Deconstructing Hollywood’s Hijinks

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The formation of actual “air quotes,” the raising and curling of one’s index and middle fingers to convey ironic distance between what is said and what is meant, doesn’t occur until almost halfway through “The Little Dog Laughed,” Douglas Carter Beane’s entertaining if relentlessly glib evisceration of Hollywood’s wicked ways. Perhaps the title should be written as “‘The’ ‘Little’ ‘Dog’ ‘Laughed'”: By the time we actually see this bit of sign language from Diane, the Machiavellian agent at the play’s outrageous center, just about every profession of love and sincerity has been rendered suspect. The only deeply held emotion among this Hollywood set is an unflagging devotion to artifice.

“Mitch’s dream is to be everyone else’s dreams.” That’s how Diane (Julie White) explains the central goal of her client, a rising movie star named Mitchell Green (Tom Everett Scott). “And the thing about dreams is, is that dreams aren’t always healthy, but nevertheless everyone has them.”

The fact that anyone still needs this reminder is a testament to the potency of those celluloid illusions. And so Mr. Beane, aided by Scott Ellis’s bright, neo-screwball staging and Ms. White’s riveting central performance, is the latest to simultaneously curse and salute the industry. And despite a weakness for needlessly arch dialogue and a somewhat facile view of Hollywood (anyone who’s read a few chapters of William Goldman or seen 10 minutes of HBO’s “Entourage” could guess the basic plot developments), he turns this love-hate relationship into something rarer than a sequel at Sundance — a Broadway comedy that’s actually funny.

Mitchell’s dream would appear to be imperiled by what Diane describes as “a slight, recurring case of homosexuality.” It is during one such recurrence in New York that he invites a sensitive hustler named Alex (Johnny Galecki) to his hotel room. (The effective Allen Moyer designed the generically sleek sets.) Before long, Mitchell has invited his new “friend” — oops, there I go with the quotes — to join him at a gay-themed play that he and Diane are interested in optioning as a movie.

This development is received coolly by Ellen (Ari Graynor), Alex’s occasional girlfriend. But her response is nothing compared to that of Diane, who isn’t about to let a rent boy or anybody else scotch her and her closeted client’s rise up the Hollywood food chain. If a purported heterosexual plays a gay character, she explains, “it’s the pretty lady putting on the fake nose and winning an Oscar. If an actor with a ‘friend’ plays a gay role, it’s not acting. It’s bragging.”

Triage is clearly needed, and if anyone knows how desperately Hollywood needs a happy ending, it’s Diane. In one dazzlingly cynical speech, she offers all four characters a superficially ironclad, emotionally ruinous solution. This plot device was referred to with the Latin phrase deus ex machina during the days of Classical theater, a celestial emissary who descended from the heavens in the last scene to wrap up every seemingly unsolvable problem. Think of Diane as a dea ex machinations, one who emerges instead from hell — i.e., Los Angeles.

Ms. White was the best thing about “Little Dog” during its run at off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theater last spring, and while some streamlining by Messrs. Beane and Ellis has raised the overall level of quality, the cajoling, seductive, altogether terrifying Diane is even more formidable on Broadway. Virtually every memorable quote in the play is hers, and her faint Southern lilt gives an added twinkle to Diane’s barbs. But her performance needs to be seen as much as heard. Ms. White has picked up a whole new arsenal of physical feints and deceptively placid bits of body language, and the audience quickly comes to realize that, like Mitchell, it is in good hands.

Mr. Galecki, the other holdover from off-Broadway, has grown in the role of the hustler whose emotions threaten to upend the Hollywood contingent’s carefully laid-out game plan. Alex’s burgeoning feelings offer just enough of an emotional foothold in a play that constantly threatens to tip into self-satisfaction.

Like “Entourage,” “Little Dog” has as its leading man a rather bland, unscintillating himbo. Is this a case of unpersuasive writing or a subtle dig at the industry’s “image is everything” ethos? Either way, Mitchell is the play’s least sympathetic character, and while Mr. Scott’s chiseled jaw and bruised sensitivity are well suited to the role, the character’s passivity ultimately gets the better of him. A similar fate befalls Ms. Graynor, who has been asked to turn a litany of oh-so-clever one-liners into a plausible human being.

Which brings us to the play’s fifth character — He Meaning Him, the unseen naïf whose play churns up so much of the trouble for Mitchell, Diane, and everybody else. Despite having been burned in the past, He Meaning Him is clueless about the movie business. He is alternately described as “notoriously neurotic,” an “inconsequential little stain,” and “St. Francis of the Sissies.” The closest anyone comes to complimenting him is in Mitchell’s semi-admiring line, “He’s got, like, morals and integrity. And they’ve made him bitter and snippy.”

He Meaning Him is clearly meant to signify Mr. Beane. And while any writer who has ever even had a layover at Los Angeles International Airport has a Hollywood horror story, a special circle of development hell seems to exist for Mr. Beane, whose optioned play “As Bees in Honey Drown” spent a decade in turnaround, and whose most notable Hollywood credit is the infamous “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.”

It is not giving too much away about “The Little Dog Laughed” to say He Meaning Him’s beloved tale of same-sex love does not remain intact on the way to production. And the inconsequential little stain’s feelings are notably absent in the calculations of Diane’s final masterstroke. But don’t pity him too much. He Meaning Him Meaning Beane now has a saucy, twisty, frequently hilarious Broadway play to go along with his morals and integrity. This may not mean much to Diane — the only thing she holds in deeper contempt than the studios’ art-house divisions is the theater — but even she would salute the idea of someone, anyone, getting a happy ending.

Open run (138 W. 48th St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-239-6200).


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