Best movies like Role Model: Gene Wilder

Sassy and ambitious waitress Mary Evans amuses and befriends amiable seldom-sober Hollywood film director Max Carey when he stumbles into her restaurant. Max invites Mary to his film premiere and, after a night of drinking and carousing, Mary is granted a screen test. A studio contract follows. Just as Mary finds her dreams coming true, Carey’s life and career begins its descent.

An exploration of the appeal of horror films, with interviews of many legendary directors in the genre.

1951: Andy Schmidt is in his last year of college. Taking life easy and always a saucy joke on his lips, he manages to win fellow student Mary's heart, although she's already otherwise engaged. But getting a job after college turns out much harder than expected; most directors take offense at his free interpretation of his roles. Desperate, he tries in wrestling. To avoid getting beaten up he stages the fights - and incidentally invents show-wrestling.

Released two years after James Dean's death, this documentary chronicles his short life and career via black-and-white still photographs, interviews with the aunt and uncle who raised him, his paternal grandparents, a New York City cabdriver friend, the owner of his favorite Los Angeles restaurant, outtakes from East of Eden, footage of the opening night of Giant, and Dean's ironic PSA for safe driving.

The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.

A failed Hollywood actor returns to his home town in Wisconsin and reminisces about his life in L.A. to a potential new girlfriend about his faults, auditions, misadventures, and confrontations with the evils of Hollywood.

Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."

The story of Leon Vitali, who surrendered his promising acting career to become Stanley Kubrick's devoted right-hand man.

This historical and critical look at slasher films, which includes dozens of clips, begins with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Prom Night. The films' directors, writers, producers, and special effects creators comment on the films' making and success. During the Reagan years, the films get gorier, budgets get smaller, and their appeal wanes. Then, Nightmare on Elm Street revives the genre. Jump to the late 90s, when Scream brings humor and TV stars into the mix.

Actor Ned Beatty hosts a look at the genre known as "exploitation" films. Interviews with some of the producers and directors of these films are shown, along with scenes from and trailers for some of these films.

A British actor insults a French acting group only to fall victim to a prank that might destroy his career.

A celebration of the life and career of one of America's most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians—Buster Keaton—whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.

A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.

An act of civil disobedience turns into a standoff with police when homeless people in Cincinnati take over the public library to seek shelter from the bitter cold.

Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.

Down-on-his-luck film director Jimmie Dale takes a job at a fly-by-night acting school. He is drawn into the plans of the school's owner to bilk a wealthy young man out of the funds he has supplied to shoot a movie starring pretty student Alice Perkins. But Jimmie hopes to bilk the bilkers by actually completing the movie as ostensibly planned.

"I Am Steve McQueen" tells the incredible life story of this legendary actor, racer, and cultural icon. Extensive interviews, movie clips, archival footage and sound bites chronicle his extraordinary career while focusing on the correlation between his on-screen and off-screen experiences. Narrated by Robert Downey Jr.

During the run of a particularly awful interpretation of Richard III, the star, Anthony O'Malley, begins to frequent a rough pub to develop his character. He meets Barreller who he discovers owes someone he's never met a considerable sum of money. Seeing an opportunity to make some fast money, O'Malley convinces hapless extra, Tom, to meet Barreller as the debt collector.

THE AUTEUR follows formerly renowned porn director Arturo Domingo (Five Easy Nieces, Requiem for a Wet Dream) through a bizarre weekend as he receives a lifetime achievement award at a film festival in Portland, OR. Encountering crazed fans, former collaborators, bitter enemies and free-loving hippies, Arturo attempts to put the pieces of his broken career and personal life back together.

A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes her top off.

A young screenwriter allows others to exploit her in the hopes of "making it" in Hollywood.

On the set of Cleopatra, Hollywood's most beautiful star, Elizabeth Taylor, fell into the arms of one of the world's greatest actors, Richard Burton - and she didn't leave. Their subsequent white-hot, scandalous love affair gave rise to the paparazzi and they became the most hunted and photographed couple on earth. Their rocky, passionate, relationship, born in front of the cameras, was subsequently captured in a series of films, including The V.I.P.s and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The last of the great, extravagant stars, flaunting diamonds, yachts and private planes, they continually seized the headlines. They even divorced and married again - only to divorce again - but remain in each other's hearts. This Elizabeth Taylor - Richard Burton story is a no-holds barred account of their undying, but impossible love.

