WHY 200 CIGARETTES FALLS SHORT OF CULT STATUS

http://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/why-200-cigarettes-falls-short-of-cult-status/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=SubCult200Cigs&utm_campaign=News&adid=social_Twitter_News_SubCult200Cigs

SUB-CULT IS NATHAN RABIN’S ONGOING EXPLORATION OF MOVIES THAT HAVE QUIETLY ATTRACTED DEVOTED FOLLOWINGS AND ARE ON THE VERGE OF BECOMING FULL-ON CULT SENSATIONS.

When actors and crew people make the leap to directing, they tend to make movies that reflect their backgrounds. Actors gravitate toward the kind of intense, emotional showcases that give them and their collaborators the juicy speeches, scenes, and dramatic moments they are cruelly spared when directed by those whose lives do not revolve around the sacred art of pretending to be other people for money. When writers get the big promotion to director, their emphasis is, quite naturally, on the written word, on dialogue and monologues and preserving the integrity of their own words or someone else’s. Choreographers, cinematographers, and production designers tend to make movies that are elegantly put together and lovely to look at, but a little empty and dramatically inert. As for producers, well, I’ve been writing about pop culture for close to two decades and once spent a weekend at the home of super-producer Robert Evans, and I still cannot, for the life of me, tell you exactly what it is that a producer does, except that it seems to involve a lot of ego, money, manipulation, seduction, dishonesty and cocaine. I suppose when producers become directors, the product represents those obsessions as well.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that when casting directors become director directors, their films are often defined by some really amazing ensembles. A case in point would be Risa Bramon Garcia, the director of the 1999 non-cult classic 200 Cigarettes, which is wholly acceptable hangover viewing on New Year’s Day but had the potential to be infinitely more. Garcia’s career as a casting director almost couldn’t have begun on a more auspicious note: according to IMDB, her first credit was on 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan, a film that briefly made Madonna a movie star as well as a pop icon. From there, Garcia racked up impressive credits for casting movies like Something Wild (which broke Ray Liotta), Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Twister, and Flirting With Disaster. That is one hell of a record for spotting talent, and on a mere casting level alone, 200 Cigarettes is a goddamned triumph: the film brings together (drumroll please) Dave Chappelle, Courtney Love, Elvis Costello, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Martha Plimpton, Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, Christina Ricci, Jay Mohr, Kate Hudson, Gaby Hoffman, David Johansen and Caleb Carr in one stunningly inconsequential wisp of a movie.

Unfortunately, 200 Cigarettes barely even feels like a movie; it’s more like a 1980s dress-up party special on MTV (whose film division had a hand in this, as it did Dazed & Confused) with a narrative clumsily shoehorned in. Despite its period setting, in terms of cast, tone and sensibility, the film could not be more a product of its time. Honestly, if Daria and My So Called Life somehow achieved sentience and co-hosted 120 Minutes, the results wouldn’t feel more 1990s than 200 Cigarettes, or more MTV.