STUNTED

"The Fall Guy."

- RICHARD BRODY

In the art of filmmaking, there's a special place for movies by directors who know whereof they film. When a baseball movie is made by a former professional baseball player—for instance, Ron Shelton's "Bull Durham" (1988) or when, as with Oliver Stone's "Platoon" (1986), a Vietnam War movie is made by a decorated and twice-wounded veteran of that war, there's an implied assurance of something deeper than just research. The assurance is of a personal stake, of having the story in one's blood, and maybe vice versa. Such movies fit within a larger genre, what one could call the lid-lifter-fact-based fictions that offer behind-the-scenes glimpses into realms that are usually inaccessible. Ava DuVernay's "Origin" (2023) reveals how a nonfiction writer goes about her research; David Fincher's "The Social Network" (2010) shines a light on the hectic maneuvering of the tech-startup scene. Another subset of this larger genre is the movie-business movie: Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992), say, or Robert Townsend's "Hollywood Shuffle" (1987). These films have an extra layer of built-in reflexivity: set in a world that the directors inherently know, they go behind their own scenes, via sly allusions and bold metafictions.