Filmmakers real, fictional ready to climb own Matterhorns

Can't sing worth a darn? Can't dance without humiliating your spouse, children, friends and/or self?

Maybe you can make a movie.

Fox's latest reality competition, "On the Lot," gives 50 aspiring filmmakers a shot at a $1 million development deal with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks production company. Of course, a million won't buy you popcorn at the movies these days, but a chance to work under Spielberg's label? Priceless.

Like many of the best ideas, this one was shamelessly filched: in this case, from HBO, which aired its own filmmaking contest, "Project Greenlight," before dropping it two seasons later, when it was picked up for a final season by Bravo.

But where "Greenlight" dispensed with most of the competition off-camera, focusing instead on the efforts of the winning filmmakers to get their projects in the can and onto the screen, "On the Lot" has a more elaborate structure, modeled on "American Idol," that puts the competition front and center.
84491'On the Lot'

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Photo/FOX

"On the Lot" judges Carrie Fisher (left) and Brett Ratner will trim the 50 filmmaker wannabes down to 18 finalists.
When to Watch
What: "On the Lot"
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and 8:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Fox
What: "Entourage"
When: 9 Sunday, repeated at 10 p.m. Tuesday and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday
Where: HBO
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Many of the 50 semifinalists already have some connection to filmmaking, most of the others to the worlds of arts and entertainment: a singer-actress-filmmaker from Los Angeles, a freelance writer-director from England, a film editor from Indiana, a painter and graphic artist from Italy, etc.

They represent, in the eloquent words of Carrie Fisher, one of the four judges, "all races, creeds, colors and whatever."

This week's two episodes feature a "Hollywood boot camp" where the 50 will be assigned various tasks and get feedback from Fisher and the three other judges, producer-directors Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour 3," "X-Men 3"), Garry Marshall ("Georgia Rule," "Pretty Woman") and Jon Avnet ("Risky Business").

The judges will then trim the 50 down to 18 finalists. Starting next week, when the show's twice-weekly episodes will air at 7 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, viewers will watch and vote for their favorite short films, with a "Film Premiere" installment each Monday and a "Box Office" results show each Tuesday.

Fox couldn't offer more than a five-minute peek at the show, so it's hard to say how this will all look.

But, judging from "Project Greenlight," competitive filmmaking ain't for sissies.

The promising writers and directors chosen by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and their producing team on that show endured all manner of budget crises, casting disasters and scheduling snafus.

Of the three full-length features that came out of the series, "Stolen Summer" (2002) and "The Battle of Shaker Heights" (2003), both rather conventional comedy-dramas, were critical and commercial flops.

The third, the over-the-top horror movie "Feast" (2005), quickly went to video, where it has enjoyed some modest success.

Speaking of filmmaking, the boys of "Entourage" - HBO's sharp and explosively funny tale of the Hollywood high life - have taken the plunge recently, too.

Golden boy Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier), star of the hugely profitable "Aquaman," has wanted for years to do a movie about Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

"It'll be the new 'Scarface!' " Vince is fond of telling anyone who'll listen, especially his manager and best friend, Eric (Kevin Connolly), known as "E."

A script based on Escobar's life, "Medellin," has been knocking around town for a long time, but no one has wanted to make it.

Just last week on the show, however, Vince and E. acquired the screenplay for the low, low price of just $5 million and have set out to make the movie themselves.

Vince's man-eating shark of an agent, Ari (Jeremy Piven), would rather his client do another blockbuster, like "Matterhorn," the no-brainer a big producer offered him last week. But Vince is determined to go his own way - and, for the first time, with his own cash and career on the line.

As usual, "Entourage" gets the details right.

"Medellin" is just the sort of bad-boy biopic a hotshot like Vince would itch to take on - and just the kind of dark, risky project that makes big producers nervous.

Will our lads, who've gambled and won before with another producer's independent film, the arty "Queens Boulevard," defy expectations with "Medellin"? Or will they crash and burn, as the cynics shake their heads, swig their San Pellegrino and say, "They shoulda done 'Matterhorn' "?

I can't wait to find out.
Short takes

• Romantic, suspenseful, wry but with a mournful undercurrent, "The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton" (8 tonight on Milwaukee's Channel 10 and other PBS stations) dramatizes the brief, eventful career of Isabella Beeton (Anna Madeley), who became 19th-century England's reigning domestic diva before her death at just 28.

At the urging of her publisher husband, Samuel (JJ Feild), Isabella compiled "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management," a volume of recipes, rules and advice unlike anything that came before it. This 90-minute drama, complete in one episode, paints both Isabella and Sam as feminist heroes, working side by side to elevate homemaking from drudgery to art.

Madeley and Feild have real chemistry, and clever animation gives life to the book's Victorian engravings. But at least one British critic notes that screenwriter Sarah Williams ("Wallis & Edward") treats the speculation about the cause of Beeton's premature death as fact.

• It didn't see combat till late in World War II, but the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division had a dramatic impact, dislodging the Germans from their impossibly lofty strongholds in the Italian Alps.

"The Last Ridge" (midnight tonight on Channel 10) is filmmaker Abbie Kealy's tribute to this unique and highly trained division, which still serves today in Afghanistan and Iraq. Kealy smoothly integrates archival footage with re-enactments to tell the story of the historic Alpine campaign.

Among the veterans with memories to share are a pair of Wisconsin men, Raymond Farley of Racine and Moni Wuerslin of Waukesha.

Kealy, an Oconomowoc native and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a personal reason for making the film, which is based on the book of the same name by McKay Jenkins: An uncle she never knew, Stuart Abbott of Chicago, was killed while serving with the 10th in 1945.

"The Last Ridge" will be repeated on Memorial Day, May 28, at 9 p.m. on Milwaukee's Channel 36. It is not scheduled for broadcast on other public stations in Wisconsin.

• Insomnia can be awful. But if you find that you're making award-winning films while others sleep, do you dare reverse the curse?

That's the dilemma Alan Berliner documents in "Wide Awake" (12:30 a.m. Wednesday, repeated 7 p.m. Wednesday and 10:30 a.m. Saturday, HBO), a personal look at a condition that plagues millions.

Consulting with experts, stylishly illustrating his theme with vintage film clips and obsessing neurotically in voiceovers, Berliner can be hilariously self-involved - as when he reports the minute sensations induced by his first cup of coffee in 30 years - while delivering important truths about families, work and human nature.