“The Leisure Class” and the Ugly Business of Project Greenlight

With how maligned reality television is, its hard for us to openly admit that we love the constant bickering, yelling, and battle of egos that comes with the territory. No matter how much Matt Damon and Ben Affleck try to mask their “documentary series”, reality TV is at the core of what Project Greenlight does. And it is never more evident this season, and painstakingly obvious when viewing this season’s ultimate production, The Leisure Class.

For the uninitiated, Project Greenlight is the HBO-produced, Damon-Affleck helmed series that pits amateur directors against one another for the rights to produce a multi-million dollar movie. The rest is a documentation of how the picture is made; from pre-production all the way through post. If you’ve heard anything about Greenlight this year, it is certainly centered on producer Effie Brown. When the show selects Jason Mann, the whitest dude you can imagine, as the winner of the competition, it is Effie who immediately addresses the issue of race and diversity that is bound to rear its head. And she’s right. But of course, Matt Damon (rich, white dude) proceeds to interrupt Effie (successful black producer) and correct her view points. HBO knew what they had immediately, and spent the rest of the season milking the conflict for every penny that it was worth. Less concerned with the points that Effie was actually making, Greenlight proceeded to build its own narrative: Jason Mann, a limp and unrealistic director who is too picky and oblivious, versus Effie Brown, a strong, uncompromising producer bogged down by the amateurism. Throw in a few testimonials and we’ve got Real World Hollywood with less alcohol. Needless to say, the end production, The Leisure Class, was doomed from the start. It made for great television, but a terrible movie.

As such, it is difficult for me to review The Leisure Class simply as a standalone film. If I were to do so, I would say its is largely fine, a somewhat confused farce that plays its hand too soon and never builds to anything of substance. Its easy to see the outlines that Jason Mann was drawing, but the tone is ineffectual and dull. But witnessing the creation of the film (the thousands spent to shoot on film instead of digital, for example) makes it less of a disappointment; its more like wasted potential. Watching Jason Mann’s winning short, Delicacy, reveals the extent to which everything was fumbled. There is clearly loads of talent here, but The Leisure Class died a death of a thousand cuts. It is essentially a case study in how to not produce a film. HBO, Effie, and Jason formed the points of a hate triangle from day one. If it were any other film, these relationships would have been abandoned before anything could get off the ground. Instead, the very talented Jason was thrown into a hellscape of demanding HBO executives and a producer who didn’t have the word yes in her vocabulary. Jason had virtually zero on-set support, and the support structure in place, his mentor Peter Farrelly, quit after Effie torpedoed what could’ve been a very fruitful relationship for personal reasons. On the other hand, Effie, locked into a story of white male privilege that’s as bad as she said it would be, did everything she was obligated to do (on time and under budget) and still encountered resistance at every turn. It was a monumental task to even get a diverse set of extras in the film, much less diverse storytelling. The result is a “comedy” from a first time director who ignores his producer, a producer that doubts the director at every turn and doesn’t fight for his creative vision, and a studio that is literally phoning the whole thing in. Its hard to say if the whole ordeal was worth any of their time, much less ours. If there is anything to say about The Leisure Class it is this: its better to watch the sausage being made than taking a bite.