Day 261 - 9/18/09 - Movie #261
BEFORE: A last minute addition to NYC week - just taped this movie off The Movie Channel today. I like it when the cable channels cooperate with my theme weeks...
THE PLOT: A disillusioned young writer living in New York City turns to drugs and drinking to block out the memories of his dead mother and estranged wife.
AFTER: They say New York is "The city that never sleeps" - I think during the 1980's that was amended to "The city that never sleeps, but occasionally crashes after a 3-day coke-fueled nightclub bender".
Michael J. Fox plays Jay Conway, who's upset by his wife's departure and turns to drugs - or did his turning to drugs cause his wife to leave? We're never quite sure... I want to sympathize for the character, I really do - but it's not easy to throw sympathy toward a young, good-looking guy who seems to have money to burn, and girls a-plenty throwing themselves at him.
And he's stuck in this cycle of partying, staying up too late, oversleeping, being late for work, barely scraping by at his job, and then - well, partying again. Yet he never realizes that the partying might be part of the problem... Well, I'm a fine one to talk - substitute "movies" for "cocaine" and these days I seem to be having similar schedule problems myself.
My wife says the book is much better, and I would believe that - Jay McInerney wrote it in the 2nd person tense, and that's very hard to pull off. There's a writer for the Daily News, Michael Daly, who tries to do this every so often and fails - I like to e-mail him and remind him he's no Jay McInerney, probably bugs the heck out of him. The movie saves a little bit of this style by dividing the movie into chapters like "Tuesday - you should have read your New York Post horoscope", but the effect on the overall movie is somewhat minimal.
It works as a sort of snapshot of life in New York City in the 80's, but didn't hit me with much more than that. I mean, eventually the main character figures out that he's on a treadmill to nowhere, and that he's got to get over his mother's death and his wife's departure - other than that, I was left asking (as I so frequently am these days) - what was the point? Just another tortured wanna-be writer in the big city, there's probably a million guys like him.
Also starring Kiefer Sutherland (last seen in "Young Guns II"), Phoebe Cates, Swoosie Kurtz, Dianne Wiest, the great Frances Sternhagen, the greater John Houseman, and Jason Robards in an uncredited role. Also a cameo by William Hickey, and the first movie role for David Hyde-Pierce (as the bartender at the fashion show). Geez, with a cast like this, I really expect a better movie...
RATING: 5 out of 10 double-vodkas
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Yeah, it's funny. It's been so long since I've read the book or seen the movie that I totally forgot the plot. You asked me not to reveal the ending... no problem, I have no recollection of it! However, the one thing I do remember so clearly is the style in which the book was written. Good story or bad, it hardly matters, what stayed with me was the way it was written. It's sort of the same way I feel about Clockwork Orange. The book had a decent enough story to keep me interested, but having to stop every two seconds to refer to the glossary in the back was what I remembered so much more than the story.
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