Chabert Watch: Being Michael Madsen (2007)

Watched:  04/29/2025

Format:  Legitimately obtain video

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Mongillo

There's nuggets of a couple of ideas in Being Michael Madsen (2007) that are very good ideas.  Unfortunately, this was not the movie to execute on those ideas.  And you know you're in trouble from the very start when the faux-documentary alerts you it will be bleeping out *real* brand names for legal reasons (sigh) and then rolls like three quotes before the first shot of video.  

Yeah, this is a fake documentary - about a documentary that we will never get to see.  Or is it the documentary?  It's not clear.  I do know this movie is also a weird mix of wildly pretentious nonsense that believes it's very clever and maybe poking fun at itself for being pretentious.  But, hoo boy, it's kind of like when someone is being pretentious but isn't quite smart enough to actually pull it off, but they're Dunning-Kruegering their way into believing they're the smartest person in the room.

Part of it is that I can't tell how serious they are at any given point, which is maybe not a great thing for a mockumentary.  The entire movie hinges on the real life Madsen playing a version of himself which is hounded by an individual paparazzo.  For unclear reasons, the paparazzo accuses Madsen of having killed an extra on a film (sorry, this is Hollywood - so I can't even tell if "atmosphere artist" is a joke).  The extra is Lacey Chabert, which, I hate to say, immediately bursts the illusion that this is a documentary even as a documentary.  She's the only name talent who is playing a character, and... why?  There's no reason to cast a name.  

But the set-up makes no sense.  Nonetheless, it leads to Madsen "turning the tables" and hiring his own documentary crew to harass that paparazzo.  And pretty clearly, the real movie someone wanted to make was this one - about how the documentary crew slips down the ethical hole of being paparazzi themselves and employing the same tactics.  

But none of it works.  The tone is so confusing.  I don't know what's a joke and what's them stepping on rakes as film makers.  The dialog is horrendous.  And mostly it feels like a very mid-2000's inside Hollywood joke that I just watched from outside of LA in 2025.  And that's on me.

Anyway, what works in it is maybe the idea of the paparazzi harassing the paparazzi.  And, frankly, Chabert's one scene at the very end.  And the interviews with real, recognizable talent playing themselves are good.  But the actors you don't recognize - yowch. But who you do recognize includes Daryl Hannah, Harry Dean Stanton, David Carradine and...  apparently Virgina Madsen is Michael Madsen's brother?  God as my witness, I had no idea.  And Paige Davis from 00's-era reality TV show Trading Spaces (that, for reasons, Jamie and I had been recalling just this evening) is in it as herself.

I basically don't feel like talking about this.  I don't miss small indie movies about Hollywood that feel like they're aimed at people who live in about a twenty mile radius in order to find them funny.