Cleopatra Entertainment, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, announced this past week that their September of 2021 domestic distribution acquisition, the film festival delight, writer/director Frank Martinez’s Dreaming Hollywood, will be heading home on Mar. 22 as both DVD and Blu-ray editions.
In the always sunny world of Hollywood, there are thieves, and then there are filmmakers. They are often one and the same. This is what would-be screenwriter Raymond Balfi (Turk Matthews) is about to learn … and he won’t be happy.
By any standard, Ray Balfi is a loser, but he has the Hollywood dream of writing a hit screenplay that will earn him millions and allow him to break free of his low-life grifter ways. He is the new Walter Mitty, a bespectacled nebbish, who has written a script for a major animated production and that will be his ticket out of the rundown tenement he calls home … no longer paying for ladies of the night for dates, the beautiful women of Hollywood will certainly come flocking to him.
But before we go further down the rabbit hole of Ray
Balfi and his soon-to-be-Pixar animation smash, we should look back at how
Frank Martinez and his producer/actor partner, Turk Matthews, got the
inspiration for this indie gem and how it got made.
As Martinez tells it, he was standing in line at a copy store and overheard a conversation between two other customers. Basically, they were musing as to what assurances did they have that one of the employees wouldn’t make a copy for themselves of what they had turned in … that’s all it took for Martinez to spring into action.
The script came together and then Matthews (who stars as Ray) and Martinez began filming. Not as you might imagine in a traditional way, but when they had money, they would see who was available and what scenes could be blocked and shot. A few scenes at a time.
What materialized is nothing short of genius. The film played at a couple of festivals, was noticed by Cleopatra Entertainment and snapped up for distribution. Dreaming Hollywood is virtually unseen, but don’t let that stop you from seeking it out come Mar. 22.
The backbone of the plot is about Ray Balfi and his moment of inspiration. He is an ex-con, living in squalor, surrounded by drug dealers, hookers and lowlifes … it’s just a matter of time before he is back in trouble with the law.
But Ray has a dream, and he turns that into a script which is titled “The Dog’s Meow,” an animated film that will be his ticket out. It is, by any standard, a horrible script and his 100 (exactly 100) copies that he sends out to studios and producers are all rejected.
He’s also secretly in love with a prostitute named Maureen (Madelyn Allen), who he plans to rescue from drug dealer and pimp, Rudy (Eliot, aka: Mark Eliot). Maureen is completely oblivious to Ray’s plan, he’s just a customer; one of many.
Rejection after rejection … after rejection. And then our boy Ray discovers that someone has stolen his idea. He snaps. He will find out who, he will have his revenge and he will rescue Maureen from Rudy … it will be the perfect Hollywood happy ending. He just needs to kill the right person!!
For a movie that was put together on weekends over months, this has a slick look to it that belies its budget. From the script, to the acting, to the technical elements of cinematography (Adam Brant and Alexander Zingaro), the editing by the filmmaker himself and the music soundtrack (Zocotroco), Dreaming Hollywood is certainly one of the best indie productions to surface in recent memory.
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