What Just Happened is a winningly sharp
comedy about two nail-biting, back-stabbing, roller-coaster
weeks in the world of a middle-aged Hollywood producer -- as
he tries to juggle an actual life with an outrageous series
of crises in his day job.
Academy Award® winning director Barry Levinson reunites with
Academy Award® winning actor Robert De Niro and leading
producer Art Linson, who wrote the screenplay based on his
bestselling memoir. They all join with an all-star cast in
this rollicking, shrewd tale of a man besieged by people who
want him to be all sorts of things -- a money maker, an ego
buster, a bad news breaker, an artistic champion, a loyal
husband, an all-knowing father, not to mention sexy,
youthful and tuned-in – everything except for the one thing
he and all the preposterously behaved people he’s surrounded
by really are: bumbling human beings just trying to survive
by any means necessary.
Ben (DE NIRO) is already in over his head trying to balance
the tug-of-war of having two ex-wives and two different
families with his latest business venture – the boldly
“visionary” movie Fiercely starring Sean Penn (SEAN PENN) –
when everything that can go wrong goes completely screwy.
Fiercely looks like an audience-offending flop which draws
the ire of iron-gloved studio chief Lou (CATHERINE KEENER),
who forces him into tangling with the film’s rebellious and
drug-addled director Jeremy (MICHAEL WINCOTT). Meanwhile,
he’s confused and bewitched by his ex Kelly (ROBIN WRIGHT
PENN) who can’t make up her mind about him; shocked by his
daughter Zoe (KRISTEN STEWART), who seems to have grown up
overnight; infuriated by his screenwriter friend Scott
(STANLEY TUCCI) who’s trying to make a deal with him while
making moves on his former wife; horrified by a hirsute
Bruce Willis (BRUCE WILLIS) and flummoxed by Willis’
nebbishy agent Dick (JOHN TURTURRO), who’s scared to death
of his own clients.
Somehow amidst all the madness, treachery, deceit, runaway
egos, rampant commercialism, personal politics and atrocious
behavior of America’s dream-making machinery, Ben has to
find a way not just to make it to Cannes with a finished
film, but to cope . . .
© Magnolia Pictures. All
rights reserved
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