INSERTS no stars

INSERTS is a movie about making movies; well, making stag movies to be exact. It looks and feels like a play since it sticks to the one set, a house in Hollywood where the Boy Wonder, a once potentially great director now down on his luck, has holed up and is making porn pictures. There are only five characters; the Boy Wonder (Richard Dreyfuss), his producer (Bob Hoskins), his producer's floozie (Jessica Harper, excellent), his drug-addicted 'star' (Veronica Cartwright, also very good) and her 'stud' (Stephen Davies). The one character missing from the picture is a youngster called Clark Gable whom they all keep talking about but who never shows up. That was something of a wise move for the young Mr Gable since appearing in crap like this would, I'm sure, have done very little for his career. I'm now ashamed to say that when I first saw this film many years ago I thought it highly original, if not exactly profound, and even went so far as to choose Mr Dreyfuss for my best actor of the year and Cartwright for my best supporting actress. It just goes to show you that even I can be wrong on occasion or maybe we should just blame it on my youth.