Striptease
A guest review from the elegant Jessica “Juniper” Ritchey. Enjoy!
Of the more piquant flora of the crime literature family is the South Florida crime novel. An average example will depict trained alligator assassins, stolen diamonds from an irate Cuban drug cartel, and an ex New York cop trying to enjoy retirement in his houseboat just as a corpse of a beautiful Miami Dolphins cheerleader washes up on his front step. And this is just the first page. The two acknowledged masters of this genre are Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, with Hiaasen making it his sole specialty. And while both deal with duplicitous dames, heroes just smart enough to not know how dumb they are and the ever useful trait of the Everglades for keeping secrets best not shared in polite company the ways both gentlemen reach their conclusions divert considerably. Leonard measures out prose with a switchblade sharpness and economy of words. Hiaasen is the paper equivalent of getting your favorite relative potted on Hurricanes and grinning the fool while they continue to spin tales of familial exploits of such credulity stretching proportions you can’t help but believe they’re true. Both are perfect for days when the humidity threatens to extend a chloroformed rag over your mouth leaving you in an intermittently lucid state of misery. If you feel you would like nothing more than a drink in one hand and a gun in the other, pick up a Leonard novel and park yourself under the air conditioner letting the chill from the machine almost match the effortless cool of the words. If you find yourself in reverie over vacations to the beach, gobbling down Blizzards and feeling gloriously sick afterwards and the knowledge that no matter how much sunscreen mom applied you where going to come home fluorescent pink, grab an equally neon Hiaasen novel and lay claim to the porch. Hiaasen has the habit of putting his characters through hell before they triumph so you can feel the heat at the back of your neck as much as they do.
SOURCE:
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Striptease by Carl Hiaasen
Hiaasen’s trademarks are all here, a delightful cast of freaks, weirdoes, and politicians, a near howling rage at the destruction wrecked on Florida’s wildlife by over development and a female protagonist learning just how base male nature can be. I won’t give too much away suffice to say it concerns Erin, a bright young woman who has recently divorced one of the scummiest human beings not to be connected to Motley Crue. He cost her cushy job as FBI receptionist and to pay the bills she’s found employment at the local strip club. In the first lacerating attack upon the hypocrisy of “good people” the husband took the judge to the club which cost her custody of her daughter. This would be enough plot for any novel, but before our tale ends she will have crossed paths with evil sugar industry lobbyists, a politician who hasn’t thought with his brain in years, a bouncer with a heart of gold and cockroach in a yogurt cup, and scores of others who are rarely what they seem. If one can fault the novel it that it’s villains are three steps past cartoonish, and that Hiaasen a columnist by trade is marvelous at setting up characters in a few short paragraphs but the seams tying the narrative together are rather rough lending a jumpy pace that sometimes works as much as it hampers building emotional moments. It’s also not a story you can read more than once, but this is not such a loss, the trip while it lasts is a pure delight and leave a little dazed, a little fired up to protect your own patch of heaven and a hankering to read another.
SCREEN:
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Striptease, directed by Andrew Bergman
Ignore the directed by credit, this is clearly Demi Moore’s show. And before I rush to attack her performance in this I should say a few words in defense of her. She was always a limited actress but in the right parts she projected a tough earthiness I found appealing. Her scratchy voice seemed borrowed from a tough gangster’s moll, and in the early stages of her career she exhibited a wry sense of humor. I especially liked her in A Few Good Men where her fierce and grounded defense attorney was a welcome respite from Tom Cruise’s Maverick Goes to Law School antics. But alas as her fame grew her sense of fun dropped and as she could now demand choice roles and top billing she stopped being supported by a safety of capable actors and the quality of the scripts took a nosedive. This film was the beginning of the end for her career (career other than tabloid fodder I mean), the warning signs were all there, far more press was laid on her then unprecedented 12 million dollar fee, “amazing” transformation into a buxom sex goddess, and just how much in fact was she going to bare in said film. When Striptease opened it quietly died at the American box office but grossed enough overseas to allow her to drop several more bombs the nadir of which had to be the unspeakable Scarlet Letter adaptation. Finally exhausting any reserve of goodwill she might have had she disappeared for a few years before turning up as the villain in the tiresome Charlie’s Angels sequel, generally the last stop for former A-listers, just ask Kelly Lynch. It speaks to her tenacious thirst for fame that she was able to wring an almost comeback from it but audiences weren’t about to forgive her so she remains cluttering the pages of Us Weekly and In Style with equally useless prop/boyfriend Ashton Kutcher in tow.
And the film that ended it all? Well the screenwriter/director seems to have mistaken the novel’s brilliant send-ups of Lifetime movie tropes for actual Lifetime material. And the few moments that do capture the caustic bite of the story jar badly with the soft focus scenes of Demi trying vainly to regain custody of her daughter. Burt Reynolds playing the senator, and ex husband Robert Patrick, an underrated comic actor understand the feel of the novel, but their outsize playing further sinks the film as the audience struggles to wonder why any court in the land would award custody to such an obvious borderline psychopath. Had this film appeared earlier in her career and in the hands of a more capable director it could have been a funny, sexy hit, Moore is very close to my conception of Erin. But as it stands it’s a weary slog as depressing as last call in a run down bar, where the girls just don’t care anymore and any fleeting moments of entertainment remind you you’d much rather be somewhere else.
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
The film jettisoned the subplot on the devastation the sugar mills have brought down on the Everglades and the abuses of immigrant labor the industry is allowed to get away with. A little heavy for popcorn entertainment maybe, but reducing it to a few, of course, Cuban goons getting buried alive under a sugar pile gives a sucker punch to those who’ve read the book seeing it reduced to mere set dressing. As par for the course in star vehicles like this it’s the bit players you wish the film could have been about rather than the star who’s obviously too busy admiring herself in the mirror. Hiaasen’s novel was packed to bursting with similarly scene stealing characters but as much as they contributed it always remained Erin’s story. It’s telling that in trying to make it a showcase for Moore, they bared (if you can excuse the term) her inability to carry a film. Hollywood hasn’t paid Hiaasen country a visit since, and perhaps we should be grateful. His stories work best on the page as though told between closest friends.
Source: QQQ.5
Screen: QQ
I resisted a “less is Moore” joke, be proud of me.