He's Way More Famous Than You an LOL Farce About Hollywood Stardom

A self-referential, insider farce about the hunger for Hollywood stardom, He's Way More Famous Than You is — like its leading lady — as unhinged as it is hilarious. Still clinging to the fact that years earlier, she costarred in The Squid and the Whale, Halley Feiffer (as herself) aims...

By Nick Schager

May 9, 2013

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A self-referential, insider farce about the hunger for Hollywood stardom, He's Way More Famous Than You is — like its leading lady — as unhinged as it is hilarious. Still clinging to the fact that years earlier, she costarred in The Squid and the Whale, Halley Feiffer (as herself) aims to reignite her faded career by producing a five-minute trailer for a ten-page treatment that will hopefully be developed at a film festival screenwriting lab. Feiffer reimagines herself as a drunken mess consumed only with recapturing the red carpet spotlight, and her plans to produce her semiautobiographical work soon involve casting her gay wannabe-actor brother, Ryan (Ryan Spahn), enlisting as director Ryan's boyfriend, Michael Urie (Urie, the film's real director), competing for parts with Mamie Gummer, convincing Ralph Macchio to be her costar, seeking help for her alcoholism from Natasha Lyonne, and kidnapping Ben Stiller. Whether guzzling bottles of champagne through a straw or reenacting the death scene from The Outsiders in a crowded restaurant, Feiffer is a brazenly tasteless riot. And this comedy, rife with bonkers one-liners and laugh-out-loud absurdity — culminating with a finale that actually refers to child-abuse doc Capturing the Friedmans' "mysterious eroticism" — should, in a just world, solidify her A-list credentials.

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Nick Schager is a regular film contributor at Voice Media Group and its film partner, the Village Voice. VMG publications include LA Weekly, Denver Westword, Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times, Broward-Palm Beach New Times, Houston Press and Dallas Observer.