Inserts (film)

Inserts is a 1975 British comedy-drama film written and directed by John Byrum in his directorial debut, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Jessica Harper, Bob Hoskins and Veronica Cartwright.

The plot concerns actors and directors in the early 1930s who were unable to make the transition from silent films to talkies, and thus turned to making pornography. The film's title takes its name from the double meaning that "insert" both refers to a film technique and sexual intercourse. Inserts was filmed in the vein of a one-act stage play on one set and filmed entirely in real time.

Plot
In the present day, an audience of men and women are watching a black-and-white stag film. After it ends, a man complains that there was no "cum shot".

In Hollywood in the early 1930s, shortly after the start of the talkie period, a young Hollywood director known as Boy Wonder has fallen out of favour with the studios. This is ostensibly due to his reluctance to lower his standards or abandon his experimental style, such as using a hand-held camera, for the sake of churning out lesser quality stag films for easy money, due to his alcoholism and his fear of leaving his house. He works out of his decaying mansion, which is the only one left on a street being turned into a freeway.

On the morning of a shoot, heroin-addicted waitress Harlene arrives. Harlene was a well-known star during the silent film era, and she too is reluctant to join the ranks of the "talkies" due in part to her high-pitched voice. She is now the star in the first of his six-picture deal. She prepares and shoots heroin while Boy Wonder drinks heavily during a conversation about the changing times in Hollywood.

Actor Rex the Wonder Dog then arrives, wearing a suit with grass stains on his knees, having just come from his job working for a mortician. Rex believes a man from a studio who offered to put him in the mainstream talkies, and has an appointment to meet him in his hotel room later that day.

Boy Wonder attempts to make an artistic film using an actress under the influence of heroin and an actor who becomes increasingly frustrated with him and all of his poetic talk, much of which he does not understand. Once they start, Rex gets out of control during the action and Boy Wonder needs to smash a wine bottle over his head to get him to stop.

Just then, porno film producer Big Mac appears. He has heroin packets in his pocket, an unlit cigar in his mouth, wads of money for Rex and wannabe actress Cathy Cake hanging on his arm. Harlene takes her payment in heroin and dies from an overdose in an upstairs bedroom. Rex finds the dead body, and everyone is upset over this turn of events. Boy Wonder talks about continuing his film, but Rex refuses to perform with a dead woman.

Big Mac offers Rex a part in a mainstream movie to get his help in burying the body. While the two are away, Boy Wonder offers to film Cathy for insert shots of her nude body to double for Harlene. At first, Cathy refuses to undress, but after doing it, she becomes aroused by Boy Wonder filming her. She eventually has sex with him, but is disappointed after learning the camera was off. Boy Wonder's sexual experience with Cathy marks the end of his longstanding problem with impotence.

Boy Wonder, however, realizes that this romantic encounter was a ploy to get her into the film, and that she has used and directed him the way he used and directed her. Big Mac and Rex return to find both of them half naked. In a jealous rage, Big Mac ends his six-picture stag film contract with Boy Wonder, who by this time is completely drunk. Rex beats up Boy Wonder hit him with the bottle, as Boy Wonder earlier did to thim. Big Mac takes the film reel that Boy Wonder used and leaves with Rex and Cathy. After Boy Wonder is left alone in his home, a man knocks at the door. This is Clark Gable, a then little-known actor who had been said to be intending to call on Boy Wonder about a film project. Boy Wonder will not answer the door, and Gable eventually leaves. Alone in his spacious living room, Boy Wonder plays piano and sings, pondering what he will eat for lunch.

Cast

 * Richard Dreyfuss as Boy Wonder
 * Jessica Harper as Cathy Cake
 * Veronica Cartwright as Harlene
 * Bob Hoskins as Big Mac
 * Stephen Davies as Rex

Production
The film was originally written in 1972. John Byrum felt his career was, in his words, "going nowhere fast. I was asked to write a porn film but I couldn't so instead I wrote a film about trying to write in the porno genre. It's a very personal film."

