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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/04/2007 : 12:02:08
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Man in the Chair
Michael Schroeder's Man in the Chair is a labour of love and a little gem. Sure, it's about The Movies from the inside out, but it's also about the fragmenting of society and how that affects the way we relate to and treat each other. in the most profound sense it's about respect.
The film opens with grubby, booze-swigging, cantankerous old coot Flash Madden - Christopher Plummer in a knock-em-dead Oscar-worthy performance - behaving badly in a an LA re-run house where he's a frequent visitor, more often than not the only one. His life's become a dead-end odyssey from rising in the mornings of a retired show-biz nursing home to riding the LA buses around the urban sprawl, to entombing himself in a darkened cinema, immersing himself in the light-shows of nostalgia about the industry to which he gave his life.
Enter teen-aged wannabe film-maker Cameron, played with humour and sensitivity by Michael Angarano. The kid and another school pal, both seething with energy, ambition, and rage at being bullied, are determined to win a short-film contest. To counter their most serious rival, the son of a studio exec who will fund him bigtime, they set about trying to crew the film with Hollywood studio vets. When Cameron meets Flash the scene is set, though the old man takes a lot of persuading, primarily in the form of a steady supply of fine cigars.
As Flash - who reveals his nickname was bestowed upon him by Orson Welles when he was a newbie on the lighting crew of Citizen Kane, and that ain't no lie - introduces Cameron to a highly talented bunch of the faded experts upon whom all great Hollywood films depended, Cameron begins to realize his first superficial story idea is far less important than telling the real story of these all-but-forgotten folk.
Their journey is unexpected, and not without many dollops of sentiment, but refreshingly few of sentimentality. There are genuine moments of poignancy and a few of wit. The cast, including familiar faces from M Emmett Walsh to Robert Wagner, all turn in marvelous work, and it's almost churlish to focus on Plummer. But he really is quite wonderful. The film has much to commend it, but even if it didn't it would be worth seeing for Plummer alone.
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The Man in the Chair
