Scoop's notes:
This was one of the top nude scenes of 2003.
I'm not sure exactly how to describe this
movie, but here's my best shot. Imagine if they remade "Requiem for a
Dream" as a comedy.
Spun uses all kinds of visual pyrotechnics
and fast cuts to recreate the feeling of taking a drug, specifically
crystal meth. In addition to the effects that it generates with rapid-fire
editing and surrealistic sets, the film adds additional craziness through
depraved animated sequences, as well as wildly exaggerated characters and
situations. In short, you get a darkly humorous view of what it's like to
take meth and live in the meth word, without having to go through the
trouble of actually taking the drug or hanging around with the losers who
build their lives on it. Spun was originally intended to be a documentary
called The Cook, primarily about the people who make crystal meth (called
"cooks"). In the process of researching the project, writer Will de los
Santos rode for three days with a cook, then scrapped his documentary to
write this screenplay, which is a fictional retelling of those three crazy
days.
Is it an anti-drug film? You could view it
that way, but no, not really. It shows the users and even the dealers
living in squalor and thinking hazily. It shows some of them getting
arrested or shot by the police or others "in the scene". It shows people
blowing things and themselves up while creating the drug. But that's only
because those things happen. It keeps the real tragedy of drug use at
arm's length in the process of re-creating the experiences, the
aggression, the mood-shifts, and the effects of sleep deprivation. The
film doesn't try to create sympathy or empathy for any characters. The law
enforcement people in the film are just as fumbling and unattractive as
the druggies. The victims seem to deserve to be victims. That aloofness
keeps the movie from being deeply involving, but it does have a truly
demented and often brilliant comic sensibility.
John Leguizamo plays the dealer, with his
usual manic energy and uninhibited lower-class "I'm evil, but kinda nice"
persona. Mickey Rourke plays the tough guy who cooks the product. Jason
Schwartzman and Patrick Fugit play the everyday users who don't really
seem to belong in this world. As Shakespeare once said, they are merely
douchebags adrift among scumbags.
Maybe the Bard's wording was slightly
different.
The supporting players include:
-
Eric Roberts, as a gay druglord.
-
Ron Jeremy, as a bartender in a strip
club.
-
Brittany Murphy, as Rourke's bimbonic but
good-hearted girlfriend.
-
A green dog.
-
Peter Stormare and Alexis Arquette as
some insane, glory-hungry cops. (Credited as "mullet cop" and "moustache
cop".)
-
A woman who is naked through the entire
film. This role is played by Chloe Hunter. You don't realize it, but
you've already seen her tummy. Everyone has. She body-doubled for Mena
Suvari in the famous poster for American Beauty.
-
The aforementioned Mena Suvari is also in
the film. She talks and fidgets non-stop as a chick whose brain has been
fried by meth.
The unrated version of the DVD is crazy. John Leguizamo
spends the last third of the film stark naked except for a sock on his
dick. Chloe Hunter is stark naked for virtually the entire movie.
(Summoned in the middle of sex, Schwartzman leaves Chloe tied up on the
bed when his drugmaster calls. Of course, being a complete druggie, he
forgets about her and leaves her there for three days.)
