Classic Movie

Put-down central

	The man slops around in his own venomous slush. And he fucking loves it.

Swimming With Sharks (1994)

The plot: Buddy Ackerman (Kevin Spacey) is a big cheese production exec at Keystone Pictures who drives convertibles, shouts incessantly down ridiculous mobile phones, and likes nothing better than flexing executive muscle, belittling his staff and goosing young women in his office. Describing Ackerman as a ‘bastard’ is like saying Richard Keys is ‘quite hairy’ or Fern Britton 'likes a Mars Bar or two'. The man slops around in his own venomous slush. And he fucking loves it.

So what happens? His old assistant, Rex (del Toro), is moving on, so Buddy requires a new one. Enter Guy (Whaley), a talented young scriptwriter with the sort of meek personality Ackerman can piss all over. (You are nothing! If you were in my toilet I wouldn’t bother flushing it. My bathmat means more to me than you!) Where Guy thinks he’s gonna learn invaluable lessons about the inner workings of the studio system and grow as a writer, all he does is pick up Buddy’s dirty laundry, watch him nick his best ideas/girlfriend and get perpetually harangued about how much of a useless c*nt he is. No wonder he goes mad at the end/beginning.

Why’s it a classic? It’s a brilliantly acerbic insight into the kiss-arse craftwork of the Hollywood infrastructure. George Huang, the director, drudged his own way as an assistant for Columbia Pictures, which is obviously where the ideas and the characters stem. And he gets it right on every count. The dialogue’s sharper than Jeremy Paxman dressed as Edward Scissorhands and when Spacey’s having this much fun delivering it, it makes for a wickedly amusing explosion of put-downs, set-to’s and master-bastardry. ‘I could spit and I’d find someone better at this job than you,’ shouts a gleeful Ackerman. You have to go a bit further afield to find a better movie about Hollywood than Swimming With Sharks. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, Huang never worked in Hollywood again.)