"Blah blah blah," these broken characters were forever saying, because nothing much mattered to them. Fifteen years later (when "blah blah blah" has been replaced by "yadda yadda yadda"), the whole thing seems a bit dated. The overdue film version of Hurlyburly features a reworked script by Rabe himself, some inventive directorial touches from Anthony Drazan (Zebrahead, Imaginary Crimes) and an exemplary cast led by Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey and Meg Ryan. But the original excitement has diminished, and the self-destructive savagery that fueled the play now seems more theatrical than actual, even a little quaint. Hurlyburly may yet prove to be a play for the ages, but in this incarnation it seems simply aged--upstaged in the interim by satirical assaults on Tinseltown like The Player and by real-life excesses and follies that outstrip fiction.
That said, it's also worth noting that Penn, his bad-boy days behind him, puts in another spectacular performance here--perhaps the equal of his doomed killer in Dead Man Walking. Wearing a mean little pencil-line mustache that brands him as a hustler and fraud, he is Eddie, a self-absorbed cokehead who's smashed his moral compass against his ambition somewhere along the way. Penn turns him into the consummate desperado, given to screaming fits, crying jags and what used to be called moments of truth. Snorting a line for breakfast, he explains: "I gotta wake up." Indeed. In this revamped version of Hurlyburly, it's Eddie's grudging, slowly dawning attempt to wake up from emotional oblivion that becomes the drama's focus--and lets a new ray of life into the proceedings.
Admirers of the play might think Rabe has pulled some of his old punches with the rewrite, and they may be right: Eddie's terminally cynical roommate and business partner, Mickey (Kevin Spacey), is still on the scene, and he remains as glib, cruel and detached from life as ever. But Mickey's voice ("We're all going under, Eddie, so how about a little laugh along the way?") no longer dominates as in stage versions past. Among the damned, Mickey is now strictly second business.
The remaining dramatis personae can be a semi-harrowing lot--as long as you're willing to make a big leap and see them as tragic. There's the out-of-work actor, Phil (Chazz Palminteri), a bewildered brute who finds himself frozen out of Eddie and Mickey's savage word games and elaborate poses. "I don't know the goddamn code!" Phil laments. We suspect from the beginning that he'll continue to be the ultimate loser. Mercifully, we get a little less of caustic, condescending Artie (Garry Shandling is ideally cast), a producer who is not quite the smash hit he claims to be. Rabe's women, always a source of heated argument, include Darlene (Robin Wright Penn), who has no qualms about two-timing between Eddie and Mickey and babbles on about her "inner emotional experience"; the teenage runaway Donna (Anna Paquin), whom sneering Artie presents as a sexual "care package" to his burned-out pals; and, most important, Bonnie (Meg Ryan), a world-weary stripper who turns out to be the conscience of the piece, its only real moral force.
"I think I'm gonna need a magnifying glass to find what's left of your good points," she announces to Eddie, who's collapsed in a coked-up puddle of paranoia and self-pity. But Bonnie doesn't hesitate to turn the magnifying glass on herself, too.
What these lost souls have in common, of course, is the inability to feel anything beyond sensation--anything authentic. They've been seduced by drugs and sex and the appliances of success--coke vials, BMWs and cell phones--but they've lost the ability to communicate or connect. Witness Eddie and Mickey: They live in the same stark Hollywood Hills condominium and work in the same office (doing what, we're not quite sure), but they drive separate cars and talk mostly by cell phone. And they spin out their self-absorbed tangles of language (always of vital import to a playwright) not for clarification but for competition. In one of Darlene's few lucid moments, she shouts at Mickey: "I can't stand the semantic insanity anymore."
Just so. By the end of these 124 minutes, you may feel the same way. Certainly, you will have had your fill of bleak malaise and L.A. blah blah blah, circa 1984. But before we get to the end, Rabe now wants Eddie to make progress, to glimpse at least the possibility of redemption. It takes a major trauma, the death of a friend, to shake him out of his torpor, and by that time, you may be so sick of his whining and selfishness that you don't give a damn if he saves himself or not. Still, when the raving's all done, Penn has the capacity to make us feel the lightbulb going on inside Eddie's head. In the wasteland we behold a little miracle, and for a moment, the whole thing seems worthwhile.
Hurlyburly.
Directed by Anthony Drazan. Screenplay by David Rabe, based on his play. Starring Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright Penn, Meg Ryan and Chazz Palminteri.
