Permanent Midnight (1998)

Based on a true story, "Permanent Midnight" stars Ben Stiller as a Jerry Stahl, a successful television writer whose life is wrecked by a severe drug addiction. Despite a good performance by Stiller, "Permanent Midnight" is a thin film. The life of a writer and the world of an addict are superficially skimmed over, and the factors which lead to Stahl's compulsions are all but ignored. History is filled with writers (Bukowski, Burroughs, Kerouac etc) suffering from addictions, but director David Veloz never cares to ask "why?". Too in love with style and surfaces, "Permanent Midnight" only dives into the head of its protagonist in its last act, when a now clean Stahl attempts to forge relationships with both a fellow detox survivor (Maria Bello) and his young daughter. Owen Wilson co-stars.7/10 – See instead "In A Lonely Place", "Half Nelson", "Henry Fool", "Auto Focus", "Mishima" and "Contempt".

With a cast that includes Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Janeane Garofalo, many people probably came into expecting a comedy. The trailer also sort of implied this. While Permanent Midnight has its funny moments, it's basically a drama.While this is based on the true story of TV writer Jerry Stahl, it fictionalized a bit. The shows Jerry works on in the movie are stand-ins for the ones he worked on in real life, for instance. Probably to avoid licensing issues.This was David Veloz's first (and to date, only) directorial job and it shows. It's not the direction is bad, but it's certainly nothing special and there are a few places where it's a little hard to follow.This doesn't drag the movie too far down though as it rests largely on the actors, specifically Ben Stiller, who shows any naysayers here that he can do drama. He does a great job portraying someone who's a likable guy with a pretty decent life who just keeps using more and more drugs until he starts freaking out in public, shooting up into his jugular and generally wrecking everything and losing whatever self-respect he had.Despite the subject matter, Permanent Midnight avoids becoming too depressing through bits of humor, a short (88 min) running time and an optimistic perspective.I doubt this is the best movie for scaring your kids off drugs, but recommended for people who like stories about overcoming or are fans of Jerry Stahl or any of the actors.

"Permanent Midnight" is a just another junkie flick (like we need another junkie flick) and not a very good one at that. Character development is superficial at best and the storyline goes something like "connect, shoot up, act stupid, sober up, doing something normal" over and over again. Meanwhile beautiful babes are all trying to jump in the sack with the poorly developed Stiller character for which we're given no reason to care but plenty of reason to suspect writer/director Veloz thinks we're really gullible. Passable, forgettable stuff and another good cast wasted.

SPOILERS - Even thought this is a pseudo-autobiography, in the movie it is presented as the story of Jerry (Ben Stiller) in recovery, meeting a girl (Maria Bello) in recovery, and the two of them trying to figure out if they can make a go of it, initially meeting at a cheap motel for casual sex, and by the end of the movie realizing they love each other. Their conversations result in a number of Jerry's memories which are shown in flashback form.Whether this is a good movie depends on what one expects to get out of it. "Permanent Midnight" tries to be entertaining in spots. To wit, Jerry picks up a German girl, they have meaningless sex, and at climax she yells, "My God, my God, I'm being f**ked by a Jew!" Very marginal humor. This is not a very entertaining film, but it is gripping simply for the realization that some people actually try to navigate their lives that way. During this period, the real Jerry Stahl was writing for popular 1980s series like "Moonlighting", "Alph", and "Northern Exposure." Anyway, during his addiction phase Stahl represents himself as a person with little self-control, lying, needing drugs to get through any stressful situation. Then, when he first tries to rehabilitate, bad friends drag him down. I am glad I saw this film, however I cannot recommend it strongly. However, I now realize that thirty-something Maria Bello might be my new favorite female actress, after seeing her here, in "Coyote Ugly" and in "Duets." She is uniquely attractive and a very natural actress, I think I could enjoy watching her in anything!