Byrum was unable to raise finance but the script was read by Tony Bill who then hired Byrum to write Harry and Walter Go to New York. When this script was sold for $500,000, Byrum was considered "hot" and he was able to raise finance for Inserts. The money came from United Artists, Devina Belling, Clive Parsons and star Richard Dreyfuss, who had just made Jaws. (Belling and Parsons helped finance Harry and Walter.) The film was made in London over three weeks on a budget of $350,000 of which $150,000 went to Dreyfuss.

Byrum said the film "would probably have been better accepted ten years ago but whether people love or hate the movie they should know that everyone involved made a commitment and believed in it."

The film involved waist-up nude scenes from Jessica Harper, and full frontal nudity from Veronica Cartwright and Stephen Davies. A tie-in novel was written by Graham Masterton.

Release
The film was originally given an X rating. Richard Dreyfuss personally appealed the decision. "We knew it would be controversial but had no idea it would get an X rating," said Belling. "It is a film about survival, ambition and fear of rejection but nobody seems to understand that."

Critical
Roger Ebert gave Inserts 2.5 stars out of a possible 4, writing that the film's dialogue was stilted and the setting not entirely convincing, but that Dreyfuss and Cartwright gave effective performances and the film "has a certain quirky charm." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded an identical 2.5-star grade and observed, "You can tell the film was directed by a writer. Many times it reads like a play, one of those plays in which dialog always echoes earlier dialog. But that's where Dreyfuss' energy rescues the film. He supplies the rough edge that busts up the concocted script." Vincent Canby of The New York Times thought that the film was "essentially a stunt, a slapstick melodrama in the form of a one-act, one-set, five-character play. It is, however, a very clever, smart-mouthed stunt that, in its self-described 'degenerate' way, recalls more accurately aspects of old Hollywood than any number of other period films, including 'Gable and Lombard.'" A review in Variety declared, "Chalk up Byrum as a director with a good flair for handling actors, with Jessica Harper scoring as the shrewd innocent and Stephen Davies and Bob Hoskins right as the more flamboyant stud actor and boss respectively. But it is all somewhat too surface despite its possible allusions to highly fictionalized real Hollywood '30s types." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "one of those pictures that's absolutely determined to tell it like it was—or still is. But writer-director John Byrum is so intent on this it apparently never occurred to him that he really doesn't have anything to say that isn't already pretty well known—mainly, that Hollywood could be/can be a pretty sordid place, endlessly deceptive even to the most jaded."

Gary Arnold of The Washington Post panned the film as "one of those trashy concepts with nowhere to go but back to the trash heap. The sooner this sordid and pretentious fiasco drops out of sight, the better it will be for several promising careers, particularly the career of Richard Dreyfuss, who has committed a formidable artistic faux pas by hitching his lively, ascendant star to a worthless vehicle." Pauline Kael of The New Yorker stated, "Byrum is only twenty-eight, and this film was made (in England) on a small budget (around a half million). Still, the Boy Wonder's callow paradoxes ('Nothing pure, old sport, is ever simple,' followed by 'Nothing simple is ever pure') and the pearls of condescending wisdom that he drops are pure juvenilia." Tom Milne of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that early on "Inserts looks as though it might be going somewhere as a reflection on Hollywood's fall from dream factory to second-hand porn pusher," but then "the script wanders well out of its depth into some turgid ruminations about artistic integrity versus commercial opportunism, simultaneously taking the opportunity to indulge a little titillation until the whole thing begins to founder with embarrassed self-mockery into routine sexploitation."

The film holds a score of 69% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10.

Box office
The film was a box office disappointment.

Stage production
The three producers felt the material would work as a play and Byrum agreed. He adapted the script into a play and it debuted in New York in 1982 starring Kevin O'Connor.

Reception
Mel Gussow of The New York Times said "the play takes itself far too seriously while festooning the stage with turgid dialogue and tawdry situations." Walter Kerr of the same publication called it a " dreadful little piece".