Jack Haynes and Raymond Savage
Created by Rex Pickett

JACK HAYNES and RAYMOND SAVAGE, a mismatched pair of Hollywood private eyes who've seen better days, are hired by a movie studio to track down a missing starlet who walked off the set in From Hollywood to Deadwood, a low, low budget 1989 flick.

Make no mistake -- this one is a real turkey, scoring way up there on the ol' GobbleMeter. No lame cliche is left unused. Inept, illogical, and too dull to even be funny.

Some have suggested this is a spoof -- the usual kneejerk defense whenever somebody attempts a genre exercise and it belly flops.

Aren't spoofs actually supposed to be funny? The only humour here is almost entirely unintentional.

I'm not usually this harsh about films, but this was WAY BAD. Someone should track down writer/director Pickett and stop him, before he fowls up the screen again... we're talkin' serious turkey here. The cock-eyed allusion to a Neil Young song may be the sole piece of evidence that there was any intelligent life involved with this one, folks.

Fortunately, Pickett did go on to bigger and better things. I'm happy to report that his 2004 novel Sideways was made into a very successful film that even an "asshole... cyber jerk" like me enjoyed. But it's also worth noting that, beyond writing the novel that served as source material, Pickett had nothing to do with the actual film.

UNDER OATH

• "Fuck you, asshole!  I just wrote a film that won an Academy Award!  I just sold a novel to one of the hottest directors in Hollywood to be his next movie.  It's one thing to criticize a movie and trash it, but to say someone should "track me down before I fowl up the screen again" is the height of puerile.  Why don't you crawl off your stupid little Web bully pulpit and go back into the hole from where you came.  "From Hollywood to Deadwood" may be a failure, but it was made under extraordinarily difficult circumstances on an extremely low budget, was butchered by the distributor... etc., etc.  But it got made, got released, and shockingly garnered some okay reviews.  Hardly the embarrassment that most films are. What a little cyber jerk you are!"
  -- Rex Pickett, in a November 2001 letter to the editor
  

FILM

• FROM HOLLYWOOD TO DEADWOOD...Buy this video....
  (1989, Palm Pictures/Island Pictures)
  96 minutes
  A Nightfilm Productions Picture
  Screenplay: Rex Pickett
  Director: Rex Pickett
  Producer: Jo Peterson
  Executive Producer: Bill Byrne
  Starring Scott Paulin as RAYMOND SAVAGE
  and Jim Haynie as JACK HAYNES
  Also starring Barbara Schock

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith (original report, May 1999).