Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Director/producers Marci Bobis and Fouad Onbargi deserve the Existentialists Award for Excellence; we must thank them for taking this heavy-handed horror story of Sartre's and making it surprisingly palatable. Embellishing the playwright's original script, Bobis and Onbargi have experimented with a mime troupe of five who periodically act out the memories of the three main characters in stylized slow motion. It's kitschy, but it works. The set, also designed by Onbargi, creates a properly sadistic and spartan backdrop. Hell's flames simply cannot compare to the three tacky couches to which the characters are relegated...
Given the utter worthlessness of the script, it is admirable that the cast has the courage to remain on stage; in a production like this the goal is not to turn in a remarkable performance, but to avoid looking ridiculous. Fratto is successful in this respect, managing to stay in character during moments that are otherwise completely implausible. He is closest to redemption during audience-involvement scenes which come as close as anything in the show to real dramatic moments; it is telling, however, that Lantry's attempt to raise the audience from the dead comes to naught...
Purcell's debut feature comes out of the bottom of Beth Henley's script drawer. The author of Crimes of the Heart and (in collaboration) True Stories has down-home flakes down pat, but here they are too pat. Meet -- as if you hadn't met them in Southern literature a hundred times before -- the irrepressible outcast (Rosanna Arquette), the sensitive wanderer (Eric Roberts) in search of Miz Right, the good-ole-girl barmaid (Mare Winningham), the ex-jock with itchy trousers (Jim Youngs). In her eye blink of a role, Winningham is a buoyant delight, and Youngs nicely fleshes...
Demme (Melvin and Howard) is on higher ground and does a snappier dance. E. Max Frye's script offers a careering trip through the East Coast Nighttown previously explored by Desperately Seeking Susan, After Hours and Blue Velvet. Solid Citizen Jeff Daniels meets Madcap Airhead Melanie Griffith and in a trice is stripped, handcuffed, kidnaped, beaten up and plied with big wet licky kisses. Natch, he goes for it. "What are you gonna do," Melanie asks, "now that you've seen how the other half lives . . . the other half of you." Daniels holds together better than the movie, which lurches...
...Producer turns calmly to the Writer and says, "If art and this script mean so much to you, you are more than welcome to donate your salary to the budget. Then we can afford to shoot the extra scenes...