What price Hollywood?

It's not until the last few minutes of "What Just Happened" that the film's title is posed as a question, not by the protagonist but by his ex-wife. She doesn't get a straight answer, as, presumably, she never has. Her former husband is a Hollywood producer.

In that it tends to confirm all the usual stereotypes about Hollywood, you could say that there are no surprises in Barry Levinson's funny, sly and highly stress-inducing movie about two crazy weeks in the life of a successful producer. "What Just Happened" is a fictionalized adaptation of the autobiography of veteran producer Art Linson, who also wrote the screenplay.

Briskly, almost curtly directed by Levinson, it stars a low-key, even-keel and surprisingly affable Robert De Niro as Ben, a producer on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The cast includes Sean Penn, Bruce Willis, Robin Wright Penn, Catherine Keener and Michael Wilcott as, respectively, Sean Penn; Bruce Willis; Ben's indecisive second ex-wife, Kelly; an icy studio head named Lou; and the bad-boy (read: drug-addicted, self-important hack) British director Jeremy, whose ultra-violent, downer movie has fallen out of favor with Lou. Stanley Tucci plays Ben's screenwriter friend, who is now sleeping with his ex-wife, and John Turturro takes on the role of Willis' gutless agent, whose clients scare him so badly that he walks around screaming in pain from an unidentified stomach condition.

The story is framed by a scene of a photo shoot for Vanity Fair's power issue, and everything that happens happens between Ben finding out that he's been included on the list and the photo actually being taken. In that time, Ben's standing on the list drops more than a few notches. Here is Hollywood, as it ever is in these kinds of self-portraits, in all its back-stabbing, hypocritical, self-serving, narcissistic, self-sabotaging glory. Any remaining illusions anyone might have about the survival of the artistic process should be dashed by scenes like the one in which a test audience in Costa Mesa is given response cards and told, "You're very much a part of the filmmaking process."

Any remaining illusions about the integrity of artists working in Hollywood are put to rest by Wilcott's portrayal of Jeremy the director. We've seen it all before, and yet the feeling of familiarity doesn't dampen the fun of having your cortisol spiked to stroke-inducing levels. Watching Ben attempt to keep his head while trying to get Jeremy's movie finished in time for Cannes and starting production on the Willis vehicle (which is in danger of being shut down unless Willis shaves a bushy beard he's grown unaccountably fond of) without getting crushed is like watching the most dread-suffused game of Frogger ever.