Made in Hollywood

Norman Yonemoto
1990-10-20

7
57 min

Steeped in irony, Made in Hollywood depicts the personal and cultural mediation of reality and fantasy, desire and identity, by the myths of television and cinema. Quoting from a catalogue of popular styles and sources, from TV commercials to The Wizard of Oz, the Yonemotos construct a parable of the Hollywood image-making industry from a pastiche of narrative cliches: A small-town ingenue goes West to find her dream and loses her innocence; the patriarch of a Hollywood studio nears death; a New York couple seeks screenwriting fame and fortune in the movies. With deadpan humor and hyperbolic visual stylization, the Yonemotos layer artifice upon artifice, constructing an image-world where reality and representation, truth and simulation, are meaningless distinctions.