Rob Epstein
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Connections, in both directions
How astonishing it is to recall the absurd perversion of morality that led Deep Throat, Lovelace’s most famous film, to become a massive mainstream success in 1972.
At times, it’s only Linda’s hairstyle that really tells us where we are in the story: “ah, it’s the big corkscrew perm, so we’re post-marriage, but pre ‘Deep Throat.’
It's not, as the generic beats of Andy Bellin's Lifetime-movie-grade script and the camera's minimal witness to the physical abuse and sexual assault in the life of Linda Lovelace (née Boreman), star of the 1972 porn smash Deep Throat, flatten and dilute her story of victimization and redemption.
That movie became Deep Throat.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Lovelace (2013)
Plot Visuals Themes
It gets about halfway to being a great movie about an ambiguous cultural icon, and then gets stuck between modes: Partly it’s a good-times-gone-wrong period fable in the vein of “Boogie Nights,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt” or “Goodfellas,” and partly it’s a classed-up Lifetime melodrama about a woman who’s victimized and prostituted by a powerful husband.
(See Star 80, The Notorious Bettie Page , the roman à clef aspects of Boogie Nights, etc.) Lovelace has the relatively novel idea of dividing its mythmaking and moralizing into almost entirely separate acts, courtesy of a metafictional sleight of hand.
For a while, the script by Andy Bellin ("Trust") parallels "Boogie Nights" too strongly, and despite Seyfried's commanding performance "Lovelace" struggles to connect the dots -- more in terms of how Linda moved on after her brief stardom than how she wound up there in the first place.
Lovelace‘s cast is clearly having a great (R-rated) time in period wigs, outfits, and dance moves, looking a lot how the porn industry was portrayed in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997).
The only real similarity it has with Paul Thomas Anderson’s well-crafted “Boogie Nights” is that in each film, pornography is financed and made by greasy white guys.
Opening with disco rollerskating and a Boogie Nights font, Lovelace tricks us into thinking it's a retro romp starring Hollywood's most literally wide-eyed ingenue, the otherworldly beauty Amanda Seyfried.
The filmmakers' best idea was to feature Eric Roberts in a cameo, but "Lovelace" is a far cry from "Star 80."
Supporting roles are expertly filled by such talented actors as Hank Azaria, Chris Noth, Bobby Cannavale , and Adam Brody, with a brief appearance by Eric Roberts as a reminder of a not-dissimilar story, Star 80. I’ve already read complaints that the film doesn’t tell enough of the Deep Throat backstory (which is well covered in the documentary Inside Deep Throat), or that we don’t learn enough about Lovelace’s youth, later problems, and outspoken campaign against pornography and sexual abuse.
This story follows the similar path of Bob Fosse's lacerating 1983 biopic "Star 80" in which Eric Roberts' abusive husband shotguned to death his sexy wife, Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratton (Mariel Hemingway), rather than lose control of her.
Suddenly, it’s Star 80 minus Bob Fosse’s artistic eye and Eric Roberts’ creepshow turn as Paul Snider.
Rather than follow the Boogie Nights template, Lovelace evokes Bob Fosse’s thematically similar Star 80 in its intimate take on the partnership between a violent hustler and the naïve, suggestible woman he feels the need to abuse and control.
The rest of Lovelace is strangely superficial and remote, constantly evoking two other, far better movies: Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson’s exuberant look at the adult film industry, and Star 80, Bob Fosse’s recounting of the death of Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten at the hands of the opportunist who “discovered” her.
"Kill Your Darlings" is not as kitschy as 2010's " Howl " (with James Franco as Ginsberg) or as dull as director Walter Salles' Kerouac adaptation, " On the Road ," but it's a muddled and silly enterprise that wastes a wonderful central performance by skinny, bespectacled Daniel Radcliffe as the young Ginsberg, whose virginity, bookishness, Jewishness, relative poverty and closeted homosexuality mark him as an outsider even after he is accepted to an exclusive Ivy League school.
James Franco did it a few years ago in the little-seen “Howl,” and now Daniel Radcliffe – apparently well known to the public for some sort of fantasy-adventure series – plays the even younger Ginsberg as a Columbia undergrad, exploring poetry, drugs and sexuality in John Krokidas’ energetic debut feature, “Kill Your Darlings.”
The entire cast (including Elizabeth Olsen as Jack’s fiancé) is excellent, and the film rises above James Franco’s solid turn as Ginsberg in “Howl.”
Perhaps because On the Road (2013) was so lackluster and Howl (2010) was so insular and specialized, I was not exactly looking forward to another movie about the Beat Generation.
Over the past three years there have been no less than four narrative films about the beat generation, starting with “Howl” in September 2010.
From last year's " On the Road " to 2010's trippy " Howl ," they've proven to be largely film-resistant.
Over the past three years there have been no less than four narrative films about the beat generation, starting with “Howl” in September 2010.
It seems that filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman had faced a similar challenge with 2010’s Howl, the creatively daring interpretation of the life and works of Beat artist Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco).
While other adaptations of seminal Beat works, such as Howl (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2010) and Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991) have incorporated biographical detail with the hallucinogenic imagery and experimental approach from the original texts, On the Road is a much more straightforward adaptation.
