CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND (2002) **1/2 It's a really good movie, it could have been a lot better, and the best part is probably wondering about things that aren't happening onscreen. The devastating body blow-and it's a tribute to the film that it could survive this-is the casting of Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris. Now Sam isn't a bad actor, at all, but Barris was, in the most public portion of his life, a truly charismatic character filled with the many joys of randomness and silliness and lightheartedness and love of idiosyncricity and just having fun because fun is good. Rockwell doesn't manage to reflect any of these sides of Barris, the ones that made him a cult idol, and doesn't create anything new to interest anyone who's (woefully) unfamiliar with the legend. To make matters worse, Rockwell is in virtually every shot, and he's usually the worst actor in it. This isn't necessarily his fault, as Drew Barrymore (the all-time California girl voice), George Clooney, Rutger Hauer and Julia Roberts can be difficult to keep up with when they're on, and at least for scenes Drew and Rut are very on. Clooney's direction probably isn't anything that you've never seen before, but it's well done, full of contemporary flash without getting in the way of plot or actors. But the most fascinating thing is trying to figure out what was going on in Barris' head (the real one, not the one onscreen). Why write a novel intertwining his career as a tv guy with that of a CIA agent (on the side)? Did it really happen? No, the few spy insights were obviously picked up from watching television. Did he want to make some social commentaries, like how the peace movement was infiltrated and discredited by encouraging it towards violence? No, Barris seems contemptuous of groups of people in general, and no less so towards hippies than anyone else. I haven't kept up with Chuck since the days, but I did pick up a copy of his autobiography once. I was going to buy it until I flipped through and saw how bitter he'd become. I didn't want to think of him like that. But I think that's what the novel underlying this film was born of. Frustration and bitterness. That he's given most of his life with some slapstick tv shows to show for it, that he could have made even better ones, that his family life didn't work out, that getting laid isn't an end in itself. So he wrote this. It imagines greater things, it does make some commentaries, its entertaining, and it gives him a chance to once again thrust his demons into the spotlight, where he thinks they belong. But the most interesting insights are probably involuntary psychological ones. Where'd the CIA bit come from? Surely he's not consciously projecting the CIA onto the corporate structure of American television broadcasters, but couldn't there be an inkling (or more) of some connection in there somewhere? The parallel trajectories of his spy and tv careers (nothing, sudden success, rejection) are telling, and there's some poetic truth in there, if nothing else.
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