MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Star Time’: Dark Parable on Television

Alexander Cassini’s “Star Time” (at the Nuart Fridays at midnight through April) is an impressively ambitious and potent first feature, an often surreal parable, in the form of a film noir, on the impact of TV on a disturbed individual. As a tale about a man whose only knowledge of the world seems to be derived from television, it represents the dark, obverse side of “Being There.”

On a building rooftop at night a young man (Michael St. Gerard) is poised to jump to his death when an insinuating middle-aged man (John P. Ryan) appears and talks him out of it. It seems that St. Gerard’s Henry Pinkle is so alienated that when his favorite TV program, a family drama/comedy, is canceled he feels his own life has been canceled as well--that he has no identity, no reason to go on living. Ryan’s Sam Bones, the most satanic and compelling of hucksters, promises Henry that he can become a TV star himself. The way Bones intends Henry to accomplish this becomes a bleak commentary on the way the contemporary media, TV in particular, not only can shape monsters but in the process also make them into stars, if only for Andy Warhol’s infamous 15 minutes.

“Star Time” evolves into a classic struggle between good and evil as Bones and Henry’s conscientious social worker (Maureen Teefy), apparently his only human contact, eventually do battle over Henry’s mind and soul. Cassini, who developed his film from a 30-minute short made at the American Film Institute, is so imaginative that it’s not fair to reveal more.

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The film is set almost entirely against desolate night L.A. cityscapes, which express both Henry’s intense isolation and his own vision of life, in which people really don’t exist for him outside the tube. On a visual level Cassini and cinematographer Fernando Arguelles, who was also an AFI fellow, display considerable Expressionist bravura; sometimes dialogue sequences seem disjointed, perhaps purposely so, to suggest the difficulty two people can have in communicating with each other. There are some less than clear, yet convincing, moments when Cassini seems to be overreaching, requiring you to take them on faith, but Cassini has sufficient originality and audacity to make it worth the viewer’s effort.

He is also very good with actors. St. Gerard, who starred in the ABC series “Elvis” and in John Waters’ “Hairspray,” clearly reaches deeply into his resources to make Henry at once vulnerable, dangerous and pitiable. As for Ryan, it’s gratifying to see this reliable veteran get a big, juicy role that he can play with such relish. Teefy is no less effective as an intelligent woman whose own vulnerability lies in her caring too much for Henry.

For all its bizarre and stylized twists and turns “Star Time” (Times-rated Mature for some bloodshed and nudity) is essentially a philosophical film of ideas--and not at all the sleazy, outrageous sex-and-violence entertainment typical of midnight movies.

‘Star Time’ Michael St. Gerard: Henry Pinkle John P. Ryan: Sam Bones Maureen Teefy: Wendy

A Northern Arts Entertainment release. Writer-producer-director Alexander Cassini. Cinematographer Fernando Arguelles. Editor/associate producer Stan Salfas. Costumes Shawna Leavell. Music Blake Leyh. Production designers Carey Meyer, David Jensen. Set designers Andrea Claire, James Abbott. Set decorator Iain Blodwell. Sound David Lerner. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (some violence, nudity).