Inserts

Before Richard Dreyfuss had a real career, he ended up in films like this. Not to say this one is typical, but Dreyfuss had yet to prove himself as a star. It's a testament to his talent that he was able to get work after INSERTS. JAWS is lightyears away from this film. But Dreyfuss is game. As is the rest of the cast. This thoroughly vulgar film tells the tale of washed-up film director Dreyfuss, now filming stag movies out of his apartment. Veronica Cartright is the skilled porno star, and Jessica Harper is the young innocent who decides to go the other direction. Her love scene with Dreyfuss is awkward, and the nudity comes off as forced. Not a fun movie to watch, by any account, and the dialogue is enough to make you yearn for a real x-rated film.

The first half an hour or so of Inserts is as good as any film of this genre I've seen,it's got everything. As soon as Bob Hoskins arrives & through no fault of it's own, merely co-incidentally, the plot completely loses direction, the characters become thoroughly irritating (the best one had left for good by this point), the story reverts to being completely cliched (dirty old man style), and the rest is just a mix of bad language, drugs & alcohol. It may well have been realistic, but the final two thirds just did not make remotely interesting TV which is a shame because I'd still recommend the first half hour for very good fun. But if you want a turn on, get something more adult & less 70's (woman */man in sheepskin duffel coat). 3/10

After reading all of the reviews, I've come to the conclusion that people who enjoy movies, and apparently have a clue, enjoyed this movie for what it was. The people who talk smack about it, well, they all thought they were going to see some x-rated f*** flick, and were bummed that it didn't have any penetration or money shots in it. People ragged because it was X rated and say that was why it failed. I think it had more to do with the way it was distributed. Midnight Cowboy was originally X too, and it did quite well. Then there was Boogie Nights, which wasn't X rated, but dealt with the same subject on a broader scale--the * industry. Did people go to see that, thinking that they were going to see a bunch of mainstream stars in a f*** flick? No. And look at who is in this movie--Dreyfus, Bob Hoskins, Veronica Cartwright and Jessica Harper! Geeze, how could anyone be thinking they were going to go see smut, then be disappointed because it turned out not to be... actually so disappointed, that 25 years later, all they can still remember about the movie is how disappointed they were when they went to see it when they were a kid that there was no money shot or semen-covered faces, that they blunder their way onto this site and give a lame review, because their libido was let down by art yet one more time. See this movie--but don't expect Deep Throat.

John Byrum's 1975 film "Inserts" owes a lot to Hitchcock's 1948 classic "Rope". Although it does not feature Hitchcock's experimental feature length continuous shot, it is nonetheless told in real time. The 115 minute running length is the time needed to tell the story as it is the entire duration of the action on the screen, nicely book-ended by shots of the main character alone in his Hollywood home playing the piano. There are no flashbacks or progression of time sequences, and the camera frame never leaves the immediate area of the great room of the house. Technically two cameras as this is one of those "film within a film" things; one on and one off screen. The main character (played by Richard Dreyfuss) is a gone-to-seed once famous movie director nicknamed "The Boy Wonder". It's never made entirely clear whether his is a self-imposed exile; only that he has great disdain for talking pictures. In the midst of the Great Depression he earns money cranking out smut films shot inside his doomed home; a house standing in the path of the so-to-be Hollywood freeway. Inside his Moorish style bungalow, all the Boy Wonder needs is a girl, a boy, a camera, and a bottle. This is a casual set with the director prowling around in his bathrobe and the swimming pool serving as his septic tank. And not unexpectedly there are a fair amount of self-reflexive movie references in the script; such as those about the "new Gable kid at Pathe" who wants The Boy Wonder to direct his next film. "Inserts" is odd and ambitious, more a play than a film; with dialog and intensity level worthy of "Dinner Rush" (2002). Watch how all scene transitions are signaled by the entrance or exit of a character speaking dramatic entrance and exit lines. The Boy Wonder's leading lady (played by Veronica Cartwright) is the first character to make an appearance. She's an airhead flapper with a heroin habit and a heart of gold. Cartwright is wonderful in this role, with a voice just slightly less irritating than the one Jean Hagen brought to her character in "Singin in the Raid". Voices that for obvious reasons were a better fit in the silent film days. Next to appear is the leading man, Rex the Wonder Dog (Stephen Davies), a gravedigger who will do anything to break into the movie business. Bob Hoskins plays Big Mac, a gangster with a plan to open up a chain of hamburger stands. He is financing The Boy Wonder's films and pays a visit to the set along with his new girl Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper). Cathy has come from Chicago to break into the talkies and is playing Big Mac to get a jump-start on her acting career. "Inserts" shares its main theme with "The Stunt Man", the blurring of a participants's ability to distinguish between the reality of life and the fiction being acted for the camera. Watch for the occasions where the actors get into a scene too far; even the "barely with a pulse" Boy Wonder gets too involved. A liquor bottle broken over their head quickly brings these characters back to earth, insert heavy symbolism here. Bynum also allegorically explores the dynamic of an artist who must create for an audience for whom he has total contempt. The Boy Wonder is equally contemptuous of smut viewers and mainstream commercial movie goers. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

I knew absolutely nothing about this film before viewing it recently. Richard Dreyfuss, is, of course a very famous actor, although this movie was near the beginning of his career. It is sexy, but the furor over X ratings back in the day was much overblown. (No pun intended) The MPAA made a big mistake using X as a rating, because the * industry immediately invented XXX. NC-17 is a better idea, but it should maybe be used for things other than sex, such as graphic violence. It is weird you can't show much frontal nudity, even without graphic sex, but you can show dismemberment and disemboweling to teenagers all day long. Anyway, this was a nice, and quite odd character study, mainly in Dreyfuss' and Jessica Harper's roles. And the young Veronica Cartwright was interesting, too. A decent, and different film.

