So I've, like, been developing this vice over the last few years of hunting through second hand stores for that elusive video or book. Actually, that's not quite true. It's been going on a long time. Since I was a kid. I was obsessed with any store that sold comics or magazines or books or toys or videos since I was very young and I remember being particularly enamored when I visisted the US in 78. Ohh boy, all the Star Wars stuff.
But I digress, over the last few years, Dixon's has been a favorite. It's a small chain of second hand stores that specialise in LP's but also have CD's, DVD's, tapes and Laserdiscs. Ahhh yes, laserdiscs. But that's another story. There's one Dixons in particular that always has a particular fine range of DVD's and I've found some true bargains there. My last visit netted Cannibal: The Musical for $10 and Public Access for $8. Cannibal is Trey Parker and Matt Stone's first feature and that was a must-get because it's a R1 and it has amongst the extras an "inebriated commentary" that has quite a reputation. Needless to say, it more or less lives up to that reputation.
Public Access, on the other hand, has almost reputation at all. It's the first feature by Bryan Singer who went on to greater fame with The Usual Suspects and has since had one of the strangest trajectories of any major filmmaker moving to an adaptation of Stephen King's Apt Pupil (the neareast match to Public Access but not really) to X-Men to X-Men 2 and now to the new reimagining of Super-Man. Along the way he's taken a detour into television with House and may or may not have had something to do with the new Battlestar Galactica.
Public Access is a film which never really seems to get off the ground, it seems more like a first act rather than all three. I have no issue with films leaving us with questions rather than answers, but this film seems to struggle with it's own purpose and turns from a social drama to some kind of conspiracy thriller half way through the third act for no real reason. They may try to be making the point that the lead character is hiding his true self by turning everything back on the public of this small town. So then when does he start the relationship with the librarian? Why does he befriend the kooky landlord? His motives seem to be very muddled, especially his relationship with the mayor.
I quite liked the presence of lead actor Ron Marquette and was very sad to learn he had committed suicide not long after this film. A glance of his filmog on IMDB revealed nothing particularly interesting. His presence is like a leaner, more intellectual version of The Rock and his cool calm is nicely contrasted with his final moments.
This film did show some unique potential. That potential was more or less realised in Singer's next films, Apt Pupil but especially in The Usual Suspects. Singer kind of changed direction after that, and while I enjoy his big budget efforts, it's interesting to hypothesise what he might be doing now had he stayed with the more arthouse independent films. One doubts they would have been as successful commercially as the X-Men movies (which to be fair, are reasonable brain candy for movies of their type). Who knows? Who cares? He may return to them. Many of Hollywood's biggest names are often threatening/promising that they will return to their independent roots but never seem to do so. Just once I'd like to see one with the balls to actually do it.
P.S. And I never could work out what Singer's involvement with Battlestar Galactica was. I tried to find out and failed. He may have dropped out at some point due to creative issues.
P.P.S. I didn't really want to use the above image, but couldn't really find anything better. It's not even local (it's UK) but that's because it's not even available locally. The image is at least representative of the film.