Private Parts
With Howard Stern, Robin Quivers, Mary McCormack, Fred Norris, Jackie Martling, Gary Dell’Abate, Richard Portnow, and Kelly Bishop.
Both men once loved to play the outsider and the outlaw, mocking their bosses in public, standing in for millions of Americans who wished they had the chutzpah or the clout to do the same. Both specialized in a somewhat disingenuous brand of self-deprecating humor, laughing at their own neuroses while at the same time making it clear they thought they were the shit. Both challenged the conventions of the moribund talk-show format–Letterman with his goofiness and Stern with his rudeness. And though neither has been as innovative as is often claimed, both stretched the boundaries of their respective mediums. Letterman took Ernie Kovacs-style stunts to the next level and made fun of talk-show conventions even as he bowed to them. And for two decades, Stern assaulted the definition of good taste on morning drive-time radio, playing the lab rat to test what language the Federal Communications Commission would allow. Having incurred fines of almost $2 million for some of the outlets that carry his radio show, he’s the most penalized broadcaster in American history.
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But what I loved most about both Letterman and Stern was their ability to slice through the soap bubble of celebrity. These days, the feel-good tone of most entertainment “news” coverage is set by the syndicated TV program Entertainment Tonight, Entertainment Weekly magazine, the alleged newspaper USA Today, and cable’s E! channel (which also happens to be home to Stern’s nightly half-hour TV show). There is no room for even a hint of criticism or skepticism because management is afraid of offending the celebrities and losing interviews or cover stories to the competition. As a result, the entertainment press has gone past polite to downright obsequious, and the attitude has spread to more “serious” publications: even the New Yorker ran a glowing profile of Stern, gently dubbing him “The Accidental Anarchist.”
Which, of course, is utter nonsense. Of course he’s offensive to women and blacks. And to men and whites, Christians and Jews and atheists, liberals and conservatives, cats and dogs. Even if you only knew Stern by reputation (before his recent sugarcoating) you knew he was above all else (and to use his words) an equal opportunity offender. But what passes for offensive in Private Parts couldn’t get the man arrested. At one point in the movie, a frustrated program director calls Stern “the motherfucking Antichrist,” but Private Parts conveniently soft-pedals the behavior that prompted that charge (namely Stern’s refusal to adhere to any of WNBC’s broadcasting guidelines). The racial element of his humor is vastly underplayed (the movie includes one brief routine about a militant African-American traffic reporter), and though the strippers and lesbians make dutiful appearances, the prurient material here ranks a PG-13 to the R of the real thing.
Stern begins to play himself when he’s at college at Boston University. He attempts to laugh off the awkwardness of this in an aside about the movies requiring a suspension of disbelief, but at any age he’s a horrible actor who overplays some scenes and tries to coast through others by hiding behind wigs, makeup, and period clothing. Stern’s sidekicks Martling, Norris, and Quivers also play themselves, but they all do better than the boss. The real Alison Stern often calls her husband’s radio show, but for reasons known only to her, chose not to join this particular circus.
Thomas and Stern could have taken some cues from Oliver Stone and Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio, which features Bogosian as an obnoxious and somewhat Stern-like radio host dedicated to saying whatever comes to mind and challenging his listeners to shoot back (literally). It captures the freewheeling show as it explodes onto the airwaves, but without ever leaving the studio it also shows the impact of what’s being said, on others as well as on the man doing most of the talking. Stern opted for a movie that is much more commercial and–it must be said–very un-Stern-like. Why?
