(1998) Drugs, sex, death, and a funeral in Hollywood. What does it all mean? I mean, what can I tell you about Anthony Drazan's film (adapted by David Rabe from his own play), which I didn't enjoy watching - four guys involved in the "systematic sham" of show business behaving badly among themselves and immaturely with women - until the scene where paranoid Eddie (Sean Penn) and Darlene (Robin Wright Penn) are arguing in the car over whether or not to go to a Chinese or French restaurant - Darlene keeps saying it makes no difference, which irritates Eddie to no end: he pulls over, they get out and scream at each other until Eddie's mobile phone rings, and he says: "Get in. Phil's dead." And then he drives off, leaving her behind.

After Eddie introduced Darlene to his sarcastic friend and roommate Mickey (Kevin Spacey) the cynic, Mickey took Darlene to bed ("Things happen … but I don't have to see her again") - exasperating Eddie (doing lines of coke and then toking up in the morning as a stimulant substitute for caffeine), while Mickey insists that she's not worth their friendship.

Eddie's pal unstable Phil (Chazz Palminteri), violently combustible, comes over to complain about his wife Susie; he's got three kids in Toledo from before he went to prison. Artie (Garry Shandling) drops by to drop off Donna (Anna Paquin), the only character I developed much feeling for by the end, as a "care package" or household pet for desperate guys lacking serious relationships with women.

Casually floating above the fray when he's not igniting fires, Mickey, who says eventually he'll go back to his wife and kids, assures Eddie and Darlene that he doesn't mean to be the middle of a triangle: "You guys go with the flow." Eddie and Darlene agree to keep their options and hearts open while providing each other with emotional space without guilt; it's all bullshit.

Wanting to watch football on Eddie's TV, Phil insults Donna for distracting him with her tits and ass; Donna departs with her thumb for Oxnard. Maybe if he and Susie had a kid that might save their marriage, Phil postulates to Eddie, who warns: "Don't have the baby thoughtlessly."

A year later Darlene calls cokehead Eddie to say she's returning; Susie has a baby girl; and Phil, at a "critical juncture in life," signs divorce papers. Eddie phones balloon dancer Bonnie (Meg Ryan), who's "up for anything" (Eddie and Mickey recall a sick story of her giving a pilot a blowjob in the backseat of a car while her six-year-old daughter sat up front), to comfort Phil.

Feeling abandoned, Artie, a Jew, gets upset that Eddie has overinvested emotionally in Phil. After going out with Bonnie, Phil pushes her out of her own car. Walking back to Eddie and Mickey's, angry that Eddie would let her go with such a creep, Bonnie declares: "You guys are crazy."

But then everyone appears to be little more than background to everyone else's life. So what does anything matter? A car crash and a death note received after the fact: physics versus the metaphysics of "the divine conglomerate."

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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