MY LIFE'S IN TURNAROUND tells the tale of two actor friends trying to break into the film business in Manhattan. Despite much potential in its reflexive story line, this little movie turns out to be an aimless, occasionally offensive affair.
Cabdriver Splick Featherstone (Eric Schaeffer) and bartender Jason Little (Donal Lardner Ward) decide to leave the off-off-Broadway theater scene and make an independent feature film. With no idea of what kind of movie they want to make, Splick and Jason enlist their agent, Sarah (Lisa
Gerstein), to help them set up "pitch" meetings with well-known producers. After several false starts, Splick and Jason finally decide to film the story of their lives. They then try to meet movie stars who they can "attach" to their project in order to raise money. Two stars, Phoebe Cates and
Martha Plimpton, agree to appear in the film only after meeting the duo by chance. In the meantime, Splick, a perpetual loser with women, falls in love with a dynamic young lawyer, Rachael (Dana Wheeler Nicholson), while Jason, a handsome ladies' man, reluctantly becomes serious with Amanda (Debra
Clein), a woman he meets outside his psychiatrist's office. Just when financing their film proves more difficult than expected, Splick and Jason fight over control of the story's authorship. Individually, however, Splick and Jason raise enough money to make their movie, and Sarah brings the men
back together to get started. On their first day of filming, Jason makes a commitment to Amanda, while Rachael joins Splick on the set to cheer him on.
"Turnaround" is the euphemism Hollywood professionals use to label a defunct project. MY LIFE'S IN TURNAROUND so thoroughly fails to live up to its promise as a comedy, one may rightly wonder how this script escaped the turnaround endgame itself. The film starts with a likable concept, but the
screenplay, co-written by stars and co-directors Eric Schaeffer and Donal Lardner Ward, never explores the Pirandellian possibilities of making a movie about a movie. Only in the final scene--as Splick and Jason begin filming their epic--does MY LIFE'S IN TURNAROUND begin to suggest the
art-imitates-life drollery of the situation.
MY LIFE'S IN TURNAROUND owes more to ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN HOLLYWOOD (1945) than DAY FOR NIGHT (1973), but at least Abbott and Costello made their comedy routines funny. For the most part, Schaeffer mugs shamelessly as Splick, while Ward remains stoic as Jason; they have so little chemistry
together, in fact, that it's surprising to learn that the two men are real-life friends, who claim to have lived through many of the episodes depicted. The film plays like a DUMB AND DUMBER for downtown hipsters, but Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels are incomparably more entertaining to watch. (Sexual
situations, extreme profanity.) leave a comment
