Permanent Midnight (1998)

Interesting, slow, depressing
Based on the autobiography of Jerry Stahl who is playhed by a very subdued Ben Stiller(no humour here). The cast is rounded off by owen Wilson and Genine Gerafalo as well as Elizabeth Hurley. It is essentially a movie about a writer who goes from small town nobody to big stardom writing for Alf and other 1980s comedy shows, but his downfall comes through heroin addiction. This is mostly a chronicle of this downfall, his shakes and endless search for another hit. It is tragic but eventually the viewer stops caring, his life is not so interesting and it is not that compelling a story. It is mostly just depressing, wathcing Stahl be arrested while driving high with his child in the seat next to him.

Not that great a film, but a true breakthrough role for Stiller.

Seth J. Frantzman

Maria Bello as Savior; Amen Brother!
This little movie, "Permanent Midnight," almost makes it. I had a four-star review going for it right until the final scene where what could have been a capstone moment, simply misses the mark. When Brad Delp, God rest his soul, former lead singer of Boston belts out in "Peace of Mind","Now everybody's got advice they just keep on givin' / Doesn't mean too much to me / Lot's of people out to make believe their livin' / Can't decide who they should be," I think he must have had a movie like "Permanent Midnight" in mind. The movie really has an identity crisis going...is it a redemptive tale, is it a cautionary tale that screams drugs just aren't all that great, or is it a love story? The last scene where Jerry Stahl, aptly played by Ben Stiller, leaves one lost wishing that the movie had at least been one of those stories...not vainly attempting, and failing, to be all of them.

The movie is cool enough. The soundtrack is steady, not stellar. Does it glamorize the LA drug scene? Not really. When Stiller's character shoots up heroin again and again in bathroom stalls or wherever he can score a hit, and then sprays the bloody backwash from the needle over the bathroom ceiling the message is pretty clear...no one you know, love, care about should be coming any where near the drug scene. Heroin and any other addictive illegal substances (and some legal ones too) has this innate potential to completely and utterly destroy lives. As a drug movie, "Permanent Midnight," falls just short of telling the tale of complete and other woe. Movies that come to mind that really hit home the cautionary aspect of powerful anti-drug messaging are, "Requiem for a Dream," which has several scenes that want to make you look away from the screen; Steven Soderbergh's excellent social and political commentary on America's drug war and drug culture, "Traffic," and lastly but not leastly the movie with Nicolas Cage and Elizabeth Shue in Las Vegas where Cage ends up drinking himself right to death. Those films work. Those films are clear in their message, powerful in their story. "Permanent Midnight," starts to work on several levels but ultimately falls short in them all.

Ben Stiller turns in a very engaging performance as the Jewish writer, brilliant in his writing, but with a habit the size of "Utah." When I first read that on the jacket descriptor..."the size of Utah," I thought it might be one of those Mormon-themed flicks that seem to be so popular of the last 2-3 years...but alas, "Permanent Midnight," has really nothing to do with Mormons and everything to do with drugs and love. Elizabeth Hurley is well Elizabeth Hurley. Maria Bello is one of the finest actresses out there continuing to score in powerful roles in minor films so her career flies under the radar but she seems to pick and choose roles that work for her. If the movie were a redemptive love story where Bello's ex-junky character creates some true catharsis for Stahl I would have been right there. But as it is...I say look somewhere else film buffs for your love story, drug story, and ultra cool hip story. "Permanent Midnight," tries to be all these things in doses but in the end leaves you searching for blue veins...not with needles mind you but to find a pulse. ...mmw

Episodic but riveting
Movies rarely hold the same allure as the books from which they arise and that's the case here. "Permanent Midnight" portrays the harrowing experinece of a television script writer that was also a heroin addict.

Ben Stiller stars as Jerry Stahl, whose autobiography is the basis for the film. Stahl appears in a brief role as a physician treating his own (through Stiller) addiction. This is an interesting insofar as the physician -- the real life drug addict -- is very downbeat about Stiller's chance of kicking heroin for its substitute.

Elsewhere, a lot of today's A-list actors -- Owen Wilson (who had a middle initial in the credits), Maria Bello (who got great reviews in "A History of Violence"), Elizabeth Hurley, Sandra Oh, Cheryl Ladd and Jeanene Garofolo -- lend a lot of credibility to this episodic treatment. Probably most riveting, and most revolting, are Stiller's regular scenes of drug use...during breaks in meetings at work, in the bathroom during parties, while taking care of his child. In another scene, he interviews for a job with a TV producer while high. The flick concludes with sound bytes from interviews Stahl did with TV talking heads (Morey and Tom Snyder) with Stiller digitally added to the scene.

I thought Stiller transformed himself into a serious actor for the role and the good supporting cast clearly helps; still the film is too episodic to score higher than average. This biopic is mature fare and sometimes very difficult to watch, especially a scene where Stiller, in the car with an infant, mainlines heroin through a vein in his neck. It also loses points since none of the actors show any signs of age as its chronology progresses.

Still, there's often something interesting going on or something you probably haven't seen before by such name actors. There was a lot more drug use here than in "Trainspotting" where the cast was compprised 100 percent of heroin addicts. So check this out if you're up to it; you might find it rewarding.