Hurlyburly
USA 1998
Reviewed by Richard Kelly
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Casting directors Eddie and Mickey share a condominium in the Hollywood hills. Eddie is abusing cocaine and feuding with Mickey over a woman, Darlene. Regular visitors to the condo are Phil, a belligerent aspiring actor with marital problems, and industry player Artie, who offers teenage runaway Donna to Eddie for sex. Mickey engineers Eddie and Darlene's reunion at a party. Donna flees the condo after Phil hits her. Phil tells Eddie he is reluctant to give his wife Susie the child she wants.
One year later: Eddie and Darlene are dating. Susie is divorcing Phil, although they have a baby daughter. One night the four men binge at the condo. Eddie summons dancer Bonnie as a date for Phil, who pushes her out of a moving car. Mickey and Artie harangue Eddie for tolerating Phil, and leave. Bonnie limps back, and Eddie unsuccessfully propositions her. Artie and Mickey return. Artie makes a date with Bonnie as she leaves. Phil shows up, having snatched his daughter. The next night, while quarrelling with Darlene, Eddie learns Phil has driven his car off the road and died. After the funeral, Eddie finds a puzzling note left by Phil and argues bitterly with an unconcerned Mickey. Later, floating face down in his pool, Eddie is surprised by Donna. They talk until she falls asleep on his sofa.
Review
"Is that The Big One I hear? Bye, you lizard scum!" Thus did comedian Bill Hicks dream of bidding farewell to Los Angeles and its denizens in the much feared advent of a major earthquake. But Hicks' wrath was really aimed at LA's entertainment industry, making him just the latest in a long line of Hollywood Cassandras. From such books as Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust and Joan Didion's The White Album to Warren Zevon's ballad 'Desperadoes under the Eaves', the clever people have long reckoned Hollywood is just about due a hail of fire and brimstone.
David Rabe's Hurlyburly, originally a stage success of the 80s, partakes of the same apocalyptic spirit. Working with director Anthony Drazan (who made interracial romance Zebrahead), Rabe has creditably polished up and opened out his play for film. Stagy dialogues are recharged as casting directors Eddie and Mickey play cellphone tag from their respective sports cars. The glazed upmarket decors by the late Michael Haller (Hal Ashby's longtime collaborator) are spot-on, as is the elegant framing by Changwei Gu, doyen of Chinese Fifth Generation cinematographers. But none of this can redeem our suspicion that the characters stumbling over this fancy furniture are anything but terminally rotten human beings.
Although less well known outside the US, Rabe shares certain hard-edged tendencies with David Mamet. They're both good on the call-and-response rhythms of man-talk, and they both like to tease us with male characters who are scary in their self-delusion, prone to voicing repulsive sentiments as if they were the soul of sweet reason. Rabe is more earnest than Mamet: his characters might be corrupt, but they still want to protest the fate of mankind. Thus some kind of crux is reached in Hurlyburly when the lovelorn and self-loathing Eddie soliloquises to ditzy Bonnie about weapons of mass destruction that obliterate people yet leave buildings standing. If things and not humans will survive, Eddie concludes, then let's all be things. But naturally he can't help punctuating this cri de coeur with sobbing pleas for Bonnie to suck his dick.
Inevitably, cocaine is seen as the catalyst for much of this awful behaviour. Unfortunately Hurlyburly isn't such a bad advert for the hollow thrills of the drug. (There's a fine sequence during which Eddie lies giggling under a glass-top coffee table adorned with white lines, a razor blade and the daily Variety.) The female characters, meanwhile, have a tough time all round: both Donna and Bonnie take some licks from Phil. And yet, somehow, these people are seen to deserve each other. As the four reprobate males take turns cradling Phil's baby daughter, Eddie wonders aloud how the little lady might fare if they were to raise her. The audience clutches itself against a chill wind of irony.
Clearly, something about Rabe's writing has deep resonance for Sean Penn (so arresting in the Rabe-scripted Casualties of War). Penn is the most gifted and passionate US film actor of his generation, and a brilliant writer-director. But when he announced a premature retirement from movies a few years ago, Penn rightly lamented there are no longer enough committed directors in American film to enable an actor to build a body of worthwhile work. One can't but feel that his problems with material persist, and Hurlyburly feels like a return visit to a dry well. No one can do coked-out neurosis better than Penn, but something about his nerve-straining demeanour only serves to recall The Falcon and the Snowman. In the recriminatory dialogues that draw the film to a close, if not a conclusion, the patience of the audience is taxed outright. As journalist Alexander Cockburn once observed, "Southern California is comprised of too many people working too hard for too little, to support too many people consuming too much and doing absolutely nothing." If there is any reason why we should care for this latter group of lizard scum, Hurlyburly fails to divulge it.
Credits
- Director
- Anthony Drazan
- Producers
- Anthony Drazan
- Richard N. Gladstein
- David S. Hamburger
- Screenplay
- David Rabe
- Based on his own play
- Director of Photography
- Changwei Gu
- Editor
- Dylan Tichenor
- Production Designer
- Michael Haller
- Music
- David Baerwald
- Steve Lindsey
- ©Carol Drive Productions Inc
- Production Company
- Storm Entertainment presents a film by Anthony Drazan
- Executive Producers
- H. Michael Heuser
- Frederick Zollo
- Nicholas Paleologos
- Carl Colpaert
- FilmColony Production Executive
- Lila Yacoub
- Production Co-ordinator
- Barbara Spitz
- Unit Production Manager
- Deborah Cass
- Location Manager
- Stephanie Pleet
- Post-production Supervisor
- Peter Mavromates
- Assistant Directors
- David Wechsler
- Marco Londoner
- Script Supervisor
- Rebecca Long
- Casting
- David Rubin
- Associate:
- Ronna Kress
- Oakland:
- Beau Bonneau
- ADR Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Creative Consultant
- Don Phillips
- Camera Operator
- Michael Butler
- Film Editor
- Tatiana S. Riegel
- Art Director
- Derek Hill
- Scenic Artist
- Elizabeth Tullis
- Storyboard Artists
- Chuck Swenson
- Andy Friend
- Costume Designer
- Mary Claire Hannan
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Michael Nielsen
- Key Make-up Artist
- Kimberly Greene
- Make-up Artists
- Marta Camer
- Denise Della Valle
- Key Hairstylist
- Barbara Olvera
- Hairstylist
- Catherine Childers
- Title Design
- Brian King
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Score Created by
- The Palindrome Floating Band
- Featured Vocalist:
- Petra Haden
- Keys/Programming:
- Eric Anest
- Guitar/Keys/Electric Bass:
- David Baerwald
- Organ/Piano:
- Jim Cox
- Drums:
- John Ferraro
- Piano:
- David Goldblatt
- Guitar/Lap Steel:
- Smokey Hormel
- Trumpet/Flumpet:
- Mark Isham
- Keys/Pianosaurus:
- Kris Kellow
- Upright Bass:
- Larry Klein
- Keys/Pragmatiam:
- Steve Lindsey
- God:
- Mort Lindsey
- Programming:
- Eric Persing
- Electric Bass:
- John Pierce
- Drums:
- David Raven
- Guitars:
- David Torn
- Waddy Wachtel
- Time/Money:
- Valerie Pack
- Music Supervisor
- Amanda Scheer-Demme
- Score Producer
- Steve Lindsey
- Music Editor
- Bunny Andrews
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Gabriel Veitri
- Soundtrack
- "There Goes the Neighborhood" by Sheryl Crow, Jeff Trott, performed by Sheryl Crow, with Sheryl Crow (clarinet/percussion), , Gregg Williams (drums/programming/
percussion), Jeff Trott (guitars), Tim Smith (bass), Bobby Keys (baritone/tenor/alto sax), Michael Davis (trombone), Kent Smith (trumpet); music video for "Aldritch Sauce" by/performed by Red Aunts - Sound Mixer
- Jeffrey S. Wexler
- Supervising Re-recording Mixer
- David Parker
- Re-recording Mixer
- Michael Semanick
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Michael Kirchberger
- Dialogue Editors
- David A. Cohen
- Dianna Stirpe
- Sound Effects Recordist
- Hamilton Sterling
- Sound Effects Editor
- Jennifer Ware
- Foley
- Walkers:
- Margie O'Malley
- Marnie Moore
- Recordists:
- Steve Fontano
- Frank Rinella
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Rocky Capella
- Film Extracts
- Harold and Maude (1972)
- The Indomitable Teddy Roosevelt (1983)
- Cast
- Sean Penn
- Eddie
- Kevin Spacey
- Mickey
- Robin Wright Penn
- Darlene
- Chazz Palminteri
- Phil
- Garry Shandling
- Artie
- Anna Paquin
- Donna
- Meg Ryan
- Bonnie
- Gianna Renaudo
- Susie
- David Fabrizio
- stage manager
- Kenny Vance
- singer
- Michaline Babich
- receptionist
- Elaine Correl
- TV anchor
- Sharon Tay
- TV reporter
- Frank Sommerville
- TV anchor
- Bob Jimenez
- newscaster
- Piers MacKenzie
- Arthur Neving
- Penelope Allen
- dry cleaner
- Lisa Ristorucci
- cashier
- Igor Hiller
- little Billy
- Curt Skaggs
- cowboy
- Nathalie Lake
- Miranda
- Bud Cox
- priest
- Peter Sitari
- poet
- Laura Brownson
- Vicki
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Metrodome Distribution Ltd
- 11.028 feet
- 122 minutes 33 seconds
- Dolby digital
- Colour by
- CFI