Ellie Parker began life as a short film in 2001, a collaboration between writer-director, Scott Coffey, and actress Naomi Watts.  While Naomi Watts had been appearing in Australian film and television for ten years (and some overseas films), she was hailed in her breakthrough performance in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.  She has never looked back and toplined Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

Coffey and Watts and some of their actors and collaborators on the short, including Australian actress Rebecca Rigg, decided to make a feature-length version of Ellie Parker.  It looks its small-budget and quite some improvisation.  But, as an exercise in looking at Hollywood and the trials of aspiring actresses, it is quite an interesting and entertaining tour-de-force.

Naomi Watts, in case anyone still needed convincing, proves herself to be a very talented performer.  Apart from creating the character of the nervously-ambitious would-be from Down Under, she is able to perform some audition sequences, from Southern Belle to foul-mouthed street worker to drama class improvisations.  Coffey himself appears as a wannabe photographer who begins an affair with Ellie only to find that he is now convinced he is gay.  Rebecca Rigg is Ellie’s loyal friend.  Chevy Chase appears as a smooth-talking agent.

All the problems of auditions, callbacks, being stabbed in the back, encountering shady producers and directors with the come-on are all here in this brief, entertaining, cinematic exercise.

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