GOOD DICK
US, 2008, 84 minutes, Colour.
Marianna Palka, Jason Ritter, Charles Durning, Bryce Dallas Howard, Tom Arnold, Mark Webber.
Directed by Marianna Palka.
A brief, small-budget character study, something like a psychodrama.
Marianna Palka grew up in Glasgow but moved to the United States at the age of seventeen. In Los Angeles she partnered Jason Ritter in creating the company Morning Knight Inc. They work together here, she as writer, director and star, he has a producer and co-star.
Ritter plays the unnamed young man who works in a video/DVD store, with a group of friends who sit round and talk about relationships and about movies (as if they were akin to Kevin Smith's Clerks). One of the customers is an unnamed young woman whom we first see nervously driving to the store and renting erotic films. The young man is attracted, intrigued and follows her, trying to get up the nerve to speak to her. He has a telephone-dominating mother and has had to move out of his apartment and is living in his car and refers to himself, as he gives the gift of a cross, as a lifelong Catholic though this seems to have nothing to do, really, with what goes on. She seems quite neurotic.
Eventually, he infiltrates himself into her almost-confidence and into her apartment though she is very strong in exercising control over him. He is a genial and patient type. What follows is the sexual part of the psychodrama, with not a great deal of visual explicitness. This is more in the topics of discussion and the dialogue. He is fairly ordinary in his outlook and behaviour. She has been compensating with the DVDs and has to come to terms with moving away from the merely physical to the emotional and the relational.
Towards the end, she visits her father (Tom Arnold) at work and the audience learns quite a deal about her and what has stunted her emotional maturity.
1.A psychodrama? Two-hander drama? The effect, insight?
2.The work of Marianna Palka, writing, directing, performing?
3.The Los Angeles settings, the dingier touch, apartments, the video shop, the streets, bars? Offices and central Los Angeles? Realism? The musical score?
4.The title, overtones, sexuality, physical, emotional, relational, perverted?
5.The woman: seeing her driving, haggard, smoking, the video shop, the DVDs, the man giving advice, at home, isolated, mysterious, watching the DVDs, her reaction, her preoccupations?
6.The man: his age, in the store, giving advice, his pride in his knowledge about movies, his interest in the woman, his house being destroyed, living in his car, being moved along, reading his books? His mother, Polish, her demanding phone calls? His comment that he was Catholic? His following the woman, getting into the building, looking through the window? His meeting her, the elevator, her fear?
7.His story about his aunt, the woman believing it, sympathy, talking, letting him in? The meals, her being in control, her rules, he obeying them?
8.Watching the DVDs, discussions, the discussions about erotica, relationships? Her control, the bet and the measurement, in the bed, warmth? His reassurances?
9.Their discussions, changes, more intimate, her ousting him? Her fears?
10.The woman at work, the customers in the restaurant?
11.The store, the men, their chat, the meals, their discussions about relationships, the couple getting the DVD and their kissing?
12.The woman and changing her dress, going to see her father, asserting her independence, a new apartment, not giving him information, the car, his character, discussions, the revelation about the past and his molesting her? As an adequate explanation of her character and her behaviour?
13.Her move to self-assertion, the possibilities of change, relationships – especially with the man?
