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BY KIM MORGAN |
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Permanent Midnight Rated R Now playing If you thought the mystifyingly popular 1980s sitcom ALF--in which a cuddly alien was portrayed by a ratty-looking puppet--was bizarre, you weren't alone. Jerry Stahl thought so too, and he knew it well. He was one of the show's contributing writers. Stahl was first an edgy fiction writer and the creator of the film Cafe Flesh. When he became a highly paid Hollywood television writer for series like Moonlighting and thirtysomething, he experienced the horror of having sold out. Heroin helped, but not enough to quell his self-loathing. As Stahl put it in his amazing 1995 memoir, Permanent Midnight, "I wasn't Chet Baker behind the bandstand blowing his heart out...I was Jerry Stahl, writing bad TV and hating it.... The thing is, all my heroes were junkies. Lenny Bruce, Keith Richards, William Burroughs.... These guys were cool.... They would not be caught dead doing an ALF episode." Stahl wasn't caught dead doing ALF, but at one point, he thought ALF was going to kill him--literally. In an opiate-induced stupor, he believed that the puppet was tearing down his bathroom door. ALF could see Stahl doing junk. ALF was pissed. Not even David Lynch, whose Twin Peaks counted Stahl among its writers, could come up with as weird a scenario as that. But it's a shame Lynch didn't have a hand in the screen adaptation of Stahl's harrowing story. On paper it's a dark but entertaining look at the underbelly of Hollywood; on screen it's a shallow and mildly amusing look at just another addict. As filmed and scripted by first-time director David Veloz, Permanent Midnight is a mere shadow of Stahl's book, a disappointing story about a city and a guy we never get to know. The film begins with Stahl (Ben Stiller) exorcising his demons to a lovely junkie named Kitty (Maria Bello) in bed in a seedy hotel room. Told in poorly directed, out-of-sync flashback, Stahl's story goes something like this: He once was a leather-clad hipster with the unhip but lucrative career of churning out TV scripts for trash like Mr. Chompers (a.k.a. ALF). While his co-workers, such as Mr. Chompers bigwig Craig (Fred Willard), munched muffins, drank wheatgrass juice and maybe once in a while did coke, Stahl was shooting smack before it was cool. The more money he made, the more he used. He shot up at the office, at parties and even in his car with his newborn baby crying by his side. He had a gorgeous and forgiving wife (Elizabeth Hurley), a future and--rare in his business--real talent, but he shot it all in his arm. Eventually he had to shoot it into his neck because the veins in his arms had collapsed. Though this is an oft-told tale, especially with today's heroin vogue, Permanent Midnight successfully conveys the shock and horror of addiction. You won't want to squeeze your face muscles tight and stab a needle in your neck anytime soon. But the drug's lonely pathos is about all the film conveys. What made Stahl's account so intriguing was the straight 1980s TV culture (think of Cybill Shepherd filmed through a Vaseline-smeared lens) and its contrast with the writer's darkly hilarious, opiate-ridden angst. "Just because I happen to be here writing an episode of thirtysomething," he says in the book, "that doesn't make me ONE OF YOUR REEBOK PEOPLE!" By missing that, the picture becomes just another drug lecture. In Veloz's scenario, Stahl may as well be a stockbroker or an insurance salesman. Given Stiller's superb performance, that's a shame. One of the most talented actors in the business, Stiller never ceases to amaze with his distinctive wit, charm, likability and utter courage in making himself as unappealing as possible. Intuitive, inventive and intelligent, he can make even ridiculous scenes or dialogues his own. Considering Stiller directed The Cable Guy--a dark and hilarious meditation on TV--it's perplexing that he didn't direct this story himself. Perhaps he's waiting for better material involving an even more disturbing TV puppet. The story behind Snuggles the fabric softener bear cries out for this kind of treatment, and Stiller should jump on it.
originally published September 30, 1998
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