Steve Martin and a double dose of Eddie Murphy make Bowfinger lovable

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Birdman, as well as David Cronenberg’s upcoming Maps To The Stars, has us thinking back on other showbiz satires.
Bowfinger (1999)
Steve Martin delivered a whimsical valentine to Los Angeles in L.A. Story. Eight years later, he offered another Hollywood-centric screenplay infused with less romanticism and more desperation. Bowfinger isn’t exactly dark—it’s a sun-kissed Frank Oz comedy—but it nonetheless lives in one of the film industry’s sadder corners. Martin plays the title character, a small-time producer who might be happy to be described as washed up; it would imply his career had ever begun in the first place. Armed with a sci-fi action script called Chubby Rain (penned by his accountant and “part-time receptionist”), Bowfinger decides he needs to make this his magnum opus, and, as such, requires the biggest star in Hollywood, Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy). When Ramsey understandably rebuffs him, the production proceeds anyway, shooting around its unwitting star.