CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale
AVI LERNER and Trevor Short – two producers who made junk over here in the heady days of tax- breaks and Hollyveld – have now teamed up with Martin Scorsese to produce an art movie. They claim it’s part of their plan to diversify their product from the usual Cyborg Cop I, II or III that they normally involve themselves with. Well, shame on them. David Salle’s Search and Destroy’s only redeeming feature is its kookiness as the most pretentious, dated, self- conscious piece of twaddle ever to come out of New York’s hip art scene.
Salle, a fine-artist, produced videos and performance art in the 1970s. The script, based on a hit New York play, is by Michael Almereyda, a severely talented director in his own right whose Another Girl, Another Place, shot on a Fisher-Price toy camera, was one of the most original no-budget movies of the past few years.
But the two of them just manage to wank themselves into obfuscation with this supposedly ironic “screwball tragedy” about Martin Mirkheim (Griffin Dunne), a neurotic, inept and bankrupt wheeler-dealer who tries to secure the rights to a guru’s book in order to make a film. Along the way he becomes involved with drug dealers, psychopaths and a wacky secretary who wants to make slasher films.
Brimming with psycho-babble and a steady stream of over-cute performances, the film tries to be After Hours meets Woody Allen’s Interiors but fails on all counts. Dunne delivers his usual frenetic, exasperated small-man routine, Dennis Hopper again proves he’s a walking clich as the guru, while Christopher Walken just rehashes his weirdo-with-a-gun routine. John Turturro is affecting and funny for about 30 seconds as a seedy criminal with a sartorial hang-up and Illeana Douglas comes out best as the eccentric secretary who helps out with Dunne’s schemes.
Coming from a celebrated painter the film’s visual palette is an embarrassment. It all comes across like a student movie made by a bunch of self-absorbed egos with no respect for any audience but themselves.
Still, producer Lerner can be proud; his taste for low-brow projects reaches new heights with this incredibly boring piece of arty-farty