The Hollywood idea of “fake it till you make it” is taken to horrifying extremes in the new documentary Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme. It’s a true-crime documentary that should be of interest to film aficionados like myself who follow the industry and pay attention to its many wheelings and dealings. As a movie, it’s fairly standard in execution, but does have a few added twists that not only enhance the central themes, but also may leave you thinking long after the film ends.
Perhaps if you frequent the dark corners of film libraries that I do, you may have heard of or even seen a film starring Zach Avery (whose real name is Zachary Horowitz), an aspiring actor whose output never really rose above the D-list, which raises the question of how he ended up in some of these movies in the first place. However, his film career hid a ponzi scheme of massive proportions. Roping in his friends and others though a web of lies and deceit, he had them invest in his enterprise to buy the rights to independent films through his company, 1inMM (One in a Million) Productions, and sell them to Netflix and HBO. Everything seemed legit. Documentation was provided. Contracts had been made. The films were certainly real. Yet, it eventually became apparent that they were the only things real about any of this, and by the time the scheme fell apart, it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
As a true crime documentary, it makes an effort to stand out from the typical talking-head-and-re-enactment fare. Since getting Avery to be in the movie was a borderline impossibility, the filmmakers obviously had to resort to re-enactments, but the process of casting them is a part of the film itself. As the main theme of this movie is the slippery nature of truth, the experience of actors getting inside the head of someone who used their talent for acting for nefarious purposes is an interesting detail that elevates this. Granted, Avery’s talent for acting applies solely to his crimes. The footage of Avery’s filmography makes it obvious why he never made it legitimately. However, the archival footage of Zach doing interviews is chilling in just how believable he is even as he’s lying through his teeth. There’s seemingly not much that sets him apart from any other aspiring actor talking about their potential big break.
There’s a lot of details to this story I won’t spoil, and the filmmakers do a decent job putting everything together. As someone with a pretty extensive knowledge of film, The extent of Avery’s criminal enterprise did shock me, as his influence spreads to more legitimate projects than I anticipated. This is a story of a top-shelf fraudster, and a number of the reveals of how he pulled some of this off I legitimately did not see coming. In addition to the re-enactments and footage of Avery’s career, the filmmakers incorporate heavy use of famous film clips to get their points across, but I did think they used this device a bit too much at times. I feel like this story will definitely appeal more primarily to film buffs compared to a lot of other true crime fare. As a film buff myself, though, i was pretty stunned for the whole thing.
Despite seeming like a pretty standard movie structurally, there is one last trick the film has up its sleeve before the credits roll. I won’t reveal what it is, but it’ll make you question everything you just watched, and give you pause on the nature of documentary filmmaking in general. Overall, I’d say that if you’re into movies, it’s worth a watch. It’s the tale of a despicable yet fascinating actor that, while devastating, is certainly thought-provoking.
Side note: In an unexpectedly niche example of industry competition, shortly before the film’s premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, Amazon MGM Studios announced their own documentary on this story, Hollywood Ending. Whether Neon’s or Amazon’s documentary ends up being superior is yet to be seen, and it could just be a total coincidence that the announcement was made when it was. It’s not like competing documentaries on the same topic is a regular occurrence, but it does happen. Regardless, I saw this one first, and maybe I’ll review the other one when it comes out.
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