Entry 121: Inserts (1975)

Inserts (1975)

Dir: John Byrum

"A degenerate film with dignity."

In a bizarre prologue, a group of men (including what appears to be an uncredited Bill Murray, who was a good friend of both writer/director Byrum and Richard Dreyfuss) gather in silhouette to watch a 16mm stag reel.  They cheer the violent sex (during which the man chokes his female partner with a necktie), but boo and walk away in disappointment at the lack of a cumshot.  The remainder of the film flashes back to 1930 to show us the origin of the clip.  We are introduced to Boy Wonder (Richard Dreyfuss, directly before Jaws made him a star) sitting alone at a piano in his decrepit Hollywood mansion.  Once a great silent-era filmmaker, some unnamed trauma has left him broken and impotent, an alcoholic who never leaves his house (or even changes out of his bathrobe).  He now makes his living shooting porno reels out his home and is awaiting the arrival of his star, one-time lover and only friend Harlene (Veronica Cartwright, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien), a silent-era actress whose grating voice has left her jobless and addicted to heroin.  In the middle of shooting the scene from the beginning of the film, a violent, energetic encounter between Harlene and her brutish, stupid, vain co-star Rex the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies, The Long Good Friday, The Nest), Boy Wonder is paid a visit from Big Mac (the late Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Super Mario Brothers, in his film debut), the thuggish gangster who finances Boy Wonders films (they have a "six picture contract!").  Big Mac is accompanied by his fiancee, Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper, Phantom of the Paradise, Suspiria), an up-and-coming actress.  Big Mac doles out money to Boy Wonder and Rex and heroin to Harlene and, while Mac argues with Boy Wonder over the merits of his filmmaking style, Harlene OD's upstairs.  When Boy Wonder fails to make a case for finishing the picture with her still-warm body, Mac and Rex leave to hide the corpse, leaving Cathy and Boy Wonder alone.  Cathy is eager to learn from the once-great Wonder, whose specialty, even in disgrace, is helping actors reach their "peak," the point at which the barriers separating performance and reality fall away.  She convinces Boy Wonder to use her to film some "inserts" for the reel, and her purity and enthusiasm arouse him for the first time in ages.  Seducing Boy Wonder into making love to her, Cathy brings him to his own "peak," and he believes that, with Cathy by his side, he can give up booze and solidarity and return to making "real" pictures.  Alas, Cathy becomes enraged and drops her facade when she realizes Boy Wonder didn't have the camera running during their encounter, an enraged Big Mac returns and confiscates Boy Wonder's camera and film and departs with Cathy and Rex.  The already damaged Boy Wonder is left thoroughly destroyed and alone again at his piano, leading to a final line that's both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny.

Inserts is a supremely odd film.  Made for almost nothing on a backlot in the UK, it was conceived as a film yet feels extremely theatrical; it's one-house setting is VERY stagey and no attempt is made to make the audience feel like it isn't looking at a set, and it's dialogue is delivered with a pitch and rhythm more associated with stage plays.  The film was part of a cycle of films produced as the 60s bled into the "cynical 70s" that reveled in taking the piss out the romanticizing of "Old Hollywood (notable among them Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon and John Schlesinger's adaptation of The Day of the Locust).  This certainly makes sense, as 70s "New Hollywood" was built upon the ideal of "freeing" filmmakers from the old studio style.  Inserts tears into it's glamorous targets with reckless abandon, taking (usually sexual) shots at legends like DeMille, F.W. Morneau, Lillian Gish and, most frequently, Clark Gable (a recurring subplot involves Gable seeking an audience with Boy Wonder).  

Inserts was a passion project for Dreyfuss; in addition to starring, he helped with the casting a ghost co-wrote the script with Byrum (he's credited as "production associate).  Although shooting on this film wrapped shortly before Jaws began principal photography, it's release was held up for a year due to censorship and rating issues and Dreyfuss used his newfound Jaws stardom to relentlessly promote it.  Despite his efforts, the film was met with lukewarm reviews and catastrophic box office failure.  Part of the fault certainly lays with the film's X-rating; by the time the film was released in 1976, "porno chic" was on it's way out, and while earlier X-rated films had been released by major studios to great success (1969's Midnight Cowboy and Medium Cool, 1972's Last Tango in Paris), the "X" novelty had by this time worn off and stigma had set in.  The rating also kept the film from finding new life on home video when it was released in 1988, as it was relegated to "adults only" back rooms, to be rented only by the bishop-boppers who were no doubt pissed as fuck when they discovered they'd rented a black comedy with two (brief) sex scenes instead of a hardcore fuck flick.  When the film was finally issued on DVD in 2005, Dreyfuss, perhaps hoping it'd finally find an audience, successfully lobbied to have it resubmitted for an NC-17 rating, which it now carries.

I suspect more than the rating is to blame for the film's failure to find an audience.  For one thing, very little happens in the film.  It's pleasure stem primarily from the quirky, rapid-fire banter between it's down-and-out characters, and what character development does take place is subtle (but, in the case of Boy Wonder, crucial).  It's also an exceedingly ugly film, from the faded walls and broken furniture of Boy Wonder's mansion to the excessive makeup applied to the actresses to Boy Wonder's saggy, puffy alcoholic's eyes and five o'clock shadow. Above all else, the film is, quite frankly, bleak as fuck.  It's a movie about broken, pathetic, self-loathing and self-abusing characters.  Only Boy Wonder raises even the tiniest modicum of sympathy from the audience (and then only in the film's final act), and for our modest investment in him we're treated to watching him torn completely apart. At the end of the film, he's jobless, soon-to-be homeless and what shred of dignity he'd held onto has vanished with his career.

If you haven't gotten a sense of this from the proceeding paragraphs, Inserts is a comedy, and it's funny as hell.  The performers are all excellent, and the fast-paced, period-appropriate, and often cleverly-repetitious dialogue remind me very much of Clue, which was also an enormous box office flop a decade later (that film, at least, eventually found a very appreciative audience over time).  Harper in  particular is revelation and should've become a genuine star.  While perhaps off-putting at the time, it's ribald humor concerning subjects such as necrophilia and what, exactly is the proper dirty euphemism for the female sex organ ("Cunt? Slit?") are perfectly at-home in a post-Troma, post-Tarantino society.  If you're reading this blog I know you're not a prude, so please, check this movie out.  Don't concern yourself with where it's going, just enjoy the ride and delight in the clever dialogue and character interactions.  I'd love to see this film gain a bit more recognition.

Unless I missed my guess, it's almost time for lunch...