Spun [2002] is a surprisingly innovative and fresh film despite the fact that it feels largely derivative. It’s a pastiche of Drugstore Cowboy [1989], The Doom Generation [1995], Requiem for a Dream [2000], deviant pop art, and probably a host of other influences. I waited seven years to see Spun primarily because my initial instinct about it being derivative was correct—except that it blends its influences extremely well and even transcends them; it is not the boring, trite third-generation knock-off I suspected it to be. Spun is an incredible experience that is almost the drug-addled equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. It’s a sensory assault that made me feel as if I had spent two hours on meth. There were a few scenes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [1998] in which Terry Gilliam not only portrayed an acid trip but made you feel that you were on an acid trip. Spun is two hours of this—wall to wall. It’s a drug-fueled theme ride. It’s a rollercoaster that shoots out of the starting gate and doesn’t let up until it comes back to its starting point, but instead of speed of movement, it is speed of mind.
Spun briefly charts the bohemian drug life of a loosely knit group of characters; these people are just real enough that you can believe they could exist: there is no larger-than-life posturing; there is no glamorization of any kind. But that’s not to say that it goes to the polar opposite and visualizes an unrelenting grimness such as with Requiem for a Dream. Instead, Spun is somewhere in the middle; these characters are sad, pathetic drug addicts that spend their entire days snorting meth or looking for it, and their existences have turned them into buffoons beyond the capacity to control their thoughts, behaviors, and the trajectory of their own daily lives. But there is a dark humor in their actions, which is one reason why this film feels unique: it has essentially created a black comedy about drug addiction. It is in this that Spun feels like the distant cousin of Drugstore Cowboy—another film about the sweet and sour everyday travails of a band of bohemian drug addicts.
In fact, the film’s inspirations (or rip-offs, depending on how one views it) appear to be numerous. There are multiple close-ups of the rapidly shrinking pupil from Requiem for a Dream to signify addicts getting their fix. At one point, Mickey Rourke in a cowboy hat symbolically stands in front of a large American flag while waxing poetic about women’s’ pussies, which seems reminiscent of the culturally symbolic scene in The Doom Generation when the sexual-boundary-busting triad of main characters are beaten to a bloody pulp by neo-Nazis in front of a large American flag. Spun even has seemingly random yet ironic cameos by lower-rung celebrities such as Ron Jeremy, Debbie Harry, and Billy Corgan; Doom has Perry Ferrell, Heidi Fleiss, and Lauren Tewes (Love Boat’s Julie McCoy). In a thematic sense, Spun adopts Doom’s obsession with the garish tackiness of modern strip-mall existence. The film even borrows from Magnolia’s [1999] brilliant publicity stunt of broadcasting Frank T.J. Mackey’s Search & Destroy infomercial late at night on Los Angeles television stations. Spun’s version of this bizarre stunt is a trailer in the form of a faux cheesy cooking show starring Mickey Rourke’s character The Cook in which The Cook shows the audience how to prepare meth right in the comfort of their own kitchen. And perhaps, inadvertently, Spun’s theatrical one sheet was inspired by the theatrical one sheet for American Beauty [1999]: both posters showcase a naked torso with a hand held over the stomach. This might have been a subtle hint that this film is the anti-American Beauty in which absolutely no meaning is to be found in the characters’ existences. This possible inspiration is all the more interesting when considering that Mena Suvari’s character in American Beauty is supposed to be the torso on the poster for American Beauty except that it wasn’t Mena Suvari’s torso—it was actually then-model Chloe Hunter’s torso, who just happens to play the “girlfriend” of Jason Schwartzman’s character in Spun. And beyond inspiration, Spun inadvertently foreshadows Mickey Rourke’s foray into wrestling: The Cook constantly has wrestling on television as he cooks up his meth, which is amusing given that Rourke would go onto The Wrestler [2008], directed by none other than Requiem for a Dream’s Darren Aronofsky.
By far the most intriguing moment in Spun is the reunion of Eric Roberts and Rourke. In the ‘80s, both were fast becoming the masters of their acting craft in raw, intense films, and for particular cinephiles, their pairing in The Pope of Greenwich Village [1984] was on par with the first-time pairing of DeNiro and Pacino in Heat [1995]: two extremely gifted, celebrated actors sparring in a grand display of acting ability. However, Robert and Rourke’s reunion in Spun is perplexingly anticlimactic. Rourke and Roberts have one scene together, which one might predict would be scorching in its intensity. In that one scene, Roberts as a kitschy queen with a harem of young men shows that he is still an acting master despite all the years of abuse and disintegration that paralleled Rourke’s own personal and professional life. Rourke, on the other hand, seems limp by comparison; he seems generally uninterested, or lost, or both. Whether he is trying to out-act Roberts by underplaying the scene, the result is that Roberts knocks Rourke out in the acting ring. Roberts’ presence alone reminds one of their pairing in Greenwich Village and thus automatically becomes a marker to clearly illustrate Rourke’s downward trajectory in terms of his acting integrity; Roberts’ superb acting in the scene just clarifies this point even further. What should have been a scintillating, satisfyingly explosive scene—the reunion of Roberts and Rourke—becomes simultaneously thrilling (for Roberts) and sad (for Rourke). Rourke was quoted as saying that he thought Spun was crap and that his younger fellow actors in the film were essentially playing dress-up. This statement doesn’t make sense when considering the edgy, grittier performances by Suvari and even Brittany Murphy. And perhaps Rourke’s idea of acting didn’t meld with Jason Schwartzman’s low-key acting style—Schwartzman certainly doesn’t lose himself in his roles, and he is not a great actor—but Schwartzman is always interesting and entertaining to watch, and, besides, he was pitch perfect for this specific role, which required relative innocence. No…perhaps, subconsciously, Rourke was speaking about himself in relation to the acting integrity shown by Suvari, Murphy, and ultimately Roberts. Perhaps Rourke knows deep down that he didn’t put much effort into the film and essentially acted like himself, no matter how entertaining that may be. His laziness may have not bothered his Acting-Studio conscience when acting with Suvari and Murphy, but this may have stung in that brief moment with Roberts.
Despite the film’s various faults including its obvious derivative nature, Spun is stunning in that it takes all of these ingredients, puts them in a blender, and creates a hyperkinetic and psychotic shake. The film actually goes beyond the more obvious film references and mixes in pop art-inspired animation especially for thoughts or actions that would have been too graphic or difficult to film. The animated pop art sequences add yet another layer of color, texture, and visual jolt to an already packed cinematic experience created by the film’s director Jonas Akerlund and cinematographer Eric Broms. And the visual feast even extends beyond the film into the apparent publicity stills by a photographer named Max Moden; the composition, color, and lighting of Moden’s photographs are so compelling that they could stand on their own in an exhibition.
The one clear, major fault of the film is the portrayal of the vice cops played by Alexis Arquette and perennial favorite Peter Stormare. It is in these characters that the film destroys its delicate balance between reality and comedy, between natural and artificial. The drug addicts are absurd clowns because their buffoonish behavior is fueled by their drug addiction, but there is little-to-no reason why the vice cops are played in such an extreme, over-the-top manner. The cartoonish, one-dimensional behavior of the vice cops is completely artificial. In fact, they are so over the top that they almost make the drug addicts seem tame in comparison. The destruction of the film’s delicate balance at times teeters from a slice of sad drug addiction layered with an icing of absurdity towards the dimensions of a graphic adult comic book. When the vice cops are on the scene, it feels like we’ve suddenly stepped into an entirely different film, a Gregg Araki film come to think of it.
Justin Baker