I love documentaries, especially because so many are now available on Netflix Instant. It's like a snobby way of watching reality television. I especially love documentaries about serial killers, cults, internet sensations, and especially about Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Therefore, I was enraptured by The Hollywood Complex.The complex refers both to some parents' obsessions to make their child into a star, as well as the apartment complex in LA called Oakwood, which offers children and their parents a place to live during pilot season (the four months that networks cast their pilots, for those of you not up with the Hollywood lingo).
The film chronicles several children and their parents, who have dropped everything to live in Hollywood and get their children to auditions. The Oakwood complex not only offers furnished apartments, but an in-house photographer and seminars for how to "make it" as a child star. Which costs the families six thousand dollars a month. And pilot season is four months. And what's more- some families have stayed at Oakwood for over three years. Do the math.
The documentary could read like an extended episode of Toddlers And Tiaras, but the compelling thing is that the children profiled are charming and likeable. They are talented, but you know they are just walking into a wall of rejection.
