Week Of April 17, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri

April 17, 2006

As we chug toward the summer, it seemed to me that I have a surplus of movies that I haven't found the time to discuss in the column. And so, this week's THB theme… actual movies.

I Am A Sex Addict

Caveh Zahedi and his film have made quite a lot of noise in the indie worlds in a very unexpected way. The big hum has been around Mark Cuban's Landmark Cinemas - with Cuban pushing the day-'n-date agenda with a combination of 2929 Productions, Landmark, and HDNet for cable/satellite delivery - refusing to book Zahedi's film, which is being distributed by IFC, because IFC has a day-'n-date deal with Comcast, the cable provider that has decided to compete with HDNet and not to give Cuban's company space on wire. Thus, Cuban is unwilling to embrace day-n-date unless he makes his cut. How progressive!

The film is not playing in L.A. yet and I missed it at a few festivals, so IFC was kind enough to send me a screener of the film late last week. Before it got here, I became familiarized with the filmmaker via his blog on indieWIRE, which didn't help him any, I have to say.

Before I had a chance to watch the film, I got to scroll through a debate Mr. Zahedi decided to carry on with Nathan Lee, who reviewed his film in the New York Times with brevity and, what I would later learn, was a completely appropriate degree of inattention.

In any case…

The film is entertaining… though the pleasure intersects with waves of boredom and irritation. Watching Zahedi's intellectual masturbation for 99 minutes is a bit like watching a long Three Stooges movie with only one of the Stooges. And without the variation of the other two Stooges to distract, one can't help but to get bored with the same gag being told over and over and over again.

Most irritating is the notion that Zahedi's effort here is one of some kind of raw honesty. As pretentious as Zahedi sounds when he writes, in response to Mr. Lee's review, "Documentary and fiction are two sides of the same coin, and my film, among other things, is a demonstration of that fact. And yet, autobiographical filmmaking continues to be treated as self-indulgent, even though the history of art is filled with autobiographical works, not only in literature but also in painting and photography," he is correct in one fundamental way. He is trying to work both sides of the coin here and it could be dismissed all too easily for the wrong reasons. Where he is dead wrong is that he assumes, somehow, that all film autobiography is discounted by critics as self-indulgent and that it is not in other art forms.

The reason why, in the end, I Am A Sex Addict adds up to very little is that it is not particularly honest. Zahedi has enough to say to make the film worth watching for those of us who indulge in indulgence. But the failure of this film - and why Tarnation is a significantly better film - is that the effort here is all head and almost no heart.

At the center of it is Zahedi's unwillingness to come clean about his addiction, if there was ever any real addiction at all. One almost gets the feeling that Zahedi heard about Sex Addiction and went to meetings for research, hoping to catch something. Moreover, while Zahedi makes "Zahedi" the comic butt of most of the jokes in the film, the film blames almost everything on the women, who are not well enough defined to answer the issues in any real way. That is addict's behavior but it seems, in this case, more a pose than a symptom.

As absurd as sex addition seems to many, those who are searching desperately for a better way to live take it quite seriously. The basic idea of those considered addicts in this group is that they are compelled to use sex without intimacy to achieve some sort of connection in their lives that really has nothing to do with the sex. Perhaps you might see this as part of the basic definition of male sexuality. But my take is that the addiction is the difference between "doesn't want to" and "can't," including the self-destruction and hitting bottom issues that other addicts live with.

Anyway…

Zahedi is a Woody Allen kind of sex addict. He's horny, charming, and not particularly physically attractive. Ironically, what Zahedi seems to see as sophisticated, progressive filmmaking is, to me, an old, mediocre Woody Allen script as told by a guy who feels free to make most of the movie about the dirty parts of Allen's movies that we never actually see. Can you think of anything you'd want to see less than Woody Allen actually having sex with Debra Messing?

No. Me either. Zahedi's sex life is not quite as gross as that, but it's not pretty. Mostly, I just wish it were funnier.

For me, "going too far" is not only alright, it is often welcome, depending on under whose control the excess is. I'll go with Gaspar Noe to the extremes of I Stand Alone or Irreversible. I'll take Fincher's punch to the face in Fight Club and come out trying to figure out exactly what he meant. Much of Kubrick's darkest imagery is still more powerful than anything that has come since.

But Zahedi isn't saying much here. It's not serous, in its comedic context, about sex addiction. It certainly does nothing to argue successfully about why any of the parade of beautiful woman with whom Zahedi's character - not actually Zahedi, since he acknowledges as part of the film that the attractive woman who inspired these characters don't really look like starlets - is in relationships are drawn to or willing to put up with "Zahedi." As such, it offers little, if any, real insight into the humanity of the relationships or the pursuit of sex.

What is most effective about the film is the internal deconstruction. It's interesting. But here is the problem with that. It feels like endless excuse making for why the film really has little if any insight to offer. And it doesn't help that the film is often a little behind the viewer… at least this viewer.

For instance, after hiring a porn actress to play one of his wives and indulging in repeated full frontal nudity with the actresses playing prostitutes in the film, it was clear that Emily Morse, who plays one of the mid-film girlfriends, had not signed on to do any nudity at all. This later plays out when Zahedi, the filmmaker, breaks the fourth wall on her performance by explaining that the actress wouldn't simulate oral sex on camera. He shows footage of her saying, "no," or at least offers some moment in the filmmaking process that appears to be her denying him this performance. It may well be something else. He then stands in front of the camera blankly as the voiceover for the simulated fellatio scene runs… though don't think about it too much or the laugh will be ruined. The gag - no pun intended - that he is having a revelation via this oral sex but can't even get his actress to fake it, is undermined by the fact that he has already had oral sex performed on him by loved ones (and strangers) repeatedly in the film.

