20 best movies like An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn (1997)

A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes her top off.

On the verge of bankruptcy and desperate for his big break, aspiring filmmaker Bobby Bowfinger concocts a crazy plan to make his ultimate dream movie. Rallying a ragtag team that includes a starry-eyed ingenue, a has-been diva and a film studio gofer, he sets out to shoot a blockbuster featuring the biggest star in Hollywood, Kit Ramsey -- only without letting Ramsey know he's in the picture.

Mock documentary about an upstart candidate for the U.S. Senate written and directed by actor Tim Robbins. Bob Roberts is a folksinger with a difference: He offers tunes that protest welfare chiselers, liberal whining, and the like. As the filmmakers follow his campaign, Robbins gives needle-sharp insight into the way candidates manipulate the media.

"La La Wood" follows the legacy of Jiminy Glick, first introduced on "The Martin Short Show," who went on to get (non)-critical acclaim for his talk show "Primetime Glick," where Mr. Glick interviewed countless celebrities (which usually ended in verbally--sometimes physically--insulting/assaulting them). Now comes "La La Wood"--Jiminy Glick's home. This is his story (sort of).

Three actors learn that their respective performances in the film "Home for Purim," a drama set in the mid-1940s American South, are generating award-season buzz.

In small-town Texas, affable and popular mortician Bernie Tiede strikes up a friendship with Marjorie Nugent, a wealthy widow well known for her sour attitude. When she becomes controlling and abusive, Bernie goes to great lengths to remove himself from her grasp.

A small circle of friends suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.

With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a "wacky weatherman" tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.

Olsen and Johnson, a pair of stage comedians, try to turn their play into a movie and bring together a young couple in love, while breaking the fourth wall every step of the way.

Truman Burbank is the star of "The Truman Show", a 24-hour-a-day "reality" TV show that broadcasts every aspect of his life -- live and in color -- without his knowledge. His entire life has been an unending soap opera for consumption by the rest of the world. And everyone he knows -- including his wife and his best friend -- is really an actor, paid to be part of his life.

Jack Hussar is a legendary Hollywood director, whose persona commands respect and adoration from his fans. Can his son, Jack Jr. maintain his legacy?

An uninterrupted rehersal of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" played out by a company of actors. The setting is their run down theater with an unusable stage and crumbling ceiling. The play is shown act by act with the briefest of breaks to move props or for refreshments. The lack of costumes, real props and scenery is soon forgotten.

In this adaptation of the Mona Simpson novel, single mother Adele August is bad with money, and even worse when it comes to making decisions. Her straight-laced daughter, Ann, is a successful high school student with Ivy League aspirations. When Adele decides to pack up and move the two of them from the Midwest to Beverly Hills, Calif., to pursue her dreams of Hollywood success, Ann grows frustrated with her mother's irresponsible and impulsive ways.

While on a journey of discovery in exotic India, beautiful young Ruth Barron falls under the influence of a charismatic religious guru. Her desperate parents then hire PJ Waters, a macho cult de-programmer who confronts Ruth in a remote desert hideaway. But PJ quickly learns that he's met his match in the sexy, intelligent and iron-willed Ruth.

A chronicle of Russia's transition from communism to capitalism.

Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.

A comedy about a screenwriter (Wuhl) whose old movie script is read by a producer (Landau) and the search for financial backers begins. But it seems that each money source (Aiello, DeNiro, Wallach) has his own mistress that he wants put into the film. Gradually, the screenwriter is forced to make changes to his script to accommodate these backers until he finally sees no semblance of his original ideas in the writing.

Struggling actor John Person agrees to drive a blue suitcase from Los Angeles to the small town of Baker, Calif., and hand it over to a mysterious cowboy in return for having his credit card debt of $27,000 paid off. Upon his arrival, John can't find the cowboy but receives an ominously head-shaped package he's supposed to hang onto. While waiting, John gets close to Ruthie, whose psychotic boyfriend, Randy, keeps threatening to kill him.

