with the impending release of synechdoche, new york i was thinking about other 'meta'-films (self-referential, po-mo, self-reflexive, whatever label works) that reference their own making or include the process of making [a film, or a book...] as part of the story.

i can think of kaufman's own adaptation, but there's also greenaway's prospero's books and draughtsman's contract, tristram shandy: a cock & bull story, atonement, terry gilliam's adventures of von baron munchausen...i'd be interested in a list of films that reference themselves and their making, or maybe films that reference the creative process, or film that takes the veneer of and reveals the inner machinery and workings of the process.

Lost in La Mancha...sorta


Matt

24 Hour Party People

The French Lieutenant's Woman.

My Kid Could Paint That
The Muppet Movie

A Prairie Home Companion
Living in Oblivion
Waiting for Guffman

Shakespeare in Love / (George Lucas in Love)
Under the Rainbow
Irreconcilable Differences
Bowfinger
Wes Craven's New Nightmare

DanBuck beat me to The Muppet Movie, so I'll say Fight Club. On a side note, just about every movie with a scene where the characters watch a movie, (Donnie Darko, Burn After Reading) reminds me that I'm watching a movie.

Alan noted The French Lieutenant's Woman before me--the joke in that one, of course, is that the film is based on a novel that comments on itself as a novel. This is one of the few films that I think is as good as the book, in its own way.

I've just been watching Paris When It Sizzles on TCM--as William Holden & Audrey Hepburn write a movie script, we see them simultaneously "act" out the various versions of the story. Amusing little conceit in 1964.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno ?

The question I posed in that thread was this: AT what point does a "breast baring" film about making a porno, become a porno? Which made me think of this thread.

Matt

Phil Parma (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) in Magnolia, trying to find Earl's son Frank....