We have seen "loveable loser gets laid and screws himself up" before. It is no revelation. It is not Godard. And adding graphic sex - and might I mention Zahedi's unwillingness to show his penis even though he shows an endless parade of female body parts, which would not be a financial issue given that the film is unrated - does not make it high art. And, unfortunately, it doesn't make it all that interesting. It is, pretty much, the comic version of The Brown Bunny.

Of course, this is not an "I hate Caveh Zahedi" column. I find him a bit irritating and painfully self-aware of the hipness he chases. But he has some skills. He definitely makes more of being painfully low budget than most filmmakers. He is consious of what he is doing.

Unfortunately, you can't blame the low budget for all of the clunkiness of some of his set pieces in which he is trying to execute recognizable bits he has clearly watched for decades on TV and film. And you kind of get the idea that he knows sometimes, such as when he sets up "The Last Supper" and then tells it to us in voiceover, as though we were too dumb to get it and he was too lame to just let us get it, all in one.

He also has a painful disinterest in finding actresses who can act. He finds beautiful women very well. (See: Eric Schaffer, who got away with this crap for a long time.) But only two of the parade will ever work as actual actors in a professional setting, unless they make quantum leaps in skill. They just aren't close to good enough.

Would it have improved Manhattan or made it more profound art had we seen Mariel Hemmingway's vagina? Did we need to watch Mira Sorvino's head bob as she kneels before a pantless client, her stripped body viewed from behind, to explain the comedy of Mighty Aphrodite? Does throwing in real footage and apparently real information about the humans behind the characters that Zahedi offers make it okay for his story to meander and indulge?

There really is no true connection between Tarnation and I Am A Sex Addict, except in the broadest conceit. Jon Caouette told his real story through the prism of real footage of his life and the real pain of his relationship wit his mother. Watching I am A Sex Addict, it feels like Mr. Zahedi is taking the strands of reality in his life and turning them into what he hopes is a powerful, funny, insightful comedy. But he is so busy trying to stylize his film and life that it comes across as more insincere than pure fiction.

Ironically, United 93 suffers from exactly the opposite malady. It's earnestness gets in the way of the drama and only Paul Greengrass' (and his team's) filmmaking muscles and the remembered history we bring to the movie ourselves heighten the drama. (Still not quite high enough for me, I'm afraid, but I will return later this week to look again to see if I missed something.)

I Am A Sex Addict is about as deep and honest as an "I Like Blowjobs" pin worn at a film festival. Yeah, I believe you. And it's so self-emasculating that it's funny, but not profound or offering any insight other than you have the guts to humiliate yourself. Funny. And at a film festival, it might be a first step towards getting laid. After all, you might be a director. Congrats. But I'm not looking forward to the sequel, "I Am Flatulent."

READER OF THE DAY: CHEVY TO THE LEVY writes: "I think you made some large oversights in your analysis of succesful book to movie franchises such as:

The Firm and other Grisham
The Hunt for Red October and all Clancy
The Godfather
The Bourne ID

These other books I'm not sure if they were succesful as books but they made big time movies:
Catch Me If You Can
Dances With Wolves

I think the best comparison for The Davinci Code is The Firm which made $158M 10 years ago. It's a big adult thriller that was a true phenom as a book with a huge star and director (although Howard is a bigger commercially succesful directorthan Pollack). $135M for Davinci would be considered quite a huge disappointment for everyone involved and I think you're discounting how big a phenomenon the book is. It's really like a Harry Potter in terms of fanaticism and popularity although the audiences are completely different.

I also think putting Tom Hanks at #14 on your list is the most egregious mistakes in your list. Before 2004, he would have been a shoe-in for top 3 with Will Smith and Tom Cruise and somehow he drops to #14? He was in one truly unsuccesful movie that was really an awful movie and The Ladykillers which was a total indoe with low expectations. You didn't knock Sandler for Punch Drunk Love or Spanglish but The Ladykillers helps Hanks drop to 14th? He is, along with Cruise, the most diverse and commercially succesful actor there is. Sandler and Carrey can only make comedies succesful and Will SMith has yet to be in a movie that makes him act. Before 2004, he starred in 10 straight $100M movies (not counting That Thing You Do), a feat I don't think anyone else has ever matched so I really don't see how you can justify putting him as low as you did.

E Me: The books you mentioned all grossed less than the Top 10 of my chart. And yes, The Firm may be the best analogy for The Da Vinci Code... $158m domestic.. $112 million in the rest of the world. If that's the number, Sony will not be happy.

As for Mr. Hanks, no one was more supportive of his career in the Cast Away era. But the air is thin on top of the hill and while Hanks is still major, a return to the top of the list requires a couple unexpected successes. So, for instance, $300 million worldwide for Da Vinci is expected... $500 million would send him way up the charts.

I hate that this is a "what have you done for me lately" business and used to shake my fists at the gods of cynicism... but I don't have to be a cynic to know that cynicism thrives.

Week Of April 17, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri