Premiering in New York in 1996, FORTY-DEUCE appeared on the scene like a lost artifact from the pre-Disney-ized Times Square of another age. Paul Morrissey's drama about 42nd Street hustlers, pimps and johns is harsh, powerful, and fascinatingly stylized.
The story begins when a 12-year-old runaway boy dies of an overdose in a hotel bed. Feeling remorseful but frightened, the two young male prostitutes who procured the drugs for the boy, Ricky (Kevin Bacon) and Blow (Mark Keyloun), devise a blackmail scheme with the help of their pimp, Augie
(Harris Laskowy). Their plan is to get their wealthy, middle-aged john, Mr. Roper (Orson Bean), so stoned on marijuana later that day that he won't realize he is having sex with a corpse. They then plan to pin the boy's death on Roper and extort $5,000 from him.
The plan falters, however, when Mr. Roper reacts hysterically toward the dead body the morning after his tryst. Augie sends Roper home and frames some black drug dealers for the crime, but Blow and Ricky feel doomed by the situation anyway. In the end, Ricky kills himself in the bathroom of the
hotel room, while Blow resigns himself to working for Augie's demanding boss, Mike.
Despite the theatrical source material, FORTY-DEUCE represents a bold and challenging use of cinema. Director Paul Morrissey (TRASH, HEAT) opens up the Alan Bowne play with a sharp use of editing in "Act One," split-screen in "Act Two," and intricate hand-held camerawork throughout. There are
still remnants of a theatrical event in some of the performances and in the expletive-filled but strangely poetic dialogue, yet Morrissey's clash of styles (Kevin Bacon's "Method" vs. Orson Bean's declamatory technique, the cinema verite vs. the canned theater) produces a complex, highly-charged
work on many levels.
As in other Morrissey films, FORTY-DEUCE uses a run-down gothic structure (New York's Port Authority in the first half of the film) as a squalid universe that symbolizes a microcosm of the sad, sordid underside of western capitalism. (Male teenage bodies are the commodities sold here.) Despite the
depressing subject matter, FORTY-DEUCE is not without some caustic humor, including the hustlers' argument about the best way to get to Queens via subway. The split-screen of full-reel takes--an extension of Morrissey's dual-projection system created for CHELSEA GIRLS (1966)--underscores the
characters' alienation while simultaneously conveying multiple points of view.
FORTY-DEUCE is not always easy to watch, but it deserves much more attention than it has received. (Violence, sexual situations, adult situations, substance abuse, extreme profanity.) leave a comment