A series of short films spoofing "The Blair Witch Project."

American Movie is the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, American Movie is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man's quest for the American Dream.

Elliot Richardson, suicidal techno geek, is given seven wishes to turn his life around when he meets up with a very seductive Satan. The catch: his soul. Some of his wishes include a 7 foot basketball star, a rock star, and a hamburger. But, as could be expected, the Devil must put her own little twist on each his fantasies.

An anthology of 5 different cab drivers in 5 American and European cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.

Al Fountain, a middle-aged electrical engineer, is on the verge of a mid-life crisis, when he decides to take his time coming home from a business trip, rents a car, and heads out looking for a lake he remembers from his childhood. But his wandering takes him into the life of Kid, a free-spirited young man who helps Al escape from the routine of everyday life and find freedom to enjoy himself.

After building his dream house, architect Newton Davis proposes marriage to his girlfriend, only to be summarily rejected. He seeks solace in a one-night stand with a waitress, never imagining that a woman he slept with once would end up posing as his wife. Gwen's ruse is so effective that by the time Newton learns of his "marriage," the entire town feels like they know him.

Newly arrived in Hollywood from England, Dennis Barlow finds he has to arrange his uncle's interment at the highly-organised and very profitable Whispering Glades funeral parlour. His fancy is caught by one of their cosmeticians, Aimee Thanatogenos. But he has three problems - the strict rules of owner Blessed Reverand Glenworthy, the rivalry of embalmer Mr Joyboy, and the shame of now working himself at The Happy Hunting Ground pets' memorial home.

A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.

Vietnam veteran 'Four Leaf' Tayback's memoir, Tropic Thunder, is being made into a film, but Director Damien Cockburn can’t control the cast of prima donnas. Behind schedule and over budget, Cockburn is ordered by a studio executive to get filming back on track, or risk its cancellation. On Tayback's advice, Cockburn drops the actors into the middle of the jungle to film the remaining scenes but, unbeknownst to the actors and production, the group have been dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of heroin-producing gangs.

Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them.

After losing her job, making out with her soon to be ex-boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson has to face spending the holiday with her family. She wonders if she can survive their crazy antics.

A movie director-screenwriter finds a man to finance his latest project but soon discovers that the producer is actually an undercover FBI agent working on a mob sting operation.

The relationship between four female temps all working for the same credit company is threatened with the arrival of a new hire, who lands a permanent position one of the women was vying for.

The streets of Los Angeles are crawling with weirdos, hookers, peeping toms and perverts. And this time, they're wearing badges! Murray Langston, Linda Blair, Pat Paulsen, Billy Barty, Jaye P. Morgan, Andrew Dice Clay, Pat Morita, Kitten Natividad and The Unknown Comic lead a shameless all-star cast in this cult classic in the tradition of AIRPLANE and POLICE ACADEMY, filled with kooky cops, gassy midgets, tough lesbians, sick humor, gross gags, gratuitous nudity and more!

Matt and Karen have inconsiderate neighbours whose lawn sprinkler drowns their flowers. A feud errupts and a series of tit-for-tat actions develop and escalate.

Successful movie director John L. Sullivan, convinced he won't be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise and sets off on a journey, aiming to "know trouble" first-hand. When all he finds is a train ride back to Hollywood and a beautiful blonde companion, he redoubles his efforts, managing to land himself in more trouble than he bargained for when he loses his memory and ends up a prisoner on a chain gang.

Aging screenwriter Felix Bonhoeffer has lived his life in two states of existence: in reality and his own interior world. While working on a murder mystery script, and unaware that his brain is on the verge of implosion, Felix is baffled when his characters start to appear in his life, and vice versa.

Mercedes is a taxi dancer who wants to be an actress. She's involved with the married Harry, who considers himself a respected actor. Ernesto is in love with Mercedes, but he doesn't dance or have money.

