2000: IVANSXTC (90th!)

What else happened this year? All of that drama surrounding George W. Bush's election.

What is the plot - in one sentence? In a documentary style, we follow the life of a drug-addicted, womanising Hollywood agent, and the immediate aftermath of his death.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? We see flashbacks of his life, and then his unpleasant and sad death, while his new charge Peter Weller moves in on his old girlfriend.

What is the meaning of the title? The bloke’s name is Ivan… so we follow his XTC… I guess? It couldn’t be a more 2000 title, could it? He’s named Ivan because it’s based off a Tolstoy novel. Very loosley, it must be said.

2000 fashion is weird. So is all fashion.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? I don’t think there’s any violence, but there are plenty of age-inappropriate relationships. This guy is addicted to drugs, alcohol, success at work, and women who look too young next to him.

At a party held by the even older Peter Weller, we get Victoria Silvestedt, who is a pretty good depiction of everything wrong with the year. She may have been pretty before getting re-done in plastic.

Peter Weller plays a character that Ivan becomes the agent of. He’s a mostly unpleasant guy to be around, but says some stuff about gay people that would be played as a villain’s role nowadays, I think it’s not meant that way in such a way back then.

Any thoughts? This is a fairly standard drugs and Hollywood excess movie. At the end though, he dies, in a very lengthy scene in a hospital, and Peter Weller imediately moves in on his girlfriend, who is too young for Ivan, who is 30 years younger than Weller. It's grim.

There’s a fair amount of non-seuxalised full frontal nudity, which is always a bit of a surprise too from a US movie, even if it's an independet one. Also interesting is the police breaking into his house to handcuff a guy having a seizure.

Would you recommend this? A critique of the Hollywood agent system made on a low budget with an obvious axe to grind, Peter Waller playing against type as a shitheap? Yeah give it a go.

Final thoughts? The movie starts with that piece from Tristran and Isolde, which is now an overused piece in movies and TV (here it is, it's the beginning of Melancholy, if you're interested.) It's overused now, but was that the case in 2000?

I hadn’t seen the main guy before in anything, it’s the grandson of the guy from Dodsworth (which will be our movie for 1936), and Angelica Huston’s brother. It's pretty telling that a critique of Hollywood stars a third generation Hollywood family guy. He’s got a pretty severe case of Jack Nicholson eyebrows, too.

90 of these done now, what a guy I am. The others can be found right here.

Unpleasant death at the end, weird.