History Main / HorribleHollywood

* The ''Manga/TokyoMewMew'' fanfic [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8902209/1/Masquerade "Masquerade"]] plays it in a very [[RealismInducedHorror realistic and creepy way]], main character Zakuro feeling [[AloneInACrowd isolated]] and reflecting how her dreams of being a model turned into this and how she is [[DespairEventHorizon unable to go back to her old life]] and how she always has to be [[StepfordSmiler careful]] because of [[MaliciousSlander rumors]] and {{paparazzi}}. It is so much that she seems to be building to a major [[FreakOut breakdown]] or [[LossOfIdentity identity crisis]].

* Music/RedHotChiliPeppers' "Californication" (off of [[Music/{{Californication}} the album of the same name]]) pretty much defines this trope. It goes on about starlets selling their bodies on the silver screen, the hypocrisy of music and film producers who sell false ideas, and the [[CaliforniaCollapse inevitable destruction of Hollywood culture]] through its own faults and debauchery.

* Played with in the ''Series/{{Castle}}'' episode "One Life To Lose"; the behind the scenes environment of the popular soap opera isn't exactly free of intrigue, bitchiness, and people sleeping with and/or hating each other and playing their own agendas, but it's no worse than some of the other walks of life the characters have entered.

* The Manga/TokyoMewMew fanfic [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8902209/1/Masquerade Masquerade]] plays it in a very [[RealismInducedHorror realistic and creepy way]], main character Zakuro feeling [[AloneInACrowd isolated]] and reflecting how her dreams of being a model turned into this and how she is [[DespairEventHorizon unable to go back to her old life]] and how she always has to be [[StepfordSmiler careful]] because of [[MaliciousSlander rumors]] and {{paparazzi}}. It is so much that she seems to be building to a major [[FreakOut breakdown]] or [[LossOfIdentity identity crisis]].

* VisualNovel ''VisualNovel/LastChanceInXollywood'' deals with an extraterrestrial movie director and shows the alien film industry of Xollywood as a satire of Hollywood, being full of unscrupolous producers, criminals, weirdos, scammers, overstressed and underpaid workers... except that the "real" Hollywood [[ExpyCoexistence still exists]] and is depicted as being not much better.

* The ''Series/LawAndOrder'' three-parter about a Hollywood producer who gets murdered, forcing the New York-based detectives and prosecutors to spend time in Los Angeles, takes this approach, with almost everyone involved in that world painted as grasping, backstabbing, narcissistic and neurotic. It's aptly summed up by a disillusioned junior executive (and one of the few 'Hollywood' characters who ''isn't'' an utterly horrible human being) who bitterly comments that everyone around her "talks like they're a hippy and acts like they're in the Sicilian Mafia."

* The Manga/TokyoMewMew fanfic [[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8902209/1/Masquerade Masquerade]] plays it in a very [[TearJerker realistic and creepy way]], main character Zakuro feeling [[AloneInACrowd isolated]] and reflecting how her dreams of being a model turned into this and how she is [[DespairEventHorizon unable to go back to her old life]] and how she always has to be [[StepfordSmiler careful]] because of [[MaliciousSlander rumors]] and {{paparazzi}}. It is so much that she seems to be building to a major [[FreakOut breakdown]] or [[LossOfIdentity identity crisis]].

In Horrible Hollywood, the actors and actresses are brain-dead, spoiled, have a tendency towards fighting the law, like to engage in occasional sexual deviancy, and are [[HookersAndBlow addicted to various illegal substances and/or sex workers]]. Marriages rarely last more than a few years (and sometimes just a few hours), and almost everyone has ''at least'' [[SerialSpouse two divorces and remarriages under their belts]], and usually more. Everyone fears [[WhiteDwarfStarlet growing old and losing their fame]], so plastic surgery and desperate attempts to seem young abound. The directors are [[PrimaDonnaDirector egomaniac control freaks]] who wear funny pants and throw [[HairTriggerTemper petty tantrums]] at the slightest provocation. The assistants are overworked, underpaid, and might be [[DeadpanSnarker snarky towards the talent]], but this won't stop them from ruthlessly trying to climb the ladder -- and in this depraved environment, climbing to the top tends to be a [[CastingCouch horizontal sort of activity]].

* The ''Series/{{Emergency}}'' several episodes, since the show takes place in LA County, including episode 'Upward and Onward' with an invasive soap opera crew and famous TV Doctor admitted for mononucleosis.

Might overlap with TheatreIsTrueActing if the theater scene is portrayed as a purer and more authentic form of the art rather than the corrupt film and television industry. Compare MusicIsPolitics, TheWickedStage, and CorruptingPornography for other entertainment industries being depicted as evil and corrupting. See also {{Celebrity Is Overrated}}, which tends to go in line with this, and MysticalHollywood, when this trope is taken to an outright demonic level. See also: [[HollywoodStyle every trope on this wiki containing the word Hollywood.]]

