A Cinema Village Features release of a Headlock Films presentation of a Saint Dympna production. Produced by Andrew Gurland, Todd Phillips. Co-producer, Victoria Cook.
Directed, edited by Alexander Crawford
In addition to hanging out with Goldstein in his horrendously cluttered apartment, at a Screw editorial meeting, during his vituperative tirades on his "Midnight Blue" cable show and in the company of a porn agent and sex stars, one of whom Goldstein briefly services on camera, pic scores some of its best points while airing the views of devoted Screw readers.
In particular, there is Big Bob, a very large black man who owns 8,000 porn videos and regards Goldstein as something of a current-day Moses, the bearer of The Truth. Virtually everyone who appears onscreen seems to inhabit a demimonde that's a soiled remnant of the sex-sated '70s; these are guys whose erotic lives are either voyeuristic or paid for. For his part, Goldstein comes off as a counterculture hangover somehow still making his way, after nearly 30 years of publication and 19 arrests for obscenity, in a significantly upsized world, a neighborhood porn merchant in a Times Square quickly becoming sanitized and corporatized.
Perhaps this journey could have been made poignant, but Goldstein's abrasive personality prevents it from being so. His harsh rantings become wearying after a while, and the film itself increasingly devotes itself to digressions that seem like desperate attempts to create lurid, provocatively scummy scenes. Like most porn, ultimate effect of this unblinking look at Goldstein's career and lifestyle is vaguely depressing, an impression unleavened by Goldstein's remark that porn is "a self-hating business of losers." Pic's style is appropriately raw.
Camera (Magno Lab color, 16mm), Crawford; additional camera, Tom Priestley Jr. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 11, 1996. Running time: 85 MIN.
Contact Todd McCarthy at
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