In 2002, Art Linson wrote a funny, shocking memoir about his escapades as a Hollywood producer.

This is the condensed, fictional version. Linson himself wrote the script — yet something, everything in fact, has been lost in translation.

Robert De Niro plays the Linson-like Ben, a middle-aged, seen-it-all executive with two big headaches. His new arty action film, Fiercely, is testing badly with audiences — no one likes the bit where Sean Penn’s dog gets shot. So the studio bosses, led by a ball-breaker (Catherine Keener), demand a re-cut, which in turn causes the film’s British director (Michael Wincott) to have a fit.

Meanwhile, a pending project involving Bruce Willis may be cancelled because Bruce has been pigging out and won’t shave his beard. The press agent Dick (John Turturro) refuses to confront his biggest client — so it’s up to our hero to tackle the “animal” head-on.

Poor Ben. Poor us: neither of these disasters is remotely involving.

If the point of the Fiercely story is that pretentious directors enjoy fighting pointless battles, it leads to a dead end. Back in the real world, Linson worked on films such as David Fincher’s Fight Club; pictures that did indeed get censored by nervy studio heads but that seem worthy of blood, sweat and tears. It’s hard to care what happens to this dud.

The Willis vehicle does not fill the gap. The actor’s room-wrecking tantrums (inspired, incidentally, by Alec Baldwin’s behaviour on The Edge) are funny for about five minutes. Alas, they take up half of the film.

Turturro is delightful as the limp Dick (he treats his clients like hungry crocodiles: “I’m scared of all of them!”). But it’s still a one-note joke.

Nor do things perk up when the attention shifts to Ben’s personal life. De Niro seems convinced he’s in a serious drama and clearly relishes playing Ben — the kind of man who takes ecstasy to get through one-night stands and can’t remember anything in the morning.

Director Barry Levinson, though, keeps asking us to see him as an adorable, anal-retentive screw-up — a kind of Woody Allen in La-La land. More cold than cute, De Niro’s brilliance actually makes the film more confusing than it needs to be.

Was Linson’s script tinkered with by cowardly execs and/or lawyers? Did certain stars demand changes? Or was it Linson’s own vanity that tripped him up? Perhaps, in a few years’ time, Linson will blow the whistle on his artistic debut.