Proof [at least by date of release] that Kevin Smith isn’t that much of an originator is The Amateurs, another movie about the making of a porno which came out in 2005.
Okay, if you’re a diehard Smith fan and still feel he can do no wrong in your book, you might want to think of The Amateurs starring Jeff Bridges as the old fogey’s Zack and Miri tempered with sophistication and subtler wit. And that you can’t get away from.
In some respects, The Amateurs sports pretty much the same contrivances as Zack and Miri but features a sunnier locale [Butterface Fields], a slightly different disposition and a pedigree of proven veteran character actors including Ted Danson, Judy Greer, William Fichtner, Joe Pantoliano, Isaiah Washington, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Steven Weber, Valerie Perrine, Glenne Headley and Lauren Graham to make it all work.
And no one shits themselves accidentally during an anal scene for the cheap laugh. But listening to Bridges character politely describing one in the butt and how important it is to a movie is alone worth the view.
Here’s where it also gets kind of interesting. According to Bridges, who also serves as the narrator, this is supposed to be a true story with him playing the film’s real life producer Andy Sargentee.
And all the characters in the film, you’ll note, are named, for whatever reason, after those in the Andy Griffith show: Barney, Helen, Otis, Floyd, Emmett, Thelma, Clara and Aunt Bea. And Butterface Fields [very rural, pleasant and inviting] is pretty much the modern day equivalent of Mayberry- except that it’s also a place that seems to support a lot of randy women who like to screw around and wear their skirts very short, judging by the story.
[God bless Fiona Hunter who plays the leggy owner of a bed store who gets it on with salesgirl Judy Greer in the porn movie’s compulsory lesbo scene- which, from the brief looks of it has better rhythm , energy and imagination than the real product.]
Middle aged and divorced, Bridges’ wife [Tripplehorn] is now living with millionaire Weber and Bridges feels he has to splurge on a birthday gift for his son in order to compete for the attention. He can’t, of course.
After bartering with the sporting good salesman [and humiliating himself in the process] since he can’t actually afford the Pro model basketball, Bridges learns that not only has his kid been lavished with a rack of ‘em, he also has an indoor court complete with an electronic scoreboard. Like having Madison Square garden in your own bedroom.
This becomes Bridges’ wake up call similar to Zack having his electricity and water shut off.
Bridges must have also been reading the same news stories about porn as Zack, because in an effort to recruit his merry band of screw ups, Bridges begins quoting statistics about the $12B a year porn industry and feels they all can make good money in this avant-garde line of work.
Although it’s a suspicion still held that the Mafia makes porn, all of Bridges cronies want in, as you would expect, and find ways to come up with their $2,000 individual shares towards the venture. With Butterface Fields being such a relatively small, laid back town with no discernible economy, you wonder where all the money’s coming from. But to ask such a question demeans the spirit of the exercise.
Brimming with misplaced confidence, Pantoliano insists he’s the only one who can write the script [the first draft is 190 pages] and direct the movie.
Barring the availability of leftover props from a Buck Adams movie, Bridges wonders where Pantoliano’s coming up with the helicopters and skyscrapers called for in the script. And Pantoliano’s reply is to quote something from Orson Welles about the absence of limitation being the enemy of art. As the game plan begins to crumble and fall apart as it predictably would, Bridges maintains his balance by rationalizing that the best stuff in history came not from guys who knew what they were doing but from those who really tried hard. And he’s given enough reasons via tactical blunders to try.
The first recruit is beyond exceptionally promising- winsome Charlene’s the hot blond counter girl at the Softy Freeze ice cream parlor. Bridges is assured she’s 20 but swears she’s only 16, though Charlene comes off like a seasoned porn chick with her sassy body gestures. Not to mention the fact that her brother’s in the state pen which pretty much winds up sinking the project in the second act.
For the time being, Charlene’s job is to have sex with three monstrously hung black guys who turn out to be much less than. The immediate question is asked whether their parents all worked in the same nuclear plant, and the sad experience which costs him $3,000 in kill fees, tells Bridges he needs to conduct pants down auditions from now on.
Bridges’ follow-up chat with Isaiah Washington, one of the black performers, is most amusing for the way Washington now twists the entire episode into a racist spiel.
“I’m just a schnook trying to score- I don’t have time to be a racist,” says Bridges who now needs to shoot a makeup scene.
His conversation the entire film is brimming with profane sexual references to women, so Ted Danson’s basically masking the fact that he’s gay, although all his buddies know it including the audience from the get-go.
So Danson volunteers to do Valerie Perrine, the town’s oldest stripper, to prove otherwise. His bare-assed failure [Ted gets naked for his art] to get it up prompts a complete psychological meltdown.
You might know her as the bartender in Bad Santa, and Lauren Graham plays the former Playboy model now working a concession stand whom Bridges tries to recruit for a scene but can’t get up the nerve to ask. So he winds up dating her.
The fact that Bridges elects to have the movie shot-on-film also explains why Charlene’s brother, just out of the pen and going into 'roid rage when he gets a load of the footage that was salvaged of her, is in the position to wreck the entire project.
But Emmett [Patrick Fugit], the nerdy cameraman has back-up BTS on video. A true story apparently, and Bridges informs us that the sex was taken out of the final edit which was then bumped up to a film look and became the theatrical version of The Amateurs which he, or rather, the real Andy Sargentee, was able to sell for $2.8 million. Imagine that.