Friends, family, co-stars and admirers of actor Steve McQueen talk about his life and his movie career.

Helena Mora, the head of an eccentric theatrical family, has decided to sell her large estate in the Hamptons because of her recent money troubles. Before she completes the sale, she wants to have one last gathering of family and friends, with dramatic performances. Bringing everyone together, though, creates rivalries and tension, especially for Oona, a temperamental but successful movie actress who seeks the approval of her creative peers.

Murder, mystery and mayhem as B movie fan, Adam Waltz, wins Walk on Role in a film Featuring Scream Queen, Cassie Blue (Tiffany Shepis). Thinking his luck had changed for the better he steps into chaos with a killer loose and no one on the production safe.

Three sisters come to Hollywood to be movie stars. Complications arise when two of them fall in love with the same man.

The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba

Since the early days, Jerry Lewis—in the line of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel—had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches and signature slapstick humor. Yet Lewis was far more than just a clown. He was also a groundbreaking filmmaker whose unquenchable curiosity led him to write, produce, stage and direct many of the films he appeared in, resulting in such adored classics as The Bellboy, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and The Nutty Professor.

Vintage 1975 documentary about the life of movie queen Elizabeth Taylor hosted by Peter Lawford, and featuring appearances by actors Roddy McDowall and Rock Hudson, directors Richard Brooks and Vincente Minnelli, Elizabeth's mother Sara Taylor, costumer Helen Rose, and producer Sam Marx.

After the indomitable and beloved founder of a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York falls into a coma, the eccentric staff must band together with her clueless "crypto-bro" son to keep the thespian paradise afloat.

Naive Iowa farm boy Lewis Tater dreams of being a famous Western novelist like his hero, Zane Grey. He leaves home to answer a writing correspondence course's ad for on-campus classes, only to discover that the school consists of a row of postboxes at an isolated Nevada train depot. On the run from the con men responsible, Lewis stumbles across "real" cowboys--cowboy actors shooting a movie in the desert. The would-be writer soon finds himself instead acting in Westerns, for the rundown Tumbleweed Productions studio, in Depression-era Hollywood.

Co-director Robert Margolis stars as Robert, an actor who may or may not be himself in this intense and often hilarious film about acting, aging and the dark side of ambition. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, The Definition of Insanity was filmed over the course of 18 months, as a documentary crew follows Robert Margolis obsessively from one failed audition to another, recording in raw detail his every humiliation and small triumph as he searches for that elusive perfect role that will catapult his career into the next level. Just when it seems that he will be forced by family and financial pressures to give up everything he has worked for, he meets legendary filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich («The Last Picture Show», «Papermoon»). That encounter changes his life profoundly, but in a very different way than he had anticipated.

A struggling actress is cast in her last off (off) Broadway show - a modern take on “A Christmas Carol” - before giving up her dream and moving home. Instead, she finds romance with her director and a renewed passion for her craft and the city. But when the historic theater loses its lease and the show is set to fold, she and her cast mates are need of a Christmas miracle.

In this musical showcase, two aspiring stars attempt to wow a pair of talent scouts with their stellar abilities. Songs include "My Heart Isn't in It" (Jack Lawrence), "It's Love, Love, Love" (Mack David, Joan Whitney, Alex Kramer), "When They Ask about You" (Sammy Stept), "Jumpin' at the Jubilee" (Ben Carter, Mayes Marshall), "Taking Care of You" (Lou Brown, Harry Akst), "Where Am I Without You?" (Don Raye, Gene De Paul), "Two Hearts in the Dark" (Dave Franklin), "Somewhere This Side of Heaven," "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel."

Classic film star and queer icon Montgomery Clift’s legacy has long been a story of tragedy and self-destruction. But when his nephew dives into the family archives, a much more complicated picture emerges.