#36 | April 9 - 22, 1998  

The last time I was in the East Village I sat in an Italian restaurant munching on a mediocre Caesar salad and forbidden from smoking while not 10 feet away an elderly fellow sat at the bar puffing away on a cigar and unleashing a ceaseless tirade to the bartender--his son apparently--about the downward spiral of the neighborhood in general and gay homosexuals' responsibility therefor in particular. "I been living in this neighborhood my whole life...ya tell me I don't know about queers," he ranted. "I know what that AIDS stuff is all about. Those queers been humping monkeys in the ass so long who knows what kinds of diseases they're carrying around their systems"

There's nothing particularly shocking about talk of this sort. I've heard my dad and his golfing buddies toss around theories like this ever since the mid-80s, although they always tended to substitute "dirty Jews" for queers, most likely due to the largely Semite-free ethnic makeup of our particular Philadelphia suburb. Still, having been back in the U.S. for less than 24 hours, something about the old man's ravings cheered me. I realize that his words derived more from elderly paranoia and good old-fashioned intolerance than any freedom of thought, but nevertheless it's good to see that political correctness has not completely eroded America's spirit.

Compared with the real-life example of that old Italian, Jack Nicholson's curmudgeonly New York writer in As Good As It Gets comes off looking pretty flimsy. Although he mouths off against homosexuals, blacks, women, animal lovers, and darts enthusiasts within the film's first 20 minutes, his phrasing and delivery are so stilted as to completely rule out audience believability.

In fact, the only thinking people who might be incited by this character meant to be offensive to just about everyone are bona fide obsessive compulsives, who will find the movie's psychoanalytical subtext laughable at best. For Jack, the crippling disorder seems to amount to good taste in music, a fear of sidewalk cracks, and an attachment to Neutrogena brand facial soap that's nothing compared to the personal-hygiene habits of the greater Los Angeles area. It is amazing, however, how easily Jack's familiar scowl is transformed into a look of intellectual concentration by the simple addition of a pair of writerly black-rimmed spectacles. The examples of his work, which he reads aloud during bouts of composition, are on a similar level in terms of subtlety.

Like most intolerant writer types who live in Manhattan, Jack has a gay painter for a neighbor who plays a key role in the supposed asshole's spiritual awakening. But don't be fooled by the painter's apparently healthy appearance at the outset. Like everyone who plays a gay role in a mainstream movie, Greg Kinnear's understated performance inevitably falls victim to the AIDS effect. Although Kinnear doesn't actually contract AIDS during the film, he is savagely beaten about halfway through, and after his hospital stay he returns to the apartment building looking gaunt and sickly...an awful lot like--surprise!--someone who has AIDS. Needless to say, you also won't be seeing Kinnear so much as kiss another man. To be fair, such a scene would not have been particularly relevant to the plot.

While some case might be made on behalf of Nicholson's receiving his third Oscar for his performance here, Helen Hunt's parallel victory is explainable only in terms of the runaway popularity of 1990s NBC sitcoms set in New York. To further facilitate this kind of cross-medium reasoning, Hunt essentially plays Elaine from Seinfeld, that is, a spunky, unconventionally attractive gentile with perpetual man troubles and who, like all good white New Yorkers, nevertheless acts extremely Jewish. This being the uplifting Badguy Grows a Heart flick that it is, Hunt is also the other half of the human front that's behind Jack's newfound humanity.

Hunt's presence also serves to emphasize the striking similarities to Jerry Maguire, last year's big-studio Oscar movie of choice and the source from which As Good As It Gets draws most directly. Recall that Hunt's real-life sister Bonnie played the mother-figure sibling/roommate of Tom Cruise's wife in Maguire. Thus, there's a certain Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon logic in the fact that Helen here plays the female lead, a single mother who happens to live with her mother. It goes without saying that her young son is both ingratiatingly cute and easily perceived as helpless (and therefore in need of a father figure, who conveniently arrives before film's end). While the Maguire brat was a four-eyed dweeb, the Hunt child is a hyper-asthmatic who is not allowed to so much as run half a city block.

Rounding out the shameless Jerry-mandering is one-man catchphrase machine Cuba Gooding, who plays Kinnear's art dealer, also a gay homosexual. It seems odd that Gooding did not receive a second straight Oscar for a performance in no way inferior to his charismatic wide receiver with an attitude problem in Jerry Maguire. Further proof that Oscar just don't like dem colored folk.

The real star of the show and impetus for Jack's transformation, however, is Jill, the hyperactive little pug in the role of Kinnear's gay dog Verdell. If you can explain to me why someone who is supposed to be as neatness-obsessed as Jack's character would take in miniature dirt machine with a penchant for indoor urination, then you must be from Indiana. As usual, tens of millions of Americans have voted with their hard-earned bucks, thus rendering my mean-spirited criticisms largely irrelevant.

Half-assed, last-minute cheers to the appearance of Yeardley Smith (better known as the voice of Lisa Simpson) and the inclusion of a song by Art Garfunkel, doggedly still sporting a white-boy afro after all these years.

Since springtime is Moscow's Oscar season, you can also get a look this week at Robin Williams' award-winning performance in Good Will Hunting, which a much-needed trip out of town has kept me from seeing so far. Williams may be a thoroughly overrated twit whose firm belief every compliment he has every received makes me cringe, but I've heard some pretty good things from reliable individuals about Gus Van Sant's latest.

The law of chronically uneven directors would appear to dictate that his follow up to the excellent To Die For be a flop of epic proportions along the lines of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Then again it could conceivably be a breakthrough on a par with Fargo, which was also heavily nominated for Academy Awards and came away with a pair of trophies for acting and best original screenplay. Also in its favor is Matt Damon, who is like an Ethan Hawke without all the self-promotion and pretentious novelist/musician ambitions.

You'll have to make your own call on this one.