Revisiting 1999: The Forgotten Films --- Bowfinger (Frank Oz)

Here's what I've covered so far:

Intro: My Year at "Film School"
The (sorta)Forgettable Films
The Films That Just Don't Hold Up
When Bad Movies Happen to Good Directors

The Forgotten Gems of 1999:
The War Zone (Tim Roth)
Sunshine (István Szabó)
Beyond the Mat (Barry W. Blaustein)
Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot)
Mumford (Lawrence Kasdan)

By 1999 comedies were getting so grotesque and over-the-top that it was almost a guarantee that if your film was PG-13 or below that your comedy was destined for failure. I've spent the last two installments writing about two comedies that are so good-natured and sweet that it's almost as if people had forgotten about these small comic gems that were released in the summer of sex comedies that were heavy on sex and light on comedy. One of my very favorite comedies from 1999 was Steve Martin's Bowfinger, a satire on low-budget Hollywood filmmaking directed by Frank Oz (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, another one of my favorite Martin comedies). The film was the last time Martin and his co-star Eddie Murphy were ever consistently funny throughout a film. It also showed that, in typical Martin-penned fashion, comedy didn't have to be vulgar or mean spirited. Bowfinger is a pointed satire with the typical over-the-top Eddie Murphy bits one comes to expect from his films, mixed with the nuanced humor you also expect from Martin's films. It's truly one of the forgotten gems of 1999.


The film is about those fringe producers, actors, and aspiring directors who wish to make it in Hollywood, but really, their studio exists in the margins of La La Land. Bobby Bowfinger is played by Steve Martin in one of his best performances. He's the perfect man to play the fast talking con man of a producer/director. He always knows just how to convince his troupe that their next big hit is the film they're making. He sits inside of Bowfinger International Studios (in one of my favorite subtle jokes there's a sign outside of the rundown building, there's something hilariously authentic about the way the establishing shot looks) mulling over debts and depression due to lack of ideas. However, he gets the brilliant idea film an action movie starring the number one action star in America Kit Ramsey (Murphy).

Kit's an uptight, paranoid actor with a chip on his shoulder. He constantly complains that Arnold and Clint and other white actors get all the good lines. He whines "where's my Hasta La Vista Baby!" and wonders why his agent is giving him bad scripts. Ramsey is one of many Hollywood stars who is into the new age cults that prey on the insecure Hollywood types. Martin and his director Oz have a lot of fun lightly jabbing these new age organizations, and I especially liked Terence Stamp's hilarious portrayal as the guru of Ramsey's new age group called Mind Head.

We're introduced to a bevy of these dreamers ho believe everything the bottom-feeding Bowfinger tells them: Daisy (Heather Graham) is a sexy blond who comes off of a bus from the Midwest and is looking to make it big in Hollywood, Carol (the always funny Christine Baranski) is one of those actors who thinks that the more you emote the better the performance, Dave (Jaime Kennedy) works at Universal Studios and borrows the equipment from the lot so that Bowfinger can make his film, Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle) is the screenwriter, and finally Slater (Kohl Suddoth) is the obligatory hunk of the action film. There's also Jiff, played by Murphy (and one of his best creations), a look-a-like who resembles Ramsey in looks and only looks. He's a sweet, innocent bumbler of a man, and when he interviews for the job he thinks his credentials are solid because he frequents Blockbuster Video (in fact the whole interview scene where we're first introduced to Jiff is one of the funniest moments in the film).

They all hope to turn Afrim's screenplay entitled "Chubby Rain", an Ed Wood-esque sci-fi/action film about aliens who come to earth via rain drops, into a mega hit starring Kit Ramsey. As alluded to earlier Bowfinger comes up with a plan to play off of Ramsey's privacy and idiosyncrasies. He tells his crew that Ramsey has agreed to make the movie but he's so method that he cannot ever see the camera or interact with the crew. This ingenious plot device plays nicely off of the always-paranoid Ramsey who begins to really think that aliens are after him.

The film is a lot of fun, and like Galaxy Quest and Mumford, once the plot of Bowfinger kicks in it's a breezy comedy that makes you smile more than laugh out loud. But don't get me wrong, there are some hilarious moments as when Jiff has to run across traffic for an action scene, and Bowfinger convinces him that all of the drivers are stunt drivers. I also love the how Daisy plays all of the men in the film in order to get what she wants. Her only knowledge of being a starlet is to sleep your way towards the top, so that's what she does. Her and Bowfinger have a hilarious date where they both get what they want while simultaneously thinking that they are playing the other for the sucker. It's a brilliant piece of writing and acting by Martin.

I also love how Murphy portrays Ramsey. Not since the underrated comedy Boomerang has Murphy been this appealing. He plays Ramsey as a man angry at everything because he's supposed to be. Why? Because he's black and "the sickness runs deep" he explains. There's a great scene where Ramsey scans the script in his computer to see how many times the letter K appears. It comes up 1,456 times, which Kit informs us is perfectly divisible by three; therefore KKK appears in the script 486 times. It's a hilarious portrayal of Kit's paranoia. Then watch the scene that follows where his friend eggs him on ("yeah I see where you're going with this..." is the perfect line a hanger-on friend of a celebrity would say) when Ramsey's agent says the script "isn't Shakespeare", which then devolves into a rant about "spear shakers". The way Murphy portrays Ramsey as someone who listens to these insane nudges from his posse and then passes them off as his own crazy thoughts is a brilliant balancing act. Murphy hasn't been this fun to watch since his portrayal as fast talking cop Axel Foley.

Bowfinger is a forgotten comedy classic. Yes, classic. I think it's one of those rare satires on the film industry that is just mean enough to make its point, but doesn't go over the top with anything, creating a sweet, humorous film that makes you smile as well as laugh out loud. It reminds me of another forgotten Hollywood satire, The Big Picture starring Kevin Bacon and directed by Christopher Guest. That film was a little more subtle (okay, maybe a lot more) than Bowfinger, but they remind me of each other in the sense that they are both underrated comedies about the industry of filmmaking. Bowfinger ranks along side the aforementioned Dirty Rotten Scoundrels as well as L.A. Story and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as one of my very favorite Martin films. Martin's film is a breath of fresh air, like Galaxy Quest and Mumford, other small comedies from 1999 I adore, it shows that to be funny you don't need to be mean spirited or vulgar (although when done right that can be funny) you just need to know funny, and Martin knows funny.