Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Film Pacino To Have Hot Old Man Sex with Former Lesbian
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 12:05 PM
- Help, I Can't Act Anymore!
Reviewing in The L, Michael Joshua Rowin summed up the book excellently: "While the first third...exactingly traces the debilitating frustration of an artistic cul-de-sac, the sexual obsession and dependency of the remaining 'counterplot' is less convincing." Which is to say (as I have read the book too—it's short!), the opening descriptions of artistic frustration are beautifully crafted; the following sections, with their absurd sex scenes (oh yes, there is a dildo)...less so.
Roth isn't exactly washed up; The Humbling may prove an isolated disappointment in what has otherwise been an exciting late-career. His previous novel, Indignation, was a perfectly plotted examination of Eisenhower-era angst. And there's that old maxim that bad books make good movies, and vice versa.
But the rest of the talent involved isn't encouraging. Barry Levinson has made almost 30 movies in his career, and he's lucky if five of them merit being "of interest". (Lately he's been making by-all-accounts awful political movies, like Poliwood and, groan, Man of the Year.) Buck Henry is a bit more promising, as he's the scribe behind The Graduate and To Die For. He's better known for the Get Smart series. He hasn't written a produced screenplay in nearly a decade.
And then there's Pacino. I hardly know what to say at this point, except that the latest Pacino news—he'll be playing Shylock this summer at the Delacorte—made me roll my eyes. You never see Robert DeNiro doing Shakespeare because the man knows his limitations. Would that Pacino would learn the same.
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