http://www.slate.com/MovieReview/97-03-11/MovieReview.asp
[Image] [Movie Review]
Private Parts [Image]
Directed by Betty Thomas
[Howard's End] Fartman on the big screen.
A Paramount Pictures release
[By David Edelstein]
(1,256 words; posted Tuesday, March 11;
to be composted Tuesday, March 18)
[Image]
[Howard Stern (playing with himself)]
Howard Stern (playing himself)
Although I remain dubious about Howard Stern, I'm bullish on Private
Parts, the movie based on Stern's best-selling auto-hagiography--which
suggests that I'm either a hypocrite who refuses to own up to what makes
me bust a gut for fear of appearing incorrect, or
that a bunch of talented filmmakers has brought off the shrewdest piece
of spin doctoring since Triumph of the Will. (It's the kind of analogy Stern
would love.) Whatever the truth, the picture is bad fun--wilder and more
raffish than The People vs. Larry Flynt and without the First Amendment puffery.
In a marvel of chutzpah, Private Parts begins with the premise that,
extravagantly popular as its protagonist seems to be (we watch him descend
from the rafters of a stadium in the role of Fartman, a bare-cheeked superhero
who explodes lecterns with a twitch of his derrière), he is, in fact, tormented
by rejection: by his fellow artists, among them such pillars of refinement as
Ozzie Osbourne, Dee Snider, and the late Tiny Tim; and by classy ladies,
particularly a sumptuous thing (Carol Alt) seated next to him in the first-class
section of a plane. And so the film takes the form of a
seduction -- of her and us -- with voice-over narration by a man who insists
that all his life, he has simply been "misunderstood."
[Image]
Needless to say, by the end, we don't "understand" Stern much better. We
have merely been impelled to collude with him against a universe of repressive
corporate weasels. We cheer for Stern the way we do for Bill Murray and other
oddly vulnerable dirt bags: Triumph of the Will becomes Triumph of the Swill.
The strategy makes brilliant commercial sense. Whereas on radio the
egomaniac can be strangely entrancing (the medium loves the strongman, the
Stern or the Rush Limbaugh, whose very self-aggrandizement is inclusive: Worship
me, they imply, and I will be your champion), movies that don't feature
bodybuilders or aikido masters do better with heroes of the "aw-shucks" variety.
No, Stern does not clean up his act in deference to feminists and liberals.
He still induces women to shed their clothes, and he never seems more in his
element than when mocking the mind-set of African-Americans. But what a series
of checks and balances! Incessantly dirty minded, the picture banners its
protagonist's fidelity to wife and family. Drenched in bigotry, it features
a hero who is nonetheless steadfast in his support of a black female co-host
(Robin Quivers, playing herself). Suffused with macho piggery, it boasts a
leading man who perpetually refers to the dinkiness of his own member. And
however outrageous Stern becomes, the prospect of yielding to network stoolies
who have no regard for free expression--for his need to say whatever's on his
mind, however disgusting--is the far greater outrage.
The movie is like a pro-wrestling match in which the audience screams for
the good guy to stop being such a deferential wimp and start kicking butt.
As a boy, Stern (Michael Maccarone) is humiliated by a dad (Richard Portnow) who
tells him constantly to shut up. At Boston University, he's a curly-haired,
high-voiced geek who's rejected by girls (even the blind ones). He finally
gets to be deejay ("If you love music, you'll love Deep Purple!"), only to make a
laughingstock of himself when he knocks over a pile of LPs. Sneered at by station
owners and fellow deejays (one of whom calls him "Big Bird" and asks if he'll be
interviewing Kermit the Frog), he moves from one deadbeat FM station to the next
in urban disasters like Detroit and Hartford--all while his beatific wife,
Alison (Mary McCormack), does good works on behalf of the mentally challenged.
Where--the movie wants us to ask--is Fartman? Private Parts offers the
standard biopic follow-your-dream scene as an answer. Stern, clutching his
pregnant wife and ruminating on the directionlessness of his career,
concludes (with her tender approval) that everything he thinks, no matter how
offensive, he should just blurt out. Dare to be a pig, the movie says, and ye
shall be redeemed.
Betty Thomas, the former actress (Hill Street Blues) who made The Brady
Bunch Movie such an unexpectedly happy experience--a broad mainstream comedy
with a genuinely satirical point of view--does another nifty directorial
turn. Thomas might be God's gift to broad mainstream comedies. She and her
crackerjack editor, Peter Teschner, know just when to nip off a gag and when to
let it bloom. Once Howard becomes "Howard," the cutting between His Lowness
and Quivers in the radio booth is beat-perfect. There's another, unexpected
source of merriment: Playing himself, Fred Norris, Stern's other side person
and sound-effects wizard, has the scruffy, swacked aplomb of Michael J.
Pollard. In the last third of the film, which is set in Manhattan, a hotshot NBC
exec, Kenny (the virtuoso comic actor Paul Giamatti), takes it upon himself to
Tame the Beast. The routines that Stern and company devise to drive Kenny (or
"Pig Vomit," as they call him) to apoplexy drive the audience to a state of
elation.
Private Parts is so riotous that you almost don't remember how unfunny
Stern can be on his radio show. In theory, he's a tonic--when I worked at
the Village Voice, I used to tune him in as a relief from all the
gay-left-wing-feminist yo-yos I took flak from every day. Alas, I could never
listen for long. Half an hour with Howard was all it took for me to realize
that my lot would be forever cast with the gay-left-wing-feminist yo-yos,
who were not, at least, striving to be creeps. Ultimately, the man who'll
always say the most loutish thing that comes into his head is just as tedious
as the man who'll always toe the party line. Stern's interviews with women
take the form of sniggering sexual harassment, which is why he's most at
home with porn stars and centerfolds. And while you can hear amazing things
(a few months back I heard Stern directing a message to O.J. Simpson, advising
him patiently, in the soothing tones of a social worker, to put a gun to his
head and pull the trigger), the bulk of the show takes place in a vacuum,
the oxygen sucked out by the force of the host's ego.
But Private Parts pulls off some deft sleight of hand. The Stern we see
has no temper and no inappropriate aggression--no dark side at all, really.
And while his wife is shown to be uncomfortable with his tendency to share
the couple' s private woes--he makes jokes about her miscarriage, about
wheeling the dead fetus to the zoo in a jar--it doesn't resolve the matter; it
just lets it drop. We get little insight into Quivers except that she's kinda
nice and has an anti-authoritarian streak herself. (There's no indication of why
his jokes about black people don't seem to bother her.) The film even gets away
with the fact that the seduction on the plane is no seduction at all--for there
is Howard's family to greet him at the airport gate!
Of course, Stern tells us, he could have had the sumptuous thing. But
when you think about it, it's more in keeping with the movie's brand of
populism that he goes home with his family. If Stern took Carol Alt to bed,
we'd resent him for being above the hordes. This way, Howard and his audience
leer as one, proudly joined together at their (dinky) private parts.
David Edelstein writes about movies for SLATE.
Stills, and video and audio clips from
Private Parts © 1997 Paramount Pictures.
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