** Troy [=McClure=] is a washed-up movie star whose career [[IncrediblyLamePun tanked]] after he was [[NoodleIncident caught]] [[BestialityIsDepraved sleeping with the fishes.]] He is shown to be incredibly vain and self-centered, and incapable of normal adult relationships. It doesn't help that his agent had all but abandoned him. He dates and eventually marries Selma in an attempt to salvage his career, but then his agent tries to pressure him into having a baby with her. She doesn't want to bring a child into a sham marriage, and she leaves him. [[ResetButton And once again, his agent abandons him, leaving him to do "educational" films and infomercials]].

* ''Money: A Suicide Note'' is a Creator/MartinAmis book about a really unpleasant advertising man writing a movie script and getting it published. He is a truly horrible character, and so are most of the other people he meets.

* All the characters of ''Literature/ImperialBedrooms'', the sequel to Creator/BretEastonEllis's ''Literature/LessThanZero'', are members of the Hollywood machine.
* Creator/RaymondChandler's fifth novel, ''Literature/TheLittleSister'', takes Literature/PhilipMarlowe into the underbelly of Hollywood, with backstabbing movie stars and celebrities who have dangerous secrets and studios willing to pay well to hush them up. Story features a producer named Oppenheimer because Chandler's subtle like that.
* Creator/MarioPuzo's ''The Last Don'' portrays Hollywood as being substantially more ruthless than the ''Mafia.'' [[CreatorCareerSelfDeprecation Puzo was himself a screenwriter]] (he wrote the screenplay for ''Superman'', among others.)
** In one of its longer subplots, ''Literature/TheGodfather'' follows Johnny Fontaine's adventures into this. It includes planned orgies, doctors who will ignore a patient's health to keep them going, and studio boss Jack Woltz molesting an underage girl (with her mother's consent, though not her own). Mob [[TheConsigliere Consigliere]] Tom Hagen thinks to himself that if this is the world Johnny wants, [[EvenEvilHasStandards he can have it]].
* AbusiveParents Camille and Antonio Spencer from ''Literature/{{Damned}}'' encourage their thirteen-year-old daughter to experiment with drugs, adopt NonSpecificallyForeign and/or InspirationallyDisadvantaged children as a PR stunt each time they have a project coming up, and let their vanity go so far that when their daughter dies, they put the wrong birth year on her headstone to make themselves appear younger.

* ''Literature/LittleStar'' portrays the Swedish music industry as this. It starts with Lennart Cederstrom, a retired pop singer who was part of a duo with his wife Laila in TheSeventies, discovering an infant girl in the woods, naming her Theres, and becoming a [[StageMom Stage Dad]] as he tries to raise her into a great singer without letting her have any contact with the outside world. [[spoiler:He never teaches her basic empathy or understanding of metaphor, however, and Theres brutally murders him and Laila over a tragic misunderstanding. (You see, Theres was told that love is something found inside the mind, and so [[LiteralMetaphor she went looking]] for [[YourHeadASplode that love]].)]] From there, we get Max Hansen, a sleazy and perverted talent agent who attempts to take advantage of the young Theres in more ways than one. Theres, on the other hand, still as emotionally detached as ever, violently attacks him when he tries to rape her, causing him to develop masochistic tendencies. And finally, as Theres becomes famous, she transforms her [[LoonyFan devoted fan club]] into a {{cult}}.
* In the Creator/NeilGaiman story "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories," a young British writer is invited to Hollywood to adapt a novel he wrote into a movie. He's immediately thrust into a Kafkaesque cycle of meetings with people he never sees again, while ExecutiveMeddling mutates his story into several different scripts (a horror story called ''Sons Of Man'' gradually becomes a feel-good comedy called ''I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock And Roll''). Throughout, he ponders the story of a silent film starlet who committed suicide in his hotel, as well as a running gag about two celebrities who were with Creator/JohnBelushi when he died.
* ''Literature/TheShining'': Despite the novel taking place in the Rocky Mountains, this trope still plays a minor part in the backstory, specifically in the background of the Overlook's most infamous owner, the HowardHughesHomage Horace Derwent. One of Derwent's many poorly planned investments was an ailing movie studio that had once been successfully making sappy family films but hit hard times when their most beloved child star O.D.'d on heroin at a party, with the studio covering up her death as a "wasting sickness" she got while entertaining orphans at a children's hospital.
* ''Literature/SomethingMoreThanNight'' mixes the usual kinds of horribleness -- vapid, selfish stars, oppressed writers, studio execs treating studios as their personal playsets -- with additional touches of surreal horror like a team of slapstick comedians that doubles as a clown-themed hit squad, and a private clinic where unethical experiments are carried out to find a cure for death.
* ''Literature/ValleyOfTheDolls'' is all about this, showing the effects of the old studio system, the greed, perversion, and paranoia rampant throughout the entire show business industry. Each of the three women is affected differently, and all end up in the "valley of the dolls" -- addicted to prescription medications to cope with stress.

