[Short Film]

“Hollywood”

Directed/Produced & Written my Michael Golon
Reviewed by Kent Manthie

In eleven minutes you don’t usually think that one can put together a film that really goes anywhere or at least tells a complete story. Well Michael Golon put together Hollywood -it’s a sort of film school project of sorts – the ground rules were that he had to make a film with no dialogue, save voice-overs.

The movie starts out with the voice over of this private investigator who mulls over the fact that, yeah, he’s living in Hollywood and he’s married and they just had a kid – his wife said that LA is no place to raise a child and he agreed (what? Are you kidding? I would’ve killed to grow up in LA you idiots!). Anyway, as he mulls that proposition over he also realizes that his job is as a P.I. and well, right now he’s out looking for this missing girl – her step mom came to him with her picture and asked him to scour Hollywood for her. It seems that the young girl had left Kansas for Hollywood to follow her dreams and be a star. But, as is usually the case, most girls that flock to the city of Angels don’t find fame and fortune but end up in a netherworld of vice and drugs.

It’s not long before our hero, the private eye is scouring all over the dregs of Hollywood, looking all over for this hapless young Kansas-girl. But his searching and searching comes to no avail. He even roughs up some dude – just some passerby in a fleabag hotel – the dude seems surprised but just stands there and takes it – doesn’t punch him in the nose or anything. Then you see our PI showing the girl’s picture all over the strip with no luck.

What he doesn’t know is that she has found something – she is now doing porn and turning tricks to make ends meet. But before he can find her she ends up in a state that so many young wanna-be starlets end up in – dead of a drug overdose. After it’s too late our hero, the private eye finds her dead body and is all broken up and is even sadder at having to break the news to her step mom.

Well, for an eleven minute film Golon certainly packs a lot into his film and it may be short but it does have a beginning, a middle and an end, so it is a honest to goodness story brought to life, via video. -KM

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