PERMANENT MIDNIGHT (Artisan) Starring: Ben Stiller, Elizabeth Hurley, Maria Bello, Owen Wilson, Peter Greene. Screenplay: David Veloz, based on the memoir by Jerry Stahl. Producers: Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy. Director: David Veloz. MPAA Rating: R (drug use, sexual situations, profanity, brief nudity) Running Time: 87 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
In the last few minutes of PERMANENT MIDNIGHT, writer/director David Veloz introduces a jarring element of irony to what had been a fairly straightforward dark night of the soul drama. It's the true story of Jerry Stahl (Ben Stiller), a successful television writer during the 1980s for such programs as "ALF" and "thirtysomething" who bottomed out as the result of heroin and cocaine addiction. The film's coda shows Stiller-as-Stahl, having written his confessional autobiography, appearing on a series of television talk shows to promote the book and bare his soul. In one of the film's best lines, Stahl explains in voice-over that the most humiliating thing he ever did as the result of his addiction was "appearing on 'Maury'."
A good gag, but also a pretty self-serving one. In an era when celebrity mea culpas are just another part of the public relations landscape, a film like PERMANENT MIDNIGHT has to work extra hard to function as an honest cautionary tale rather than a plea to love me, feel sorry for me, let me back into your hearts. The film makes sure we know about Stahl's troubled family life, including two suicidal parents, which already suggests that Stahl and/or writer/director David Veloz is pointing fingers outward as much as inward. That five minute montage of chat show appearances, however, acts almost as a slap in the face. Watching the character pitch his book -- which, of course, became the movie we're watching -- takes every harrowing moment which preceded and makes it cheap and exploitative. Instead of learning from his experience, we learn that a really good salesman can turn his tragedy into dollars.
That's truly a shame, because Stahl's story is given a harrowing conviction by Ben Stiller's performance. Though best known as a comic in films like the hit THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, Stiller is a versatile performer who makes heroin addiction about as ugly as we've ever seen it. It's funny yet pathetic watching Stahl trying with a ridiculous lack of success to disguise his stupors as artistic eccentricity; even other self-absorbed Hollywood types instantly recognize that he's utterly useless. What's fascinating about Stiller's performance is that there's never a moment when his character appears to be functional as an addict. He disappears instantly into a world of excuses and frantic searches for his next high.
Unfortunately, there's nothing besides Stiller's performance to make us care about PERMANENT MIDNIGHT. The two romantic angles which are supposed to give resonance to the story -- Stahl's marriage to a mid-level television executive (Elizabeth Hurley) and his post-rehab infatuation with fellow recovering addict Kitty (Maria Bello) -- are both undercut by the circumstances of their relationships. The marriage, though it produces a child, is primarily a way for his British wife to get a green card, and the romance with Kitty serves primarily as a device for Stahl to tell his story in flashback. There's not much at stake as we watch Stahl disintegrate, nor is there a particular reason to care if he's earned his second chance at love. He's just another cleaned-up Hollywood junk-head with a tale to tell, probably one of a thousand. The last five minutes of PERMANENT MIDNIGHT are as ill-conceived as any five minutes of film this year, because they make it look like Stahl is just a different kind of self-absorbed now. You're left with the uncomfortable feeling that for him, addiction is just a marketing hook.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 junk men: 5.
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