Not a Lot to "On the Lot"

I don’t know why I thought “On the Lot” might be something special. I guess I was hoping Steven Spielberg, who co-produced the film-making competition with reality-TV pimp Mark Burnett, would bring a vital something or other to the table.

Silly me. “On the Lot” adds absolutely nothing new to the TV-contest formula. It’s a Mad Libs-style reality series: There are film-directing terms -- instead of dancing, cooking, or singing terms -- written in all the blanks. "On the Lot” does what every knockoff reality contest does -- three judges, a lot of humiliation, a little bit of triumph -- and it doesn’t do it well.

You know the drill. Fifty people are selected (from 12,000 submissions!) to come to Hollywood (OMG, Hollywood!) to vie for an office at DreamWorks and some production money. One guy is doing it for the folks back home; another sees the contest as his last chance out of obscurity; another has dreamed of directing since he was a baby -- no, wait, since he was a fetus! They stand before the judges, Garry Marshall (he’s a genius!), Brett Ratner (he’s a double genius!!), and Carrie Fisher (she’s not a genius, but SHE’S PRINCESS LEIA!!!), and they are given instructions for the first challenge: Pitch a movie.

Naturally, we mostly see the worst pitch meetings, including an excruciating one in which a guy named Mark has a panic attack while the judges wait impatiently for him to find his words. I loved the way the editor of the footage made the painful silences long-longer-longest. We see two successful pitches, both of which are presented with confidence. But neither -- one a animated buddy movie about a rat and a mouse -- deserved the kudos lavished on them by the judges.

I kept wondering if Burnett saw “Project Greenlight” and envied it. Maybe he said to himself, I’ll show them, I’ll snag Spielberg and blow viewers away with prestige. Ultimately, we don’t know what led to the creation of “On the Lot,” but we can safely assume it wasn’t inspiration.