‘Slaves’ to Show Biz

Michael Wechsler and Terry Keefe’s “Slaves of Hollywood,” which opens a one-week run Friday at the Monica 4-Plex, is too talky for its own good, but this first-time feature gathers steam and manages to hold interest because Wechsler and Keefe have had firsthand experience as film industry assistants. They cast Katherine Morgan, poised and lovely, as the daughter of a studio mogul (Nicholas Worth, in a ferocious portrayal) who has grown lethally paranoid over the years. An aspiring filmmaker herself, the daughter decides to document the lives of five assistants as a way of showing how the movie business turns people into monsters if it doesn’t destroy them. “Slaves” is a bleak satire that is often funny, very knowing and totally uncompromising, which may explain why the picture bears a 1996 copyright. No matter, Wechsler and Keefe have genuine talent and imagination, though at this stage more as writers than directors.

Thomas (Howard Scott) is the film’s innocent, newly arrived in the mail room of a top talent agency, where he is swiftly targeted for exploitation by Roman (Rob Hyland), the blithely unscrupulous assistant to the agency head; Roman is a refugee from a Neil LaBute movie. Fisher (Hill Harper), who dreams of discovering “the next Madonna,” has become the assistant of an exuberantly decadent music video producer; he ends up carrying his boss around on his shoulders. Hefty, vulnerable George (Elliot Markman) is stuck in a mail room with a studio head’s crazed heavy-metal-freak son, who may well succeed in driving him out of his mind. Already out of a job is aspiring filmmaker Dean (Andre Barron), fired by his apoplectic boss because he one day forgot to make him a lunch reservation at Spago. As “Slaves of Hollywood” grows darker it grows funnier and is a fine showcase for its actors. Harper has already begun to make his mark, and Hyland, rugged and forceful, and Markman, a character actor of considerable resources, are especially impressive. (310) 394-9741.

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In “Totally F***ed Up” (1994), which screens Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Sunset 5 as part of the Strand Releasing Retrospective, the consistently provocative Gregg Araki delves into the troubled world of gay teenagers. He evokes desolate images of L.A, especially at night, which makes our town, in the words of one of this film’s young men, “the alienation capital of the world.” An angry Araki addresses the disproportionately high suicide rate among gay teens. Although more serious than he has ever been, Araki speaks his mind without being preachy and, what’s more, uses color and direct sound without losing the grit of his earliest pictures.

Araki effectively punctuates his story with quotes in the manner of one of his acknowledged idols, Jean-Luc Godard, and probing interviews by Steven (Gilbert Luna), an aspiring filmmaker who’s always poking a camcorder in his friends’ faces. Indeed, the film is tautly, faultlessly structured, and Araki manages to create a spontaneous, off-the-cuff quality while maintaining tight control. Once again we’re in the world of looming billboards, deserted parking structures and all-night coffee shops in which his disaffected young people do an awful lot of hanging out. Araki lashes out at gay-bashing and what he aptly sums up as “institutionalized homophobia” that makes the teen years so tough on so many kids.

Araki presents none of his young people, all of whom are played expertly by his cast of unknowns, as gay stereotypes but rather as indistinguishable in dress and mannerisms from other L.A. teenagers. (Only one of the actors is actually gay.) The irony is that if any of these young men had been even slightly obviously homosexual, they might have developed lots more resiliency.

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Tanya Wexler’s “Finding North,” at the Sunset 5, Saturday and Sundays at 11 a.m. features a grieving gay man (John Benjamin Hickey) who leaves New York to fulfill his late lover’s wishes by taking an extended and complicated journey to a small Texas town where the dead man was born and raised. Tagging along quite unexpectedly is a klutzy heart-of-gold Brooklyn motor mouth (Wendy Makkena), who falls in love with Hickey. There’s a decided aura of contrivance in the way Wexler sets up her story, but it gets better and better as it goes along, with Makkena at last able to break through her stereotyped role. Wexler leaves us to wonder just where the strong emotional bond that develops between these two will ultimately take them. (323) 848-3500.

