Late Night: Stay up for it!

Late Night (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and occasional sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.14.19

I’ve suffered through so many vulgar, trashy, profane and infantile comedies during the past several years, that it seemed like the entire genre had been hijacked by such junk.

Imperious late-night talk show host Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) would only
"make nice" in this manner, with lowly writer Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), if a publicity photo
were required. Otherwise, Katherine wouldn't waste a moment with such a staff peon...

Bless you, Mindy Kaling, for reminding us that witty, sophisticated humor still exists on the big screen.

Late Night is delightful. Kaling’s consistently amusing script is blessed with both sharp one-liners and shrewdly wry jabs at sexism, racism, ageism, tokenism and several other isms that don’t immediately leap to mind. The story also takes pointed pot shots at television and its cult of personality, while giving us the funniest behind-the-scenes writers’ room gang since we lost television’s much-loved 30 Rock.

And, unlike far too many lazy scripters these days, Kaling doesn’t focus solely on her story’s key characters; she also grants sidebar folks distinct personalities, and gives them little moments in which to shine. 

Manhattan-based Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is a pioneer in her field, with multiple Emmy Awards to prove it: She’s the only woman to host a long-running late-night talk show. Unfortunately, she hasn’t changed her approach after three decades, and her ratings are tanking in an age where audiences prefer social media to social discourse. Stuffy philosophers can’t compete with YouTube “celebrities” who make embarrassing videos with their pets.

Worse yet, the notoriously impatient Katherine suddenly is accused of hypocrisy: as a so-called progressive feminist whose writers’ room is staffed solely by men. White men. Mostly young white men.

Stung by the accuracy of this charge, she orders her executive producer — Denis O’Hare, as the long-suffering Brad — to take the first “diversity hire” who walks into the building. Due to a hilariously improbable set of circumstances, that turns out to be Molly Patel (Kaling), a former chemical plant efficiency expert from suburban Pennsylvania, who has dreamed of being a comedy writer.

And whose sudden presence in the writers’ room goes over like the proverbial lead balloon.

Private Life: Painfully raw, deeply revealing

Private Life (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong sexual content, nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Obsession takes many forms.

Richard and Rachel Biegler (Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn) want a child. The artsy Manhattan-based couple delayed starting a family because Rachel — an author — always had a fresh publishing deadline. Now, having slid into middle age, the “process” has become more complicated.

Richard (Paul Giamatti) and Rachel (Kathryn Hahn, center), obsessed with their desire to
"become pregnant," are delighted by the distraction offered by their niece, Sadie
(Kayli Carter), when she asks to crash in their apartment for awhile.

Or perhaps things always would have been complicated. Rachel’s eggs apparently aren’t top-quality, and Richard has only one testicle: a detail quickly tossed into any discussion of the topic — even with friends — much to his ongoing embarrassment. (And the first indication of the degree of “sharing” we’re in for.)

“Embarrassment” is plentiful in writer/director Tamara Jenkins’ intimate Private Life, much of it radiating from us viewers, who can’t help feeling like voyeurs. This is one of the most ferociously personal, deeply poignant dramedies I’ve ever seen, and also one of the most painfully, hilariously insightful. We laugh a lot, but often self-defensively: hoping that Jenkins — and her terrific cast — won’t go that one more private step further.

But they always do.

We meet Richard and Rachel well into what already must have been dozens (scores?) of sessions with their specialist, Dr. Dordick (Denis O’Hare, a stitch as the sort of tone-deaf male doctor who tries for humor at all the wrong moments). The film opens as Richard jabs his wife in the buttocks with another hormone shot, the actors bravely bared just as much physically, as emotionally.

We get a sense, as details emerge, that this process is being driven primarily by Rachel, and that Richard is doing everything he can to help and support. Both are weary after months on numerous emotional roller coasters. The hormones make her crazy, alternately bitchy or despondent; he’s exhausted, trying to anticipate and keep up with her moods, without saying or doing something that prompts an unexpected eruption of fury.

Rarely has the phrase “walking on eggshells” been more apt.

Unfortunately — unhappily — it quickly becomes clear that they’ve moved beyond “reasonable” options, and strayed deeply into the realm of fixation. Artificial insemination failed. An attempt to adopt went cruelly awry, as revealed during an absolutely heartbreaking flashback.

Dallas Buyers Club: A smart investment

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity, strong sexual content, nudity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Some heroes are born. Others are made.

Kicking, screaming, scratching and spitting every step of the way.

Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey, right) initially reacts with knee-jerk contempt
when the cross-dressing Rayon (Jared Leto) offers to help establish a rather unusual
business model. Soon, though, "just business" grows into something a great deal
more profound.

Ron Woodroof’s unexpected saga wasn’t nearly as poetic or dramatically mesmerizing as is suggested in Jean-Marc Vallée’s new film, Dallas Buyers Club, but there’s no doubt that the real-life Woodroof was an unlikely champion for the disenfranchised, much the way Oskar Schindler found his calling during World War II.

Texas born-and-bred Woodroof was a hard-living, harder-drinking electrical contractor when he was blindsided by an HIV diagnosis in 1986, and given sixth months to live. (Vallée’s film shifts this life-changing moment to 1985, to tie the unfolding drama to Rock Hudson’s announcement, that July, that he had AIDS.)

Not one to blithely accept a death sentence, Woodroof went into the research tank and emerged a year later to found what became known as the Dallas Buyers Club: an underground source of drugs not approved by the FDA for use in the United States ... but, in many cases, legal in other countries and known to be helpful for HIV-positive patients, and those with full-blown AIDS.

Woodroof’s story, and the Dallas Buyers Club, were profiled in Bill Minutaglio’s compelling article in Dallas Life Magazine, published on Aug. 9, 1992. Woodroof died not quite a month later, on Sept. 12. During the seven years he ran his guerrilla drug network, there’s no question he helped prolong the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of desperately ill people ... just as he prolonged his own life.

Interesting, then, that we’ve waited two full decades for a film to be made about this feisty, foul-mouthed, oddly charismatic Texas renegade.

Vallée’s film is powered by a galvanic performance from Matthew McConaughey, who notoriously dropped 47 pounds in order to convincingly play the emaciated Woodroof. That’s obviously a drastic move, but it certainly lends considerable verisimilitude to what we see onscreen, just as Christian Bale’s similar weight-loss routine brought jaw-dropping realism to his portrayal of crack-addicted Dicky Eklund, in The Fighter.

But the intensity of McConaughey’s performance here derives from a great deal more than his painfully thin frame; he charges through this role with a level of desperation that matches his character’s angry struggle to stay alive. And anger is the right word, because Woodroof quickly comes to believe that the U.S. medical establishment is, at best, moving much too slowly to battle a disease primarily killing the nation’s “expendables”; or, at worst, actively conspiring with Big Pharma to develop and deliver piecemeal treatment in a manner designed solely to maximize profits.