| 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 |