WRONG! In Horrible Hollywood, the actors and actresses are brain-dead, spoiled, have a tendency towards fighting the law, like to engage in occasional sexual deviancy, and are [[HookersAndBlow addicted to various illegal substances and/or sex workers]]. Marriages rarely last more than a few years (and sometimes just a few hours), and almost everyone has ''at least'' [[SerialSpouse two divorces and remarriages under their belts]], and usually more. Everyone fears [[WhiteDwarfStarlet growing old and losing their fame]], so plastic surgery and desperate attempts to seem young abound. The directors are [[PrimaDonnaDirector egomaniac control freaks]] who wear funny pants and throw [[HairTriggerTemper petty tantrums]] at the slightest provocation. The assistants are overworked, underpaid, and might be [[DeadpanSnarker snarky towards the talent]], but this won't stop them from ruthlessly trying to climb the ladder -- and in this depraved environment, climbing to the top tends to be a [[CastingCouch horizontal sort of activity]]. The fans are insane and you might gain some [[StalkerWithACrush stalkers]]. The executives are fond of [[ExecutiveMeddling excessive meddling]], [[UsefulNotes/HollywoodAccounting screwing artists out of their royalties]] or [[DirtyOldMan otherwise,]] and/or are just plain [[CorruptCorporateExecutive corrupt]], and have people fired on the spot for being insufficiently sycophantic or causing some minor inconvenience. [[WritersSuck Writers are second-class citizens]] and {{Butt Monkey}}s. [[MenGetOldWomenGetReplaced Women who age and lose their sex appeal have trouble finding work, while aging barely has any effect on the career prospects of their male counterparts.]] Child stars almost always go off the deep end in some way(s) [[FormerChildStar when they grow up]], and are often [[WouldHurtAChild victims of sexual grooming by creepy producers]]. Some people spend a lifetime WaitingForABreak that never comes. Absolutely everyone -- even those not actually ''in'' the entertainment industry -- is a StepfordSmiler [[SuchAPhony Phony]] who may be all smiles and charm and obsequiousness to your face, but only because they secretly hate you and can't wait for you to turn your back so they can stick a knife into it. Everywhere you look, crippling insecurities and neuroses are constantly being masked with bombastic, preening arrogance and ego.

* Creator/MarioPuzo's ''The Last Don'' portrays Hollywood as being substantially more ruthless than the ''Mafia.'' [[TakeThatUs Puzo was himself a screenwriter]] (he wrote the screenplay for ''Superman'', among others.)

Might overlap with TheatreIsTrueActing if the theater scene is portrayed as a purer and more authentic form of the art rather than the corrupt film and television industry. Compare MusicIsPolitics and TheWickedStage. See also {{Celebrity Is Overrated}}, which tends to go in line with this, and MysticalHollywood, when this trope is taken to an outright demonic level. See also: [[HollywoodStyle every trope on this wiki containing the word Hollywood.]]

* Music/TheDecemberists' "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41ygKJ3ABk Los Angeles, I'm Yours]]" is more about the city of Los Angeles, but elements of HorribleHollywood creep into the lyrics.

* Music/TheCorrs "Queen of Hollywood" tells the story of a girl who is prepared to do anything to make it in Tinseltown, and succeeds... but now has [[CastingCouch "handprints on her body"]] and [[TookALevelInSadness "sad moonbeams in her eyes"]].

Compare MusicIsPolitics and TheWickedStage. See also {{Celebrity Is Overrated}}, which tends to go in line with this, and MysticalHollywood, when this trope is taken to an outright demonic level. See also: [[HollywoodStyle every trope on this wiki containing the word Hollywood.]]

* The prologue of ''Manga/OshiNoKo'' ends with [[spoiler:the DecoyProtagonist murdered by her stalker, who's presumed to be working at the behest of a powerful man who got a teenager pregnant]]. The rest of the series' portrayal of the entertainment industry isn't quite as bleak, but it is still cynical, with any hopeful facing crowded markets and various conflicting production interest. Nearly all the talent are portrayed sympathetically, but anyone showing their face is threaten by harsh public scrutiny and producers playing favorites without any concern with the quality of their work.

* Several films show at ''ComicBook/CinemaPurgatorio'' were hatchet jobs directed at the dark side of Hollywood culture - some would aim at a single creator, while others just criticized standard practices, such as the disregard for stuntpeople's health, the hypocrisy of political persecutions, and the criminal behavior that's so often swept under the rug.