Mistress movie review & film summary (1992)
Barry Primus' "Mistress" knows a lot about the world of guys who made a little money in one business and now want to spend it in show business. In particular, it knows how the word "producer" is used among Hollywood would-bes.
"Producer" here does not mean a man who can, or will, produce a movie. When used between men, it means a guy who can write a check.
Used in talking to a woman, it means either (a) the man you will have to sleep with before you get in the movie, or (b) the man you are sleeping with, who has promised to put you in a movie.
Hollywood at this level consists of a lot of lunches involving a movie project, money and sex, and men who can offer any one of the three and want to use it to get the other two. "Mistress" has a good ear for how these people talk while they're having their lunches and their meetings, and it sees the desperation that's right under the surface.
The movie has been described as a low-rent version of Robert Altman's "The Player," but it would be more accurate to say it's about low-rent players. The key thing to understand, if you think of this movie and "The Player" side-by-side, is that there is no essential difference between the top people in "The Player" and the sleazy wheeler-dealers in "Mistress." Most of the millionaires who are honored at industry banquets have the same values as the fly-by-night producers who hope somebody else will pick up the check at Hamburger Hamlet. They've just had better luck.
The movie follows one project through an endless series of compromises. The project is a screenplay written years ago by Marvin Landisman (Robert Wuhl), a once-promising director who now makes educational videos.
Martin Landau plays Jack Roth, the desperately friendly, ingratiating middle-man who hopes to connect Marvin's screenplay to some guys with money. We meet three of the guys with money, played by Eli Wallach, Danny Aiello and Robert De Niro. They range on a scale from pathetic (the Wallach character) to smart and shrewd (De Niro), but each one is interested in the project only because it might help keep his mistress happy.
