PRIVATE PARTS
A film review by David Blatt
Copyright 1997 David Blatt
Released: 1997 United States Runtime: 109 minutes Distributed: Paramount Pictures Director: Betty Thomas Executive Producer: Jeffrey Chernov Screenplay: Len Blum, Michael Kalesnio and Howard Stern (book) Starring: Howard Stern, Mary McCormack, Robin Quivers, Paul Giamatti, Fred Norris
Given Hollywood's most recent ode to a sexually-obsessed bad boy, it's natural to expect `Private Parts' to be `The People vs. Howard Stern', a ringing affirmation of how our basic constitutional freedoms must be protected against the crusades of the prudish religious right. To the filmmakers' credit, `Private Parts' opts not to wrap itself in the flag or present Stern as a crusader for any ideal loftier than ratings and his right to stay on the air. But even without pretensions of political or historical weight, `Private Parts' is crafted as a movie about a hero's triumphant struggle in support of a cause. In the tradition of such diverse films as `Mister Roberts', `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', `Dead Poets Society', or most similarly, `Good Morning, Vietnam', the film adopts the tried-and-trued Hollywood formula of pitting a rule-breaking, authority-defying rebel against the bureaucratic stuffed shirts. Guess who wins and guess whose side we're on?
`Private Parts' follows Howard Stern, playing himself, from his childhood as the son of a carping radio engineer through his gawky college years at Boston University to his first jobs with small radio gigs on Long Island, Hartford and Detroit. To his own amazement, his pitiable attempts to attract women bear fruit with the radiant and warm-hearted Alison, who agrees to be his wife and support his struggling career.
While Howard's love for radio stems from childhood visits to his father's station, his success in the business comes only slowly. He lacks a natural radio voice, a flaw which he tries to mask by raising his voice half an octave to a near sing-song, and lacks a comfortable on-air identity. It is only when Alison convinces him that he is at his best when he is being himself that Howard starts attracting big ratings while provoking the frantic anxiety of station managers and account executives.
What exactly is Howard Stern when he's being himself? The film begins with a voice-over declaration from Stern bemoaning how he is always misunderstood. It is hard to tell from this film, or from occasional exposure to his radio and TV shows, what there is to misunderstand. Quite simply, Stern is the uninhibted, unleashed, voice of male pre-pubescent masturbatory fantasies, a cross between Beavis-and-Butthead and Penthouse Forum, with a brain focused on penis size, large-breasted women, menage-a-trois, lesbian love scenes and the like. Where most of us restrict this kind of talk to private spaces and eventually (pretend to) grow out of it, Stern gets to share his pee-pee and wee-wee talk daily on the air. And given that most of this subject matter remains officially taboo, he gets to attract a mass audience in the process. The Howard Stern phenomenon is nicely explained in a scene where a station executive shares audience research showing that the #1 reason why Stern's fans listen to his show is to find out what he'll dare to do next--and that Stern's haters listen even longer for the very same reason.
Stern's material is vulgar, infantile, offensive and in many cases, extremely funny. The movie plays the laughs brilliantly by delivering the raunchiest bits as part of Stern's on-going battles against the tight-assed executives of his stations in Washington and WNBC in New York. After Stern's been reminded of the seven dirty words not to say on radio, he and his cronies play an on-air game show that involves searching for the missing words that go with `willow' and `a-doodle-doo'. Another outrageous scene involves Howard leading a female listener to on-air orgasm. The higher-ups may fume and rant, but they can't stop him because the more outrageous his material, the better his ratings.
The movie's message seems to be that no matter what Stern says or does on the air, it's okay because it's honest and because deep down he's a nice guy who's all talk but no action. The counterpoint to all Stern's fantasy talk about sex with Playmates is his marital fidelity to Alison (Mary Mc.Cormack) and his personal loyalty to his on-air colleagues Robin Quivers and Fred Norris (both played by themselves). Like most fictional Hollywood heroes, Howard nearly loses both Alison and Robin at different points, but manages to regain their trust and win them back. Alison genuinely struggles with embarrassment over her husband's on-air antics, but ultimately retains her confidence that he's a good man.
The film, directed by Betty Thomas (`The Brady Bunch Movie'), mostly follows a straight-forward narrative style, punctuated by occasional fantasy scenes and `here's-us-filming-a-movie' interludes that simply seem out of place. Stern does a marvelous job playing Stern, especially during the bell-bottomed, big-afro, cheesy mustache 1970's. Paul Giamatti, a largely unknown film actor, is especially hilarious as the New York station manager, nicknamed Pig Vomit by Stern, driven to apoplectic fury by his foil's unstoppable antics. Giamatti creates one of the finest buffoons since Herbert Lom's days as boss to Inspector Clouseau.
`Private Parts' concludes with three scenes: a triumphant concert in Central Park to celebrate Stern's rise to #1 in the ratings; Howard turning down an easy score and embracing his wife and children; and a defeated Pig Vomit grumbling about that goddamned Howard Stern. With the support of the people, the rebel has conquered the stuffed shirts and kept his gal. And thanks to the courage of this true-life Hollywood hero, most of America can now share a grown man's locker-room sexual fantasies for hours on end every day.
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