Dark Humor Lifts ‘Midnight’s’ Tired Subject

He may have been working on “a habit the size of Utah,” but Jerry Stahl was never an ordinary addict. He was a show-biz junkie, someone who wrote for television by day and chased highs at night, a health-conscious kind of guy who made sure to exercise and eat organic while drugs were turning him into a walking cadaver.

Yes, that sounds ridiculous, and Stahl’s saving grace was that he always knew it. No matter how wretched his situation, Stahl rarely lost his facility with words or his dark sense of humor. They helped make a success of “Permanent Midnight,” the aptly named autobiography he wrote about his experiences, and, as translated to the screen by actor Ben Stiller, they are the film version’s biggest assets. Added to the accomplished writing and directing job by David Veloz, these qualities go a ways toward making “Permanent Midnight” an involving film, but they don’t go far enough.

For even though the filmmakers like to talk about this being a parable about the human condition, in plainer terms “Permanent Midnight” is yet another movie look at drug addiction, a tedious subject that is apparently as irresistible to young filmmakers as heroin is to a user.

While “Trainspotting” escaped the curse of junkie films by adding a bracing jolt of off-the-cuff energy, other addiction films, from “Rush” through “The Basketball Diaries,” eventually degenerate, as this one does, into the usual litany of how-low-can-you-go horrors, with the addict regularly debasing himself for fixes his veins are too far gone to accept.

Filmmaker Veloz, who was one of the writers on Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” and will not be remaking “Mary Poppins” any time soon, has the sense to avoid overdoing things in this, his directing debut. But absent a new way of looking at a tired subject, there’s only so much interest that a film like this can create.

What is a bit different, and welcome, is Stahl’s drop-dead sarcastic and starkly self-deprecating attitude, visible in lines like “smack is the leisure suit of the ‘90s” and his explanation for moving to L.A. to avoid a drug problem in Pittsburgh: “I miscalculated.”

Stiller spent enough time with Stahl (who has a cameo as a doctor in a methadone clinic) to give an uncanny impersonation of the writer, a man rarely seen without dark clothing and darker sunglasses. Though “Permanent Midnight” can’t be classified as fun, Stiller’s comic energy and timing are essential in providing the film with the numerous bleak laughs that become its trademark.

“Permanent Midnight” opens in a hellish fast-food restaurant in Phoenix where Stahl, on a kind of work-release program from a rehab spot called Whispering Winds, is taking orders.

Through his drive-through window comes the bright and lively Kitty (“ER’s” Maria Bello). Instinctively recognizing each other as ex-addicts (he’s been clean for 92 days, she for seven years), they retire to a nearby motel where, between quasi-romantic interludes, he narrates flashbacks about the fast-lane life in L.A. that nearly killed him.

Living with Nicky (Owen Wilson), a friend from back home, Stahl is introduced to Sandra (Elizabeth Hurley), a witty, attractive British woman who is looking to marry someone to acquire a green card. She settles on Stahl, but not before he rips his leather pants down the seam on meeting her and then cracks, “Jewish leather, it’s designed for humiliation.”

Sandra works on a TV show about a lovable puppet alien called “Mr. Chompers,” and soon enough she gets Stahl (who wrote for “Alf” in real life) work on the show, a job he nails when he tells the head man that he views Mr. Chompers as “a modern-day Tom Joad, a defender of the common man.” Helped by a completely humorless agent (Janeane Garofalo), his career soon takes off.

“Permanent Midnight’s” Hollywood segments are clever and amusing, but the more Stahl’s life unravels in his demeaning search for drugs, the more the film inevitably goes down along with it. Watching Stahl searching frantically for an unused vein in his neck with a baby fussing next to him (don’t ask) may be unnerving, but it is far from irresistible.

* MPAA rating: R, for pervasive graphic drug use, strong sexuality and language. Times guidelines: Scenes of drug usage are noticeably wrenching.

‘Permanent Midnight’

Ben Stiller: Jerry Stahl

Elizabeth Hurley: Sandra

Janeane Garofalo: Agent

Maria Bello: Kitty

Released by Artisan Entertainment. Director David Veloz. Producers Jane Hamsher, Don Murphy. Executive producer Yalda Yehranian. Screenplay David Veloz, based on the book by Jerry Stahl. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman. Editor Steven Weisberg, Cara Silverman. Costumes Louise Mingenbach, Lori Eskowitz. Music Daniel Licht. Production design Jerry Fleming. Art director Ryan Ong. Set decorator Betty Berberian. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.