Acting In
Hollywood
by Alex Andy Phuong
The
man proposed to the woman. He then
asks the girl if she is like Estella from Charles
Dickens’s Great Expectations. He
asks her that question because he empathizes with
Pip, the main protagonist of that novel, and then
the girl responds that she actually is playing
Estella. In fact, the entire
conversation between these two people is actually
a modernized remake of the 1998 film version of Great
Expectations, which stars Gwyneth Paltrow
and Ethan Hawke. The entire opening
scene of this movie is actually a work of meta-fiction
that combines the irony that Dickens is famous
for with the fact that the entire scene is a
movie within a movie.
The
director then yells, “Cut!” The
man tells the woman that she did an outstanding
performance, and that she should win an Oscar. The
woman then replies, “Oh Ethan, I already won
an Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love.” It
turns out that the woman in the opening scene of
this film actually is Gwyneth Paltrow! Paltrow
then offers condolences on the fact that Ethan
Hawke lost the Academy Award for Best Supporting
Actor to J.K. Simmons. She tells him
that Boyhood is brilliant, and that he
was very lucky to have collaborated with Richard
Linklater.
After
the filming of the opening scene of a movie
within a movie, Hawke returns to his dressing
room, and removes the make-up that made him look
like a darker-skinned version of Finn from the
original 1998 film that he starred in. He
then leaves the room to discuss with the director
about the recent #OscarsSoWhite controversy. He
compliments the director for giving him a chance
to play a non-white character. The
director happily accepts that compliment, and
then breaks the fourth wall by asking the film
audience to celebrate diversity. The
director then asks Paltrow and Hawke to return to
their original places, and then the film within
the film resumes filming.
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