In
Hurlyburly, adopted from the David Rabe's stage
play of the 1980s by director Anthony Drazan, the male characters
drink, snort coke, have emotionless heterosex, or just have
no emotions at all. When all is said and done, the characters
seem too dissolute and the plot seems preposterous, but then
the title well describes the Macbethian sound and fury. The
dialog, Shakespearian in diction, is a mechanism by which
the characters seek to assert identities that they have allowed
to go out to sea. If Hurlyburly were about gays,
the judgmental audience might perhaps have some sympathy for
the sad lives of a difficult lifestyle. But this film suggests
that something has gone terribly wrong with heterosexuality
as a lifestyle in Hollywood and the cruel way in which Hollywood
talent (from casting directors to actors to wannabees) booms,
busts, and is kept on ice. Although Kevin Spacey’s character
Mickey keeps cool, and thus triumphs over Sean Penn’s Eddy
and Chazz Palminteri’s Phil, whose emotions over life’s heterosexual
disappointments seem overblown if not overarticulated, we
end up asking whether the zombylike life of Hollywood narcissism
is really worth the sacrifice. With no apparent support group,
such as a Screen Actor’s Guild campaigning for better treatment,
Hollywood’s talented people are portrayed as mere hirelings
or slaves of fat-cat moguls. It is precisely this scenario,
we conclude, that has transformed the once-secure middle class
in the United States into fertile ground for an expansion
of the drug culture. While the most intriguing part of the
film is to observe the adjustment that the characters make
in response to the cold shoulder from Hollywood employers,
we emerge asking why conditions could possibly have led to
such human degradation. MH
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