starring ben stiller , elizabeth hurley , maria bello , janeane garofalo screenplay by david veloz , based on the novel by jerry stahl directed by david veloz 
permanent midnight is a pretty bad movie , though it took me a few days to conclude this . 
the film is more masturbatory than bleak , with its main character intent on confounding us with his stupidity . 
 ( he has a $6000 a week drug habit . ) 
ultimately , as adapted by veloz , jerry stahl comes off as one of those playground braggarts who chainsmokes at the age of twelve ; you are less mystified by his self-destructive nature than bored into a stupor yourself . 
ben stiller plays stahl , a young author who arrives in l . a . with ambition and a nasty drug habit . 
he eventually gets a gig for $5000/week writing for a sitcom called mr . chompers ( a thinly veiled stand-in for " alf " : chompers looks just like alf except he's blue ) , marries a producer ( hurley ) so she can get a green card , and hooks up with a spanish mother ( liz torres ) , who shoots heroin with him in the afternoons . 
insert proverbial downward spiral here . 
permanent midnight is structured mostly as a flashback , with recovering addict bello meeting stiller ( at a fastfood restaurant , where stiller works the drive-thru as part of rehab ) , taking him back to a hotel , and between bouts of serious screwing , listening to his life story . 
i've spent the last week trying to figure out why stiller never seemed to find the frighteningly gorgeous hurley attractive-worse , i've been trying to figure out why hurley did find stiller attractive . 
as stahl , stiller displays none of the charm or wit one would expect ( post-there's something about mary ) of either the actor or a comedy writer . 
what separates stahl from the hundreds of other hollywood punk-junkies , it seems , is that stahl wrote a book about his idiocy . 
watch stahl shoot heroin next to a baby ! 
watch stahl spoil numerous pitch meetings with smack-fueled babble ! 
stiller gives a technically flawless performance : the film could double as a documentary on how to be a junkie . 
but permanent midnight is mostly soulless . 
when the movie poses the question will stahl be saved ? 
and then answers it in the form of bello's character ( basically a shrink in black panties ) , could a person care less ? 
in the film version of his autobiography of the same name , stahl doesn't need saving , he needs someone who will sit there and listen to him go on about himself . 
if you learn anything about the other characters in this movie , it's that they are the most incredibly tolerant hollywood-types known to man . 
 ( stahl also seems to be the only person at schmooze parties doing drugs . 
is this hollywood . . . california ? ) 
i learned very little about the entertainment business from permanent midnight and a whole lot about an egotistical lunkhead . 
of course you know that stahl triumphed because he lived to talk about his problems . 
so , basically , his drug habit got him a book deal , a movie based on his life , and now he's apparently collaborating with stiller on future projects . 
so much for the moral of that story . 
temporary midnight is more like it . 
-bill chambers ; september , 1998 
