REVIEW
By KEVIN THOMAS, The Los Angeles Times
February 4, 2000
"Wirey Spindell" is as
idiosyncratic as the name of its hero, which gives this surprisingly
affecting film its title. It's surprising because it's hard to imagine
that even an independent
filmmaker as gifted and distinctive as Eric Schaeffer has been able to work up so
much emotional involvement
into a tale that's essentially an extreme case of male prenuptial jitters. With nine days to go before tying the
knot, Schaeffer's Wirey
beats a momentary retreat to the bathroom of his Upper West Side Manhattan apartment. All
he wants is some private
time, he explains to his lovely fiancee, Tabatha (Callie Thorne), who has made an
unwelcome interruption with
an offer of a cup of tea. Why the bathroom? she asks. Why not another room, since they have
only one bathroom? The
questions send Wirey back to his childhood, to the times when he wanted to flee from his
already-divorced, well-meaning
but offbeat hippie mother who was strenuously trying to spare him the
terrible childhood she
herself endured. For example, Wirey just does not connect with her idea that he should "get in
touch with your anger" by
beating his bed with a tennis racket. Wirey, after an excruciating incident at
school, decides at about age
15 to live with his teacher-father and stepmother in rural Vermont, which
amusingly proves to be meaner
than the streets of New York City. The local yokels brutally haze the urbanite Wirey as a
"flatlander," and in no time
he has retreated into a cornucopia of drugs his father has stashed away. (Wirey is played by
Eric Mabius from age 17 until
the film jumps ahead to the present, when Schaeffer takes over as Wirey at 36.) By
the time he's off to college,
Wirey has a drug problem, conducive neither to academic survival nor in coping with the
headlong rush of first love
with Samantha (Samantha Buck), a ravingly beautiful, aspiring young actress with a
fear of being loved. So
achingly intense and comprehensive is Schaeffer's perception that he makes the whole
business of being alive, of
being in the thrall of embarrassment, of being caught up in a love that is as glorious as it is
ultimately fleeting that this
and more come across as astoundingly fresh. Wirey's youthful self-absorption is more than a
little painful but not
unamusing. In his fourth and strongest film to date, auteur-star Schaeffer has become adept
at communicating the pain
that simply being alive can bring from just the right emotional distance. Schaeffer is discreet and funny and
inspires his actors to risk
everything, as he does on both sides of the camera. With its visual panache--Kramer
Morgenthau is a cinematographer
as venturesome as Schaeffer himself--and equally potent score composed by Amanda
Kravat, "Wirey Spindell" may
be too heady for some tastes but can stir you deeply, if you're open to it.
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Wirey Spindell
Starring
Eric Mabius, Callie Thorne, Eric Schaeffer
"Wirey Spindell"
is
the funny and touching story of Wirey Spokes Spindell,
a boy born to hippy parents at New York Hospital in the winter of
1962.
This is the story of a regular all-American kid growing up in the city
in the Sixties, dealing with his adolescence in the Seventies, his
young
adulthood in the Eighties, and his adult life in the Nineties.
With
all of the real, poignant, zany, hilarious and sad moments that make up
all of our lives.
At the outset, we
discover that Wirey, now thirty-five
years old, is nine days away from marrying his hip, sexy girlfriend,
Tabatha,
which has prompted him, for some unknown reason, to decide to write a
biography
of his life long thoughts and feelings.
In flashbacks, we
follow Wirey through his childhood.
His first memory being attempting to perform cunnilingus on an
electrical
outlet when he was one years old, and getting shocked across the
room.
From time to time,
adult Wirey narrates, interjecting
his funny and poignant thoughts in retrospect. As a child, Wirey
lives with his "self-help" mother, who when Wirey is caught defecating
on the floor of the bathroom on purpose in first grade, tries to get
him
to beat the bed with a tennis racket or play tug of war with a towel as
an alternative way to express his anger. Wirey eschews this idea
and barricades himself in his room instead, hating his mother for not
loving
him the way he wants her to.
Drinking wine and
listening to the Beatles everyday after
school is Wirey's lonely life until he meets the twin MacAffey sisters
on the fifth floor of his building in Fifth grade. Now, smoking
joints,
listening to Laura Nero and making out takes the place of his angry
life
at home with Mom. But then comes Seventh grade and the horrendous
experience of having one of his testicles accidentally fall out of his
gym shorts for all of his new classmates, including the girl he likes,
to see. This devastating occurrence sends him packing to Vermont
to live with his father.
His wacky life
continues in Vermont until he goes off
to college and experiences the "dark years" of drug abuse, after which
he gets sober, moves home to New York, and meets his bride-to-be --
which
brings us full circle to the present.
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