‘Rhinoskin’ Takes a Funny Look at an Actor’s Life

Dina Marie Chapman and Tod DePree’s “Rhinoskin: The Making of a Movie Star” (at the Nuart Wednesday for one week) is a funny, rueful account of DePree’s own struggle to become an actor in Hollywood.

Much is familiar to the initiated--the interminable rounds of auditions, the obligatory photos and acting classes, the constant rejection--but the film is a reminder of just how many people make their living off Hollywood hopefuls and what amazing things they will say. Some of these people are sincere, some are wise and some self-promoting, but others will make your jaw drop.

Scott Henning, manager for billboard queen Angelyne, must have had his client in mind when he says that a real star would “never ruin a movie with anything as ridiculous as acting.” And when Tod, a nice-looking blond young man with a pleasant smile, takes a gig requiring him to hide himself entirely in a chicken suit to promote a Melrose restaurant, its proprietor actually remarks that it’s a good job for actors because “what they really need is exposure.”

Giving “Rhinoskin”--an actor’s skin has to be as thick as a rhino’s--an edge are its interviews with those who knew Tod in his hometown of Holland, Mich., only to discover that by and large they are either vapid or surprisingly mean-spirited, apparently jealous that he was able to get away from the very place he grows homesick for at Christmas. Whether or not Tod makes it in Hollywood, you don’t see him going home again for more than a visit.

Information: (310) 478-6379.

Halpern’s Enigma: Amy Halpern’s 64-minute “Falling Lessons” (Monica 4-Plex Thursday only at 7:30 p.m.) is a stunningly sensual, life-affirming experience from a major experimental film artist that is open to myriad meanings. The film is a rhythmic montage of almost 200 faces, human and animal, that Halpern pans vertically, creating a cascade of visages suggesting that while individuals express a range of emotions they remain ultimately enigmas.

The glimpses of life going on around all these faces have an unsettling, even apocalyptic quality, and the film forces you to consider living beings and their value collectively rather than selectively. Halpern’s rich, inspired mix of sounds, words and music complements her images perfectly.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

Four From Eastern Europe: “The Curtain Crumbles: Four Recent Films From Eastern Europe” will play Saturdays and Sundays at Monica 4-Plex at 11 a.m. and is composed of four outstanding, quirky and politically critical works. Lucian Pintile’s post-Ceaucescu saga “The Oak” (1991) is deliberately brutal, nasty, shocking and profane: a picaresque journey into chaos, a portrait of a nation on the brink. The central characters, a teacher (Maia Morgenstern) and a doctor (Razvan Vasilescu) in love, act like a criminal couple on the run. The film starts when the heroine’s father dies under a toppled projector and she sets fire to his room--and this is just the beginning.

Mircea Daneliuc’s exceedingly dark comedy “The Conjugal Bed” (1993) suggests that life in Romania continues to be plenty tough, with paranoia, poverty and corruption rampant. Gheorghe Dinica stars as a virile, middle-aged manager of a derelict theater showing American movies whose life starts unraveling when his worn-looking wife becomes pregnant with a third child they cannot afford--but they can’t afford an abortion either.

“Taxi Blues’ ” Pavel Loungine returns with the equally messy, passionate and irresistible “Luna Park,” a sprawling, revved-up tale about a skinhead thug (Andrei Goutine) who hangs with an ultra-nationalist gang, headquartered by a Moscow amusement park, dedicated to terrorizing gays and Jews. Then Goutine discovers his father not only is Jewish but a famous, popular singer-composer (Oleg Borisov), an official Soviet hero living in a vast, luxurious flat where he gives boisterous, seemingly endless parties.

The most accessible of the films is “City Unplugged,” a comedy set in Estonia, where a young electrical engineer, hard-pressed financially because of his wife’s pregnancy, throws in with a gang of Russians all set to nab $970 million in gold being returned to newly independent Estonia from France after 50 years. It was written by L.A. writer Paul Kolsby.