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In the title role of “Man of the Century,” which opens a one-week run Friday at the Nuart, Gibson Frazier plays New York newspaper reporter Johnny Twennies, who for some reason is convinced that he’s living in the 1920s. His paper indulges him in this delusion because of a seemingly popular column he writes, only now interest is not only waning in Twennies but in the paper itself; he needs a scoop or he’ll lose his job.

It would seem that director Adam Abraham and Frazier, who collaborated on the script, used up all their imagination in coming up with consistently authentic period slang for Frazier’s Twennies to speak. Impeccably attired in a three-piece suit and always wearing a hat out of doors, Twennies is delightfully played by Frazier, who does in fact sound just like Pat O’Brien or Lee Tracy’s reporters did in early talkies. But once having created Johnny, they run out of inspiration; Johnny literally is all dressed up with no place to go of any interest whatsoever. “Man of the Century” might be better developed as a stage musical or as a performance piece for Frazier. This film gets so tedious it’s not worth sitting out for the finale, which has the great Bobby Short singing “Nagasaki” with no less than the legendary society orchestra leader Lester Lanin conducting the Cleopatra Four Plus Two, who perform their jaunty score for the film. No wonder Anne Jackson, playing Johnny’s grande dame mother, is listed as Mme. Du Froid rather than under her own name. “Man of the Century” is unlikely to last to the millennium. (310) 476-6379.

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To mark the centennial of the death of Johann Strauss Jr., director Percy Adlon created the most whimsical of concert films, “Forever Flirt,” which will have its U.S. premiere Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Goethe Institute, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100. Adlon, who will be present, accompanies 13 of Strauss’ lesser-known waltzes with charming and sophisticated vignettes, most of which celebrate that moment when a man and a woman become aware of their mutual attraction. Adlon, best known for the delightful “Baghdad Cafe,” ranges freely in his choice of settings and occasionally mixes in well-known actors, such as Eva Mattes, caught up in a sly backstage seduction. “Forever Flirt” is embracing, inclusive and tinges its joyful spirits with a touch of melancholy. (323) 525-3388.

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The American Cinematheque will host the West Coast premiere of P.J. Pesce’s western “From Dusk Til Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter,” which features Michael Parks as Ambrose Bierce, who’s looking for the Mexican Revolution, circa 1914, and Sonia Braga as a vampire-madam, operating a bordello of the undead. With Marco Leonardi, Ara Celi and Temuera Morrison. Produced by Lawrence Bender, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. It will screen at the Egyptian on Saturday at 7 p.m. and again at 11 p.m. as a special Halloween presentation. Pesce and cast members will appear at both screenings. On Wednesday the Cinematheque will present at the Egyptian at 7:30 p.m. “Women in Shorts,” a program of short films made by women. (323) 466-FILM.

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Yousef Chahine’s “Destiny,” which screened last weekend as part of a retrospective of the esteemed Egyptian filmmaker’s half-century career, opens a regular run Friday at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., (310) 274-6869. In telling the story of medieval Spain’s Arab philosopher Averroes (Nour el-Cherif) and his struggle to teach and preserve the Greek classics in the face of both Christian and Muslim zealots, Chahine attacks contemporary Mideastern fundamentalism. The result is a sweeping historical epic, sustained by Chahine’s characteristic energy and passion.

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The Orpheum Theater, 842 S. Broadway, downtown, concludes its fifth annual Spook-a-Thon tonight at 7 with Brian De Palma’s 1976 horror classic “Carrie,” with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, followed by a burlesque show headed by veteran stripper Cynthianna, magician Christopher Wonder and the Velvet Hammer Dancers. “The Mummy” (1932), with Boris Karloff, screens at 9 p.m. and burlesque returns at 10:45 p.m. with the kinky duo Lipstick & Lashes. Saturday brings a 9 p.m. “ghost expedition” of the historic Broadway theater district. (213) 239-0949.