Inside the Goldmine

I saw this movie on the Sundance Channel. And I think it is a work of rigorous simplicity and economy, it is assured and mature, especially for a first film. Clearly the filmmaker has not only looked at the world around him but deep inside himself. This is to suggest that this is the kind of film made by someone prepared to strive for self-knowledge. Jordan is the likeable pleasant-looking son of a famous producer. Clyde is his darkly handsome pal, a corrosive nihilist who insists he believes in nothing. There's a recklessness and an immorality about Clyde that attracts the uncertain Jordan, who is a nice guy who has some vague notion of trying to find some direction in his life. As we're wondering how Clyde is going to impact Jordan's life, the two are riding in the hills of Laurel Canyon when Jordan's slows down, curious about a cluster of police cars. Disregarding Clyde's advice, Jordan gets hilmself interviewed by a TV reporter. And their lives are changed by this event. The film has an easy elegance and a swift pace even though the acting is directed much llike a John Cassavetes film, going for a spontaneous, improvised quality. The score enhances the moods perfectly and there arre two sharp and sadly funny scenes between Jordan and his producer father Sid, in which the father is crude but not uncaring, but completely unable to listen to his troubled son. In the end, a long, sustained climax scene reveals the terrible torment beneath the cool void that Clyde affects.

What a big surprise I received when I started viewing this DVD, there is really nothing I can say about this so called film. The actors did a fantastic job of portraying mixed up and confused young people, who use only four letter words mostly with "F" and one subject deals strictly with girls and one guy talking about men's private parts. There is a girl getting hit on and the guy getting to First Base and at the same time giving her a very hard time. The producer tries to shock his audience with conversations about believing in God or not, lesbian behavior, a guy who loves whores and a rather strange relationship between a father and his son. There is constant bad language and there is no story. The DVD cover has Drew Barrymore starring in this film, and this is a very false statement as well as this film.

As a Drew Barrymore fanatic, I was excited to see this hard to find film on The Sundance Channel one night - it was the only movie in her filmography I had not seen. What a disappointment it was that she was only in maybe 60 seconds in a random cameo - but in the end I'm glad she wasn't in more of this horrible movie. The plot is stupid and it feels like most of the dialogue is improvised - which said dialogue consists mainly of the F word and other explitives shouted over & over. The F word is seriously said probably every 2 or 3 other words the entire movie. The acting is atrocious as well. I ended up buying this movie only to complete my Drew collection but it's the only DVD that I've never even taken the plastic wrap off of. The only reason I ever would is if there was someone I wanted to lock in a room and administer extreme torture to by playing this movie on a loop.

Perhaps I am the world's greatest masochist, or maybe I just have too much time on my hands, but I have watched this film twice. The first time I saw it I thought it had to be the worst film ever made. But I couldn't accept that it was as shallow as it appeared, so I attempted yet again to watch it. Parts of it are obviously improvised to a large degree, this would be alright if their dialogue reached somewhere outside the realm of random expletives shouted at the top of the actors' lungs for minutes at a time, without a cut I might add. That's right, just one shot that goes on and on and on and essentially goes nowhere. In fact, maybe it wasn't improv, maybe the actors forgot their lines and the director fell asleep while they tried to remember. I would tell you about the plot, but I can't figure out what the point is to this project. Would the filmmaker's care to step up and offer us naive minds out here in la la land some enlightment on this terribly profound work (sarcasm).

There are too many things embarrassing about this movie. Ad-libbing in itself can be an art but this movie is just filled with rambling. Josh Evans rambling in the last scene with the green facial mask smeared on his face, Jesus, it was just too painful to endure. Alan Marshall started out bad but appeared to redeem himself as the movie progressed, it's easy when you're surrounded with actors this bad. There's a scene where's he's trying to open up to his successful producer father- Marshall could win an Oscar standing next to this guy. His father appeared to keep forgetting what he was suppose to be talking about, and so to fill space just kept repeating stupid taunts like "are you a f*gg*t" and "are you sucking cock". It was surreal and oh so, yes, embarrassing.