Bowfinger

B movie film producer Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) has saved up to direct a movie for his entire life-he now has $2,184 to pay for production costs. He is deep in debt, but an extremely positive outlook towards life. He is a master at doing things on a budget, using his connections. He has a script ("Chubby Rain" (because the aliens come to earth in rain drops) penned by an accountant, Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle), and a camera operator, Dave (Jamie Kennedy) (who is also a parking lot attendant and loans Bowfinger expensive cars for his meetings with producers and stuff), with access to studio-owned equipment. Bowfinger then lines up several actors who are hungry for work (including Daisy (Heather Graham), a Hollywood wannabe and Carol (Christine Baranski) who considers herself a serious actress), along with a crowd of illegal Mexican immigrants for a camera crew; the only other thing he needs is access to a studio in order to distribute his masterwork. He extracts a promise from a high-ranking Universal Pictures executive, Jerry Renfro (Robert Downey Jr.), that Universal will distribute the film if it includes currently hot action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy). Ramsey-a pompous, neurotic, and paranoid (he thinks there is a conspiracy in Hollywood to deliver all the good lines to white actors) actor-refuses to act in Bowfinger's film, so Bowfinger constructs a plan to covertly film all of Ramsey's scenes without his knowledge. The actors, told that Ramsey is method acting and will not be interacting with them outside of their scenes, walk up to Ramsey in public and recite their lines while hidden cameras catch Ramsey's confused reactions. Daisy is very comfortable giving sexual favors to get what she wants and starts by showering Slater (Kohl Sudduth) (the supporting actor) with her affections. The plan goes well at first: Ramsey (who is a member of an organization called MindHead, whose mentor Terry Stricter (Terence Stamp) is counseling Kit on his paranoia about being chased by aliens and against his urge to flash females in public) swallows the movie's alien invasion premise and believes he is genuinely being stalked by aliens, resulting in an exceptionally genuine and intense performance. Daisy wants more scenes with Kit and asks Slater for it. Slater suggests speaking to Afrim, since he is the screenwriter. Daisy sleeps with Afrim and he changes the script. Afrim informs Daisy that its up to Bowfinger if the scenes actually make it into the final movie or not. So, Daisy moves on to Bowfinger. Bowfinger steals Daisy's credit card to fund the equipment to film the rest of the movie. However, the strain on Kit's already-precarious mental state leads him to go into hiding (He moves into the Mindhead facility for solitude) in order to maintain his sanity, stalling the film's production. Bowfinger resorts to hiring a Ramsey lookalike named Jiff. Jiff is kind, amiable and rather clueless. He even runs through a gauntlet of "stunt drivers" racing along a major freeway when asked. During a chat with the other cast members, Jiff mentions that he is Kit Ramsey's brother, explaining the likeness. Using this new knowledge, Bowfinger has Jiff find out Kit Ramsey's movements and the final scene to the film is readied for shooting. Also, Daisy moves on to having sex with Jiff to get an intro to Kit. The final scene is at an observatory. Though otherwise pleased with Ramsey's unscripted dialogue, Bowfinger considers his character's final line "Gotcha suckers!" to be the key moment of the film and directs one of the actors to guide Ramsey through the scene under the guise of showing him how to get rid of the aliens. During the filming, Ramsey becomes terrified and struggles to deliver the final line. At this point, Ramsey's mentor at MindHead, Terry Stricter (Terence Stamp), has discovered evidence (A guard at Dave's studio is a MindHead member and tells Terry everything) that Kit's "aliens" may not be just in his head. MindHead officials track Bowfinger to the observatory and shut down production. Bowfinger's camera crew show him B-roll footage of Ramsey they were filming off-set, just in case they saw anything they could use. The footage shows Ramsey donning a paper bag over his head and exposing himself to an amused Laker Girl Cheerleading Squad, something MindHead specifically discouraged him from doing. Bowfinger blackmails MindHead with the footage, threatening to release it and ruin Ramsey's career (which would also endanger MindHead's finances as Ramsey is a major donor to their operations). MindHead advises the star to finish the project. Bowfinger finally gets to sit at the premiere of a film he himself directed and is awed (Daisy attends the premier as Kit's guest, suggesting that she is now sleeping with him). Following the arguable success of the film, Bowfinger receives a rare Fed-Ex envelope-an offer to film a martial arts film called "Fake Purse Ninjas" starring himself and Jiff Ramsey.