Unscripted

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Starring: Frank Langella
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Type: DVD
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Release Date: 2005-10-18
Running Time: 300 minutes
Number of Items: 2
Executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney (Ocean's 11, Ocean's 12), UNSCRIPTED is an innovative half-hour comedy series that fuses reality and fiction to chronicle the lives of three struggling young actors as they navigate the rough waters of show business. Starring Krista Allen, Bryan Greenberg and Jennifer Hall, essentially playing themselves, and co-starring screen veteran Frank Langella as Goddard Fulton, a noted actor who leads them in an acting workshop at Los Angeles' fabled Tamarind Theater, UNSCRIPTED offers a revealing look at the sometimes raucous, often disillusioning world of the fledgling actor.

DVD Features:
Episodic Previews
Episodic Recaps

The most accurate portrayal of life as an actor.
As an actor living in Los Angeles,this is the most accurate depiction of life that I and thousands of other people know. Everyone thinks that being an actor is glamorous and that everyone is rich and lives like Brad Pitt. It can be a very humbling experience and sometimes down right humiliating. When you have to book a job in order to pay rent or going into an audition where everyone is trying to psyche you out or make fun of you. The sad thing is,this is an evil business. Everyone is scraping at the bottom and trying to fight their way to the top,lying,cheating, betraying everyone to get what they want. There aren't many genuine people in this business.

As for the show,I highly, suggest anyone that wants to pursue acting or get a look into the life of an actor, pick this DVD up. It does a tremendous job at capturing the realistic side of life as an actor. Expenses, friends, loneliness,depression, having family as a support system,the high that you feel when you book a job, the lows that you get when you don't book a job or get edited out,etc.

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Oh my god I hate the acting coach guy. He doesn't give the actors any specific tips or pointers, just constantly tells them they're not good enough. I don't know why they didn't end the series with him getting hit by a bus or something.
At first I thought it was all real, then I realised that it was all staged, but the parts the actors actually got during the show were written into the fiction. The most surprising part is that they actually got established actors from the tv shows and movies the three aspiring actors got parts on to participate in the little fictonal scenarios they wrote on the set. It seems like Jamie Kennedy's new show Blowin Up is based on the same formula, probably highly influenced by this show.
The differences other reviewers pointed out between the first five episodes and the last five were not apparent to me at all.
So what did I really like about it? The believability of the actors casualness, like they're really not aware of the camera, something rarely valued by filmmakers aspiring to capture realism.
The characters, to whatever extent they were characters, go through a lot of self-questioning, having to weigh up all the different things they're being told about who they are or who they should be. Ultimately they were all a little less decisive and resourceful than I would have liked to see, but I guess that's realism, no one really has all the answers, and they did all display an admirable resilience.
It's generally eventfully written, or based on eventful realities. They don't dwell too long on one situation, or keep recycling the same dramas, it always keeps moving.
The only reason not to buy it is the price tag. Damn you, HBO.

This is NOT a comedy (as labeled)!
This is a drama not a comedy.
Seeing young actors being laughed at during auditions
and constantly trying to sacrifize their dignity for a lousy actor's job
is not funny in my eyes.
And by the way: The DVD is labeled as 16:9, but this only goes for the dvd menu.
The episodes are letter boxed in 4:3

The other side of "Entourage," on another coast from "K Street," across the pond from "Extras"
This is another experiment from Clooney/HBO along the lines of "K Street," except it's a cinema verite look at actors instead of lobbyists, actors who are at various levels on the food chain. Krista Allen is a just-past-30 "Baywatch" babe trying to make a break into serious acting; Bryan Greenburg is Vincent Chase without the sudden success (but with, he hopes, a recurring role on "One Tree Hill"); Jennifer Hall is a sort of hapless audition flop and occasional car wash hawker who's a dead ringer for "Fast Times"-era Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Best of all is Frank Langella as an acting coach who's both wise and shamelessly pragmatic, sometimes at the same time.

As a previous reviewer pointed out, the first half of the 10 episodes are more fly-on-the-wall, and I watched them with interest but rarely stopped wondering why I should care. The second half, however, develops a better sense of plotting and, right along with that, a definition of why a viewer should care. Even when some of the characters aren't very compelling the sitautions usually are.

As experimental as it seems, "Unscripted" is also a strangely effective example of studio synergy. Hall, at one point, gets a role as an extra in "Constantine" and, sure enough, if you watch "Constantine" (I don't recommend it) she's actually in the film. Likewise Greenburg's "character" gets a role in "Prime," opposite Uma Thurman, and later this month he co-stars in that same film. And I must say that after seeing Allen in this (I'd never seen her in anything before) I did find myself eagerly seeking out her "Emmanuel in Space" movies.

Still, corporate and non-corporate cross-promotions aside, this is another one of those HBO shows that suck a viewer in and turn out to be smarter than one might expect.

unscripted living
I had never seen unscripted before I purchased it (Don't get HBO in Australia) and I just finished watching the whole series in one go, and it is fantastic. As other reviews say the first five are very different from the last. The series starts off focusing more on auditions and the struggle to find work, and later focuses more on the drama in each of their lives, but there is no stark difference as you are slowly pushed into their lives. Blows out of the water all the crap that the media feeds about actors and hollywood. By the end of it you have been taught a lesson in life.