Guy is a young film executive who's willing to do whatever it takes to make it in Hollywood. He begins working for famed producer Buddy Ackerman, a domineering, manipulative, coldhearted boss. When Guy also finds out that his cynical girlfriend, Dawn, has been using sex as a career move, he reaches his limit. Guy decides to exact revenge on Buddy by kidnapping him and subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment.

For Shirin, being part of a perfect Persian family isn't easy. Acceptance eludes her from all sides: her family doesn't know she's bisexual, and her ex-girlfriend, Maxine, can't understand why she doesn't tell them. Even the six-year-old boys in her moviemaking class are too ADD to focus on her for more than a second. Following a family announcement of her brother's betrothal to a parentally approved Iranian prize catch, Shirin embarks on a private rebellion involving a series of bisexual escapades, while trying to decipher what went wrong with Maxine.

Mafia hitman Tommy Spinelli (Joe Pesci) is flying to San Diego with a bag that holds eight severed heads, which he's bringing to his superiors to prove that some troublesome rival mobsters are permanently out of the picture. When his bag gets accidentally switched at the airport, Tommy must track down his duffel bag and the 8 heads it contains.

Two air traffic controllers who thrive on living dangerously compete to outdo each other on several levels.

A rich brat fakes her own kidnapping, but in the process ends up locked in the trunk of a car that gets stolen.

When once-up-and-coming indie film starlet Halley Feiffer loses her boyfriend, her agent and her career in one fell swoop she finally realizes that something in her life has got to change... she has to become WAY MORE FAMOUS! Armed with a stolen script and two pitchers of sangria, Halley enlists the help of her brother Ryan and his boyfriend to make her own movie, starring herself (of course) as herself, and any A-list celebrity she can land along the way.

An aspiring filmmaker learns that success in Hollywood doesn't come as easy as she suspected as she attempts to discover the formula to success. When the guidance of her helpful has-been uncle fails to pave the way, Sarah Wilder must seek the advice of such Hollywood heavies as Mike Meyers, Ben Stiller, and Fred Willard -- only to discover that the old adage is true and Nobody Knows Anything about how to succeed in the cutthroat world of Los Angeles.

An aspiring actor and his girlfriend handle life's frustrations, while his friend seeks fulfillment with a blonde.

Desperate to meet new girls, six down-on-their-luck guys come up with the ultimate plan to hook up - cast a fake movie. When tons of hot chicks show up for the audition, it's a matter of who's willing to go the farthest to get the part.

A man works for the unpleasant guru of a Scientology-like movement.

Jewish Jack-the-lad David seriously fancies smart, rich Anglo-Saxon Carrie as soon as he first offends her in a Boston bar. They run into each other again and though she still says she finds him appalling he works on it and they are soon together. His even more reprehensible best mate and her blousy best friend watch bemused as the two fall deeply in love and then apparently as fatally out again

Auggie runs a small tobacco shop in Brooklyn, New York. The whole neighborhood comes to visit him to buy cigarettes and have some small talk. During the movie Lou Reed tries to explain why he has to have a cut on his health insurance bill if he keeps smoking and Madonna acts as a Singing Telegram.

When recently single Steven moves into his new apartment, cable guy Chip comes to hook him up -- and doesn't let go. Initially, Chip is just overzealous in his desire to be Steven's pal, but when Steven tries to end the "friendship," Chip shows his dark side. He begins stalking Steven, who's left to fend for himself because no one else can believe Chip's capable of such behavior.

When unemployed dockworker Joey Coyle finds $1.2 million that fell off of an armored car, he decides to do the logical thing: take the money and run. After all, he says, finders keepers. He turns to his ex-girlfriend Monica, who works in an investment firm, for advice, before turning to the mob for help laundering the money. While Joey makes plans to leave the country, however, a detective is following his ever-warmer trail in order to recover the cash.