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Permanent Midnight
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by Live / Artisan
Sales Rank: 38413
Price: $9.98
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Like the book it is named after and based on, <I>Permanent Midnight</I> is a chronicle of downfall. Jerry Stahl, the story goes, showed promise when doing shifts as a porn writer for <I>Hustler</I> and <I>Penthouse</I>, and his promise landed him in the exact center of television's hottest shows of the 1980s. Alas, Stahl also brought with him a gargantuan appetite for drugs, most damagingly heroin. The film begins with Stahl, played by Ben Stiller, working in a fast-food chain on his way back to society from the drug-addled skids and recovery. He's lured away from work, where in a hotel room with Maria Bello (as Kitty) he begins detailing his fall from TV's top (where he wrote for shows like <I>Alf</I> and <I>Moonlighting</I>, among others). Director David Veloz does great work in leading viewers through the episodes in addiction and excess, making the action seem naturally odd. There are priceless shots of Stahl and his coke-smoking buddy on an upper floor of a high-rise smoking and leaping into the windows--which don't break, of course. Stiller does a classy job of staying monochromatically zoomed in on scoring and shooting dope. He's sweaty and freaked out at the right times and grimy and desperate, too. The movie's a sad one, with Stahl's journey taking him through an arranged marriage (which benefited him enormously) to the couple's having a baby to getting busted on a rare occasion alone with the infant. It's a visceral script, replete with lots of intravenous drug use and Stahl/Stiller creating a recurring motif out of shooting the bloody drawback from the syringe onto the ceiling, making a mad little scribble. <I>--Andrew Bartlett</I>
Viewer Reviews
Based on the autobiography of Jerry Stahl who is playhed by a very subdued Ben Stiller(no humour here). The cast is rounded off by owen Wilson and Genine Gerafalo as well as Elizabeth Hurley. It is essentially a movie about a writer who goes from small town nobody to big stardom writing for Alf and other 1980s comedy shows, but his downfall comes through heroin addiction. This is mostly a chronicle of this downfall, his shakes and endless search for another hit. It is tragic but eventually the viewer stops caring, his life is not so interesting and it is not that compelling a story. It is mostly just depressing, wathcing Stahl be arrested while driving high with his child in the seat next to him.
Not that great a film, but a true breakthrough role for Stiller.
Seth J. Frantzman
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Last Modified : 1-7-2009
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