All Bark, All Bite : ‘Four Dogs’ a Nasty, Fun Portrayal of Hollywood Film Culture

Renamed and refurbished by movie money, the Geffen Playhouse (nee the Westwood Playhouse) opened Wednesday night. Interestingly, it opened with a play starring actors best known for movies and directed by film screenwriter-director-producer Lawrence Kasdan. The play: “Four Dogs and a Bone,” John Patrick Shanley’s acid Hollywood satire about four sociopaths and the movie they are making. Could this production be an augury of a brave, new Los Angeles theater, one that seriously examines the culture it produces? Maybe, but who cares; the play is too much nasty fun to be worried with the future of the theater.

Certainly no one in the play worries. To the four coldblooded characters fighting for control over an unnamed film, the terms “from the theater” or “art film” are synonyms for leprosy. These people care passionately whether Johnny, a fictional character in the film they are making, lives or dies--Johnny’s fate could affect their careers. Whether anyone human lives or dies is of no significance whatsoever to anyone. The scruples of a movie producer are symbolized by his peculiar ailment--a rectal tumor the size of a Dungeness crab.

Gross it may be, but “Four Dogs” is also dead-on funny. Penned by a man who won an Oscar for writing his screenplay for “Moonstruck” and who wrote and directed a major flop, “Joe Versus the Volcano,” the play is a knowledgeable and very edgy look into the belly of the beast. For the stage, Shanley directed “Four Dogs” Off Broadway in 1993. His production was razor-sharp, fast and black, emphasizing the characters’ impressive acuity with language--this is a world where memorable phrases are slung about with astounding rapidity, where filmmakers are as “ignorant as raw potato-sucking peasants.” Kasdan, who is far more a product of the world of movies, approaches the characters with more understanding, robbing the play of some of its edge. Yet, by daring to understand Shanley’s characters, Kasdan illuminates another fascinating aspect of Shanley’s milieu.

Kasdan meticulously articulates the social mores of four ambitious people working in tight quarters in a trailer in New York, crossing and double-crossing each other, veering between extraordinary duplicity and honesty of the most brutal variety. Emotional extremes are not only permissible, they are required.

The sentence “I’ve been incested” is but a calling card for the starlet Brenda (Parker Posey, who plays the role as a standard Hollywood airhead), who will reel off a confession of intimate atrocities in any situation where it might benefit her. She is just as likely to turn on her new intimate by delivering the most hurtful bit of gossip imaginable, but only as necessity dictates.

As Brenda’s rival, the nasty, aging ingenue Collette, Elizabeth Perkins steals the show. All of her scenes are sharp. Her gift for unmitigated self-hate and her genius for savagery are equally hilarious. She comes off as the brightest and most debased of the characters, and she delivers Kasdan’s reality without losing the great vitality and humor in her part.

Martin Short plays Bradley, the film’s slimy producer, a man who claims he would never do anything “to endanger my third marriage.” Short has made a rather brilliant career of lampooning over-the-top show-biz egos both real and fictional.

Here, he keeps the reins in, using almost no physical comedy, playing Bradley straight and almost dull. He allows himself one liberty, though--while shouting at someone, he takes off his glasses and cleans them, revealing to the audience eyes that not only cross but wildly ricochet. He puts his glasses on and the brief but luscious Jerry Lewis moment is over. The production could use a bit more unrestrained nuttiness; the text would certainly absorb it.

As the screenwriter Victor, Brendan Fraser starts out well (in his scene with Perkins) but gets lost in the play as his character’s relative normalcy gives way to bigger and bigger ambition. Kasdan buries the play’s tiny climax, which has Victor taking center stage as he rises to take over the picture. In the final stretch, Kasdan fails to build sufficient energy, and the play ends almost on a dead note, a disappointing finale to an often highly charged evening.

As unlikely a scenario as it sounds, the movie director at the helm of the play didn’t go far enough into the heart of its realistic absurdity. Nevertheless, “Four Dogs and a Bone” is one of the best modern artifacts we have of Hollywood, a system that has its “own peculiar genius,” as Collette notes. Elizabeth Perkins, though, reveals that genius in its full gory glory.

* “Four Dogs and a Bone,” Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood, Tue.-Thur., 7:30 p.m.; Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 5 and 9 p.m.; Sun., 2 and 6 p.m. Dark Thanksgiving Day. Ends Nov. 26. $25-$35. (310) 208-5454, (800) 233-3123. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Parker Posey: Brenda

Martin Short: Bradley

Elizabeth Perkins: Collette

Brendan Fraser: Victor

A Geffen Playhouse production. By John Patrick Shanley. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Sets Michael McGarty. Costumes Colleen Atwood. Lights Neil Peter Jampolis. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Production stage manager Wendy Cox.