"Regular Guy", a Saratoga Springs community affair

Saratoga Arts and the Saratoga Springs Film Forum hosted the local premiere of “Regular Guy”, a film directed by Leigh Rathner, written by David Kalish, and produced by Jason Ward. The Saturday showing was packed with friends and family of the production team and the actors: a true Saratoga Springs community event.

Films have taken up in the 21st century the role the novel played during the 19th and 20th centuries: chronicler and witness of the societies as they evolved through the generations and the frequent historical catastrophes. The tale of the young writer who sets out to write “the great American novel” has been oft told and quoted. Now, the literary form of choice is the film script and everybody believes he/she has one, mostly autobiographic.

“Regular Guy” reminds us how fortunate it is that only few of them get made into films at great effort and expense. Most remain in unpolished form in drawers and under the transom. Still this film must have been fun to make, and we were reminded often during the evening that the collective effort, conceived and concocted in the local coffee-shop, forged friendships and bonded disparate individuals into a team.

The most unforgivable sin of any tale told is that of outstaying its welcome. The original idea, stated as parenthesis at the beginning and the end of the film, is quirky, comparing a cancer growing in the male to the pregnancy in the female, with opposite outcomes. Its exploration, however, draws out into eternity. The team labored hard, they say, to shorten the original takes, but it still feels oversized by about ten minutes.

I guess that the main objection that I have against this film is the premise, very common in TV sitcoms, that men never grow out of adolescence, and that women patiently steer them into doing the right thing, against their will. Writing a script and making a film about a man’s cancer of the rectum, lets a guy use all the unforgotten sophomoric jokes about his lower end and its functions. Are “regular guys” really that emotionally and inspirationally handicapped? I refuse to believe it.

Remarkably, Rick Fenton’s performance as the proctologist, resigned to his chosen fate of having to look at humans from the wrong end, is stellar. His faint disgust comes through as disengaged professional tedium, a cold glass of unsweetened lemonade.

The lack of chemistry between the protagonists, Amy Rosen and Sky Vogel, does not help. Their relationship (couple, item, marriage) is difficult to ascertain. They are shown sleeping in the same bed, but they never seem to be emotionally attuned to each other. When they (he, really) decide to extract some sperm with a view to a possible after chemotherapy preservation of the species, the gulf becomes a chasm. At no point does the wife/partner/companion offer her physical help in obtaining the desired result, except by copulation and that as an after-thought. The script probably means to exalt family values and conjugal love, but the emotional inhibition of the scene brings the film to a shuddering end.