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You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again

 (Docu)

By TODD MCCARTHY

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A Dove Entertainment release. Produced, directed, written by Michael Viner, based on the book by Robin, Liza, Linda and Tiffany as told to Joanne Parrent.
 
With: Robin, Liza, Linda, Tiffany.
 

This attempt to cash in on the notoriety of a racy true-life best-seller, which is coincidentally just now being published in paperback, stands as a diluted version of the tome, one in which many of the names are still named but without much of the lurid detail. Nothing but videotaped interviews with "authors" Robin, Liza, Linda and Tiffany intercut by subject, the padded-out talkathon possesses a certain prurient interest that, helped by the title, might actually be able to generate some B.O. in limited theatrical runs, such as the "special sneak preview" engagements that began Friday in New York and Los Angeles. But piece's natural place is on homevid, where it should perform quite nicely.

The four women subjects, three of them professional call girls, are all attractive young blondes who, for reasons they briefly explain, became involved with very rich, powerful and often famous men.

Two of them started with Adnan Khashoggi for $ 2,000 per night, three of them worked for a time with the legendary Madam Alex and all of them ended up on the Hollywood sex-and-drugs party circuit.

Naturally, many of the names dropped in the book turn up here as well: James Caan. Timothy Hutton, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Vanna White, Jon Peters, George Santo Pietro, Billy Idol, Gary Busey. Dennis Hopper, Heidi Fleiss, Robert Evans, George Harrison, Don Henley, David Crosby, Jonathan Axelrod, Don Simpson and O.J. Simpson.

But while there is the occasional steamy tidbit, the often graphic and extended stories of the book are missing.

By default, the interest of the film turns from its laundry list of celebrity assignations to the lives of the four women themselves.

Watching and listening to them go on about their good and bad times, contrasting Robin's utter composure to her sister Liza's hardness and Linda's sometimes devastated unhappiness (Tiffany speaks candidly but is photographed in a shadow to protect her family), one can't help but ruminate about their experiences and the happenstance that led to their unexpected careers and current 15 minutes of fame.

Despite the utterly electronic, brightly and artificially lit TV-like nature of the docu, it is rather more human than the book due simply to the emotional attitudes that unavoidably come through.

Afraid to linger for long on any one topic, director (and Dove Entertainment topper) Michael Viner organizes the discussion by topic, jumping quickly among more than a dozen subjects, such as "First Time for Money," "Most Money for Sex, " "Therapy" and, by far the longest, "Sleeping With Celebrities."

The one thing the women seem to agree upon is that men in Hollywood are more competitively obsessed with one another than they are interested in their women.

Camera (color, tape-to-film transfer), Eric Bakke, Chip Goebert; second camera, Steven Bradford, Mike Oates; editor, Tony Nassour; sound, Matthew Dewan, Michael Guske. Reviewed on videocassette, L.A., Oct. 18, 1996. No MPAA Rating. Running time: 82 MIN.