Janek Ambros’ Mondo Hollywoodland, you might get the impression that it’s a sun-baked riff on Jonas Mekas, full of fleeting, seemingly disconnected L.A. encounters and a quick history of Hollywood narrated by a perturbed Englishman from the fifth dimension (Ted Evans). When the pace settles into something resembling a narrative structure, we meet Normand Boyle (Chris Blim), a psychedelic mushrooms dealer who teaches the disembodied traveler about Tinseltown’s three-tiered hierarchy of Titans, Weirdos, and Dreamers.

Ambros spent approximately ten thousand dollars shooting a feature on an iPhone 8 Plus. If this brings to mind words like “gimmicky”, “cheap”, or “unserious”, rest assured that Mondo Hollywoodland is anything but. The movie feels as professional as a wide-release-bound Sundance indie, whether Ambros’ cameraphone is embedded in actual anti-gun street protests; tucked into an after-hours diner booth with four dim-witted Antifa members; or following a nervous, cocaine-abusing talent agent. These and several other locations and situations come to life with personality, staging, and design that belie any notions of “point-and-shoot” filmmaking.

Let’s get back to audacity.

Co-writers Ambros, Blim, and Marcus Hart include a few jokes in their film that took me aback with laughter. One involves 9/11; another dissects the term “Latinx”; and a third is actually an entire category of humor that I’ll call “dunking on Antifa”—which, as the movie goes along, turns out to be a sly subversion (which is even more subtly subverted in the final analysis).

I remember a time, not so long ago, when every other mainstream movie held boundaries-pushing humor in the highest regard. From Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle to Old School to SuperBad to Tropic Thunder, studios couldn’t get enough of hypersexualized, dim-witted raunch—and neither could audiences. Maybe those films simply had their day and succumbed to broad-appeal fare like comic book movies, but I’ve also noticed a generalized softening of the culture.

Suggest re-releasing any of the above now and you’ll be met with accusations of bigotry, sexism, and possibly threads of deplatforming. Hell, people still bring up Robert Downey, Jr.’s “blackface” performance in Tropic Thunder as a historical wrong that must never be repeated—as if the 2008 versions of these prudes weren’t rolling in the aisles, propelling the film to nearly $200 million.

Of course, attacking people based on immutable characteristics or beliefs is not cool. But not all jokes at someone’s expense are an attack. For example, when a character in Mondo Hollywoodland takes issue with the term “Latinx”, the writers aren’t engaging in racial condemnation—they’re making fun of a weird term meant to categorize people who likely didn’t ask for it in the first place. The argument, of course, is that three white writers have no business critiquing how people of color choose to identify themselves. To this I can only say that it’s wrong to judge anyone based on gender or the color of their skin—so leave the white writers alone.*

During a recent conversation with Ambros, I realized that we are not on the same page, politically. Though he and his fellow writers take some rather pointed jabs at Antifa, he ultimately ascribes a level of nobility to the activist group that I find questionable. This didn’t prevent me from enjoying the film, or from finding value in the writers’ point of view. I appreciated the boldness, the audacity, of artists putting their beliefs on display while also poking fun at the absurdity of themselves and their opponents.

I also appreciated Ambros and company’s willingness to invest their film with just about every conceivable emotion without fear of losing tonal consistency. Yes, there’s the nonsensical drug-infused silliness and the unrestrained comedy I just droned on and on about, but the “Dreamers” chapter contains some of the most hopeful characters and romantic ideas about a lifelong pursuit of creativity that I’ve ever seen. Through the struggles of aspiring actress Anna (Jessica Jade Andres) and aspiring gym owner Barry (Barry Shay), we see the raw ingredients that filter up through the jaded Weirdos’ narco-economy, ultimately becoming the polished, marketable but hopelessly corrupt products that allow Titans to thrive.

Imagine John Dies at the End re-imagined by Gaspar Noé and co-written by Bret Easton Ellis and Christopher Guest, and you’ll be in the neighborhood of Mondo Hollywoodland—an irresistible horrorshow critique of a degraded, commoditized, and regurgitated culture that miraculously retains some features of its once viable humanity.

You might call that weird beyond the pale.

I call it the only kind of filmmaking that really matters.

*I actually have no idea what Marcus Hart’s skin color is, and shouldn’t assume. That goes for Ambros and Blim, too, actually, despite what I’ll call “visual evidence”. Looking at me, for example, you might have a hard time correctly guessing my parentage.