Stand-Ins

The year is 1937 and six women have come to Hollywood with dreams of making it in show business, but instead end up working as stand-ins for Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, and Jean Harlow. When one of them has her birthday, they meet up at the local, where Jack is tending bar, and the night turns out to be one of crucial importance in their lives.
It took director Harvey Keith and producers Roy Silver and Jon Rothschild six years to get enough money together to make a film based on Ed Kelleher's one-act play ”Stand-Ins. ”When it was finally time to start shooting, they had to try out 300 actresses for the roles of the six female leads, and for the role of the receptive barman Jack, the team was looking for an older Jack Nicholson-like character. The result was six actresses who don't look much like the stars they're supposed to be stand-ins for, and a relatively young male actor who had previously been in tough gangster roles.
It is clear that ”Stand-Ins ”was originally written for the stage. The action takes place entirely in the same room, and is driven forward by dialogue alone. Cinematographer Andrzej Sekula, well-known as the man behind the camera in Quentin Tarantino's ”Pulp Fiction ”and ”Reservoir Dogs”, has imbued it, however, with an extra filmic dimension through his suggestive, and intricately thought-out images.
Even though the film has managed to capture the atmosphere of the glamorous thirties perfectly, the dialogue can be moved around through the decades. It's about Hollywood's dark side. Too many actresses come to Hollywood in the hope of getting discovered and becoming famous, but end up unemployed and hooked on drugs or alcohol.
''I wanted to depict the difficulties that women experience when trying to make it in the acting business, and the chances of success have hardly improved over the years. If you put six actresses in a bar, and listened to their conversation, it would sound exactly the same in 1937 as in 1997,'' says Harvey Keith.
Lotta Svedberg

Premiärstatus
Internationell premiär: Medverkande
Daphne Zuniga, Costas Mandylor, Missy Crider, Charlotte Chatton, Sammi Davis: Producent
Jon Rothschild: Manus
Ed Kelleher & Harvey Keith: Foto
Mike Martt: Musik
Bill Elliott: Talat språk
english