Nature has blessed certain types of carnivorous plants with pretty colors, pleasant fragrances, and sticky, sugary emissions, all the better to attract and trap its prey. You can say the same thing about Los Angeles, a sunshine-dappled industry town that
draws legions of hopefuls in before chewing them up and spitting them out. Chris Rock has spent his fair share of time in Hollywood, and he’s noticed a thing or two about the highs and the lows, the perks and the pitfalls of the place. His new movie Misty Green — which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last night — kicks off with a photo montage that pinballs between glitzy premieres and grungy street life, gorgeous Santa Monica sunsets and downtown tent cities. One person, all dolled up for a gala, poses on the red carpet. Another peruses a trash can. It’s the good, the bad, and the downright ugly of a city that’s somehow maintained a dream factory amidst a landscape of harsh realities. Welcome to Hell Ay.
Anyone expecting a satire of the business we call show from a filmmaker who moonlights as a first-ballot stand-up GOAT will be in for a rude awakening, of course; publicists have gone out of their way to note that Rock’s latest work as a writer-director should be referred to as a drama and not a comedy. We understand the necessity of underlining this point, given who’s behind the camera, but trust us when we tell you that, starting with the brutal opening-credits tour: No one’s mistaking this for a comedy. It’s a character study. Misty Green isn’t a description of the inherent envy that envelopes L.A., but a proper name. And while the story itself will seem very familiar, the undercurrents of contempt will come off as more than a little problematic, and the various subplots orbiting the film’s main narrative will run the gamut from pretty convenient to extremely WTF, Rock has the benefit of a thermonuclear weapon in his arsenal. Her name is Rosalind Eleazar.
Slow Horses fanatics will recognize her as one of the veteran MI5 operatives stuck in the agency’s version of purgatory, known as Slough House. Consistent viewers of British imports on big and small screens — TV shows like Harlots, movies like Rose of Nevada and The Personal History of David Copperfield — have been clocking her work for years. Eleazar is one of the best “oh, it’s that person!” actors working just slightly above the radar. Rock’s now given her a prime showcase, a stage on which to rage. And dear god, does she make the most of it. That old-chestnut phrase “a star-making turn” has been trotted out way too often over the years. It accurately applies here.
Once upon a time, Misty Green was the next big thing. She earned an Emmy for being part of a popular TV show about flight attendants called Red Eye. The town was hers for the taking. People wanted to work with her, until they didn’t — drugs, diva-like behavior, and an unfortunate incident involving the star punching a wardrobe assistant made her persona non grata. When we meet her, she’s on a professional downslope. Green still has an agent (Topher Grace), but her reputation precedes her and thus precludes offers. Green still hooks up with a handsome A-lister (Adam Driver) she was in a movie with a long time ago, but their relationship is centered around after-hours coke binges and morning-after shame. Green still lives in a swank apartment with a killer beachside view, but it’s not really hers — she’s been squatting in this deceased director’s place for over a year, and the gentleman’s widow (Amy Landecker) has given here a week to vacate the premises. She hasn’t hit rock bottom yet, but it’s within sight.
Hope, or something like it, arrives in the form of a chance meeting with an old acquaintance named Jordan (Rock). He’s a filmmaker who’s also had his share of hits, misses and personal scars, and once fired Green from a project. Jordan is in town to take meetings over a remake of Dreamgirls, which Green is trying to read for. Her past and her pride — “I’m Deena, or I’m not doing it!” she informs her agent — is getting in the way of her locking down the gig. A humiliating audition in front of another colleague (Tracie Thoms) she also burned back in the day doesn’t help matters. “Do you need validation?” she’s asked while leaving the interview, in regards to her parking. The double meaning is right there, in 21-sized font.
But Jordan caught Misty singing at the Roosevelt, where she turned Radiohead’s “Creep” into the world’s moodiest, grooviest torch song, and he wants her to be a part of this musical. Their young ingenue of a lead can’t hold a tune, anyway. Second chances are rare in Hollywood, yet Green may have found one. She just need to contend with a few things, like a brother (Daniel Kaluuya) who’s bipolar and just got out of a stay at a psychiatric-care facility. And the fact that people have long memories when it comes to performers who’ve burned a helluva lotta bridges. Oh, and a seventh-circle’s worth of personal demons who, big break or not, show no signs of giving Green a break. Old habits die hard. Bad habits fueled by longstanding trauma are damn near immortal.
Misty Green is, it bears repeating, not a comedy — it’s as pitiless a critique of Hollywood’s double standards, racial biases, and blatant hypocrisies as you’re likely to find. Rock is not grinding axes so much as swinging them wildly, trying to chop and wound as many targets as possible. But there are in-jokes abound, from the way that gossip travels around Tinseltown (the maxim around getting back-channel deals done: “Work the wives”) to Green complaining that she can’t get work because “I’m not a nepo baby or a Brit!” (That Eleazar and Kaluuya both hail from across the pond ensures the irony gets a laugh.)
There’s also a lot of peripheral stuff going on, including a childhood catastrophe involving Misty’s brother that’s left purposefully ambiguous, Misty’s friend (Anne Kendrick) dealing with relation ship strife, news reports about a female USC student who’s been murdered, and the fact that the LAPD is pulling over and questioning any male with pigment because of the case. Some of these elements are distracting, some are used as plot devices, and a few simply reek of misanthropy for its own sake. A detour to Dubai turns into a gratuitous example of how debased things can get in terms of industry movers, shakers, predators, and parasites, long after we’ve seen how things can go from bad to worse to Caligula-level depraved. You almost feel like stations keep getting added to the cross that is Green’s to bear here.
None of the matters once you lock in to what Rosalind Eleazar is doing with this role, however. If anything, you admire not only how much nuance, shade, and emotional depth she’s adding to Green’s attempt at penance and salvation, but how the melodramatic plot turns, and constant need to remind viewers that the City of Angels isn’t a beacon for one’s better angels, ups the degree of difficulty for her. There’s a lot to navigate and overcome for the woman who would be Misty Green, and Eleazar gracefully handles all of it. You get so much out an expression, a seemingly out-of-nowhere explosion of anger, an attempt to use her feminine wiles, or a weary sigh from her.
Eleazar doesn’t just make the movie work. She is the movie. And the actor deserves every accolade, every compliment, every grateful bit of praise and every bit of the spotlight that Misty Green affords her. Rock knows what he’s got in this performer, and he wisely lets her cook to the fullest. We don’t cop to being part of the Oscars Industrial Complex, and the professionals who work that beat year-round have certainly been known to dabble in hyperventilating hyperbole. But in terms of people already talking about statuettes for Eleazar — to paraphrase an old Chris Rock routine, we understand. The movie is about how the apparatus around the world of moving pictures can leave a lot of destruction, failure, and overall bad shit in its wake. But Rock has also given us a meta-success story. You just have to look to the film’s star to see it.
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