Farewell to Hollywood is a documentary by director Henry Corra about his relationship with teenage filmmaker Regina Nicholson in the last two years of her battle with cancer. In the cinema verite tradition, Corra inserts himself and his camera into the life of this dying girl as she struggles with the physical and social consequences of her disease. The graphic reality of cancer is laid bare, we watch in horror as Regina is shown peeling the hair off her head after undergoing chemotherapy, panting in pain after lung surgery, vomiting endlessly and, what is perhaps most troubling, lying dead. Throughout the film she receives emotional abuse from her distraught Christian parents, with whom she eventually has a total falling out. The parents are not even told of the death of their daughter by the end of the film, her life utterly falls apart.

The only lifeline Regina has left is Corra, who becomes her primary caretaker and companion during her final months. Their relationship is touching and sincere. Corra offers her refuge from her family in his home in Pasadena, which she gratefully accepts. She spends her last days with Corra in his home overlooking the ocean. But it is at this point that the question of the film's ethicality emerges. Because Corra, the man with the movie camera, is practically synonymous with the film itself, it is evident that Regina is driven by circumstance to live her last days through this film. This is the root of our feeling that this film commits a deep violation. Even though Regina is complicit in the project of this film, and is credited as a director alongside Corra, the fact of her desperate situation has greater moral weight than his good intentions. We cannot help but see exploitation here.

This exploitation extends even to the viewer. We feel violated for having watched this film. Part of what moves us so much about Regina's tragedy is that it is real. Here is Regina, funny and cute, and here she is now, dead -- really dead, not dead like the dead people in movies. Corra uses this real-life death for aesthetic ends, practically sacrificing Regina to the film. He means for us to interpret our grief as an aspect of aesthetic experience -- but this would be to conflate the ethical and the aesthetic. We must recognize that Corra's entire project rides on this simple conflation. And we must not allow it. The film gathers its emotional content from the raw force of mere life, and contributes little by way of artistic input. It functions like a blunt existential object beating you over the head until you cry. But the object is in fact a person, and she deserves respect even in death.

Corra might be said to escape these charges because the film’s ethical slipperiness is obviously purposeful. It is even brought up in the film when Regina complains about her parents accusing him of having romantic or sexual intentions. Perhaps the very fact that this film has sparked so much controversy is testament to its overall artistic merit. But, again, to admit this would be to surrender the ethical to the aesthetic. And it would result in Corra’s practical vindication. Rather, we must condemn this film. In order for Regina to find peace in death, this film must be put to rest.