These memories are prompted, of course, by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's film version of "Howl", which opened here last year, and the Brazilian Walter Salles 's bold, faithful adaptation of On the Road, some five years or more in preparation.
There are also brief black and white dramatic recreations of moments from Ginsberg's life prior to writing the poem, featuring Todd Rotondi and Jason Potter as "On the Road" writer Jack Kerouac and his legendary friend and inspiration, Neal Cassady.
(For that, you’ll need to rent Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s excellent, NC-17-rated documentary “Inside Deep Throat.’’)
The emphasis is less on Deep Throat’s cultural legacy as a crossover hit, feminist talking point, and Watergate code word (all covered at length in 2005’s Inside Deep Throat) than on the psychological trauma faced by Lovelace herself, and on that level, the film is strong.
The cast and crew of the porn phenomenon enjoy the publicity, which explodes into an international, mainstream sensation, as documented in Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s Inside Deep Throat (2005).
For a sense of just how repressive the culture was (various jurisdictions prosecuted the “Deep Throat” folks for obscenity), check out the 2005 documentary, “Inside Deep Throat.”
It’s also telling that “ Inside Deep Throat ,” a well-received 2005 documentary looking at the cultural impact of the 1972 film , spent most of its energy examining the role of “Deep Throat” — and, by extension, Lovelace — in the sexual revolution, giving only scant attention to her allegations.
In that respect, the film comes off as a much-needed corrective to the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat, which offered a fizzy, upbeat take on the making of Deep Throat and the film’s strange afterlife.
Instead, “Lovelace” is more along the lines of “Rated X” (about Marilyn Chambers and her “Behind the Green Door” directors), “Wonderland” (about John Holmes) or even “Auto Focus” (about Bob Crane).
Each gets a George C. Scott "Hardcore " moment of tearful teeth-gnashing at what's become of their daughter but also, refreshingly, at their role in her desperate spiral.
When Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita" was released in 1962, it drummed up curiosity with the tagline "How did they ever make a movie of 'Lolita'?"
Watching "Lovelace," which takes great care not to push its luck sexually or otherwise, you get the feeling you may have had watching Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus" (about "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane and his sad, swingin' sexual exploits).
Much less-artfully done than, say, Boogie Nights or Auto Focus (clearly, the directors [documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffery Friedman] of Lovelace are no P.T. Anderson or Paul Schrader), the movie starts off with the seduction and winds up with the disenchantment.
It can’t be coincidence that the Lovelace cast includes two actors who had their own sordid screen sexploits: Stone’s notorious money shot in Basic Instinct and Chloë Sevigny’s infamous oral sex scene in The Brown Bunny.
In its second half, the film circles back for a much darker look at Lovelace’s life in an apparent attempt to make the audience feel guilty for getting a kick out of any of what they have already seen, a cheap narrative trick put to much better use by Alfred Hitchcock in the classic “Psycho.”
Instead, “Lovelace” is more along the lines of “Rated X” (about Marilyn Chambers and her “Behind the Green Door” directors), “Wonderland” (about John Holmes) or even “Auto Focus” (about Bob Crane).
“Christy” is like “Lovelace” (2013) in the way that it captures how punishing normal consensual sexuality makes women vulnerable and unable to protect themselves when the predator is someone whom society deems as acceptable as a husband.
Dying old Dad is cute, too, hosting a party for his new gay friends where they all watch The Times of Harvey Milk .
In deciding how to translate Baldwin’s prose to the screen, Jenkins has done the equivalent of turn Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” into a Douglas Sirk movie (or put Alice Walker’s’ “The Color Purple” through the Steven Spielberg filter).
Aug. 9 Stars: The voices of Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Teri Hatcher, Brad Garrett Director: Klay Hall Plot: An animated aeronautical take-off on 2006's Cars and its 2011 sequel follows a similar plot route as Dusty (voiced by Cook), a single-propeller crop duster with big dreams and an inconvenient fear of heights, signs up for an around-the-world race against a fleet of eclectic opponents.
Far rockier is the script, from Andy Bellin ("Trust").
The “Lovelace” screenplay by Andy Bellin (“Trust”) makes a devil out of Traynor and a victim out of Lovelace and skips over some relevant, unseemly facts.
Except that that first statement isn't exactly true, it's just how it's depicted in screenwriter Andy Bellin's ("Trust") adaptation of Lovelace's book 'Ordeal.'
For a while, the script by Andy Bellin ("Trust") parallels "Boogie Nights" too strongly, and despite Seyfried's commanding performance "Lovelace" struggles to connect the dots -- more in terms of how Linda moved on after her brief stardom than how she wound up there in the first place.
Looking all but completely unrecognizable, Sharon Stone (2007's " Alpha Dog ") is superb as Linda's conservative, tough-love mother Dorothy, while Peter Sarsgaard (2013's " Blue Jasmine ") plays Chuck as the stereotypical slimeball he's supposed to be.
The most famous of big-screen pornos was “Deep Throat,” which is still referred to as the “Citizen Kane” of pornography, and although “Lovelace,” the new film from directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, tells us that the 1972 movie went on to gross more than $600 million worldwide, its star, Linda Lovelace, was paid a little over $1,000 to display her, ahem, talents on screen.