I saw this movie years ago in an art house theater. It was a big deal for a brief time because it was X-rated and it came out I think right after Richard Dreyfuss was in "Jaws", probably trying to snag some of the audience appeal he had in that movie. In 1984 or 1986 I got to see Dreyfuss do a Q&A with a college theater audience after a showing of his Oscar-winning turn in "The Goodbye Girl" (I'd gotten there before the movie ended and was glancing around to see if Dreyfuss was there. I saw a gray haired guy wearing a Cubs hat leaning against the wall in the dark, watching the movie and didn't recognize that it was Dreyfuss). During the Q&A Dreyfuss selected me to ask a question and I asked him about "Inserts" and why he'd chosen to make an X-rated movie (which got a big laugh from the audience, most of whom probably had never heard of the movie or knew it was X-rated). I cannot remember all that he said but he said it wasn't like he'd woken up one day and decided to make a movie that the critics wouldn't like and no one would see. He had gone into the movie thinking it was going to be dealing with certain issues and the end product was not what he had expected. It was evident that he didn't think too much about "Inserts" and that he would have just preferred to have the movie forgotten. Dreyfuss had wasted a few years of his career to cocaine before he came to lecture at our college but had just finished making "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" which was his big comeback. Even in something ultimately forgettable like "Inserts" Richard Dreyfuss is very good and one of the best actors around.

This is the performance, Wonder Boy in Inserts, along with his other early performances (Duddy Kravitz, Hello Down There, American Graffiti, Dillinger) that won the Oscar for Dreyfuss in Goodbye Girl. A particularly intense characterization that rates amongst the best acting performances of all time. To bad the film did not do better at the box office, and is never shown on TV or available on tape.

This is trash, pure and simple. Richard Dreyfuss, who, at the time, was just about the hottest property in the business, was also having well-documented personal problems of his own. Purportedly, that is why he decided to make this one set, cheap-jack, piece of crap. I waited decades to see this, being a bit too young when it was released and then not being able to find it when I finally WAS old enough. The tantalizing thought of it stuck with me for all those years. It had the reputation of being a train wreck, and I'm a collector of legitimate X-rated movies; the ones with big budgets, like, "The Killing Of Sister George" and "Midnight Cowboy". "Rosemary's Baby", missed the ratings system by about 4 months, or it, too, would have been certified X (Rosemary's a married woman whom Satan impregnates, in a scene which was trimmed shortly after release). When I finally found an ultra rare copy of the VHS tape, I was plenty excited to finally screen this notorious oddity. The result was very disappointing, even by my low expectations. "Inserts" is a lame, almost slapstick comedy fueled by substance abuse, yelling and a script so poorly written that even the sex can't redeem it. It's a stinker, for sure. But if you're into Dreyfuss (he really is a superb American talent) and you can track this down, you may want to spend some time with this weird little movie.

A washed up silent film director - Richard Dreyfuss - has fallen in to making quickie *, but even this has its problems. I think Richard Dreyfuss is a good actor, but also a lucky one. For a shortish guy who often carries a bit of a paunch - and whose hair is in full retreat - he seems to very popular with casting directors. While often cast in Average Joe roles he can never rise above the quality of the material. Here he is given trash to work with and is left all at sea with it. A previous reviewer says he (Dreyfuss) wants to forget all about it - and I do too! This looks like a stage play written by a dope smoking school dropout and filmed by his best mate. The subject (porno) seems chosen to try and bring a bit of box office to a "Winter of my Despair" style production. There are two types of bad movie. Boring bad movies and inept bad movies. This is the closest I have ever seen to the two forms being present in one film. The whole production takes part in one room among people that have either given up on living or never had much interest in it in the first place. (Did Dreyfuss see something of his own demons in the script?) Unfunny lines about the mechanics of sex abound but it doesn't seems to want to be a black comedy - not even a failed one - it seems to be wanting to be taken seriously! The only worthwhile thing is seeing the youngish Bob Hoskins (playing a gangster) taking his first few steps in Tinseltown. Interesting only if you want to see the daddy of all bum-archers and maybe the worst "A film" of the 1970's. The writer/director - who we won't name and shame - later wrote Harry and Walter Go to New York to prove that he really was that bad, it wasn't just bad luck.

I saw this at an art cinema way back in the early 80s. Back then Richard Dreyfuss was a big star and it was a shock to see him in an X-rated film. This film was dull dull dull. It takes place in one room where the characters talk endlessly about...something or other--I was so bored I can't remember. With the exception of Bob Hoskins and Dreyfuss everybody is * at one time or another...but it's not even remotely erotic. The one sex scene is obviously being faked. The cast all try their hardest but they can't pull this across. Somehow this still carries an X rating! Don't be fooled--this is R rated material all the way Boring and stupid--a must miss. Purportedly the British version runs a half hour longer!!!!