BEFORE: Welcome back to the "Mensch Madness" tournament. I forgot to mention that I watched yesterday's film while putting in yet another Saturday at the office. I also got a lot of TV shows watched while I was working, a couple hours of "The Voice", plus a couple episodes of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", "Restaurant: Impossible" and "Hoarding: Buried Alive". But after that, I re-watched "Radio Days" because it was on the same DVD as "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion". I still think that's one of my favorites, but I've got a slightly different take on it after putting it in context of Woody's filmography now.
THE PLOT: A director is forced to work with his ex-wife, who left him for the boss of the studio bankrolling his new film. But the night before the first day of shooting, he develops a case of psychosomatic blindness.
AFTER: I think I take my vision, as bad as it is, for granted. I think a lot of people do. If I lost my sight, I'd have to find a new line of work, or perhaps stop working altogether. And filmmakers work in a medium that not only requires vision, but also an audience with vision. It's easy to poke fun at blind people, because most of them are never going to see the film, or be annoyed by the sight gags at their expense. By extension, stand-up comics are free to make jokes about deaf people.
But when it comes to filmmaking, no director works in a vacuum. Ideally he would be surrounded by people who are working for him, running things by him for his approval, and also checking his work and making sure that everything is done correctly and according to a certain set of standards. So this film has to go through a lot of contortions to allow a film to be directed by a (temporarily) blind person.
Someone has to act as the director's eyes, the director's ex-wife has to pretend to be back together with him, to justify how closely they need to work together, the director has to break up with his girlfriend, the director has to be "difficult" and refuse to show the dailies to the production company. It's a lot to ask, and it gets harder and harder to believe.
But the blindness is really another contrivance, like hypnotism or a magic trick. It's one we don't see very often, so it does seem a bit original, but in the end it gives some insight to the wish fulfillment that it provides. An analytical person might derive that this film represents a desire to reconcile with one's ex-wife and son.
A noble goal, but there are no magic shortcuts in that regard. Instead of hoping for a mystery malady to make everything better, maybe it's more constructive to look at what caused the rifts in the first place.
Also starring Tea Leoni (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), Treat Williams (last seen in "Mulholland Falls"), Debra Messing, George Hamilton, Tiffani Thiessen, with cameos from Isaac Mizrahi and Allen mainstays Peter Gerety and Fred Melamed.
RATING: 4 out of 10 comment cards
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