HP Movie Review: The Curve

When I was in college, I spent one summer interning for the local public radio station in my hometown in Southern Indiana. I reported directly to the news director. She was not only the news director; she was also the reporting staff, the editor, and the host of Morning Edition. What I’m getting at, here, is that it was a skeletal staff. So, pretty much as soon as I established myself as capable of forming sentences and otherwise trustworthy with a microphone and tape recorder, I was out doing stories and soon was filling in as a part-time radio host.

It was a pretty cool thing for a twenty-nothing semi-slacker.

Anyhow, there were several sort of generally malaised dudes that worked there, the type of guys who have vague ambitions of being “in radio” but no real motivation to actually do that much. The type of guys who like to talk a lot about how undervalued they are as a way to justify spending most of their days on the dial-up Internet (hey – it was the nineties) researching conspiracy theories.

I loved those guys. They would give me cigarettes and we would sit on the back steps of the big old dilapidated mansion that served as the public radio and TV station HQ and they would tell me all about the in-depth serial killer biographies they were reading. At the time, Andrew Cunanan had just terrorized gay clubs across the country in his manic pursuit of Gianni Versace, probably pissed at all those loud patterns.

(No? Nothing? Too soon? Eh, I digress.)

So, I was just thinking of this period in my life as I nursed my hangover this weekend to the sweet sound of bullshit b movies on tv. As I stumbled through the channels seeking something that would not over stimulate my neurons (fucking electrical activity, ouch), I came upon The Curve (curiously mislabeled on IMDB -- as if they can't even bother with it), an early production of MTV’s stint in movie-making.

This is an exceptionally bad film, starring Felicity during the height of her career, before she gave herself a much-needed haircut and got rid of some of those cascades of butt-ugly dirty blonde curls.

Basically, the movie is about a couple of guys who conspire to kill their roommate and make it look like a suicide so they can get an automatic 4.0 for the semester.

And the way I weave all this rambling together is by saying that when this movie came out, it seriously ticked off one of these cigarette-toting radio dudes. Apparently, he had written a script based upon this very premise! And now? Someone else? RIPPING HIM OFF.

Me: Did you actually try to sell your script to someone?
Cigarette-Toting Radio Dude: Well, I talked about it.
Me: So, like, you didn’t send it out?
CTRD: Well, I might have, when it was done?
Me: You didn’t finish it?
CTRD: Well, I didn’t really write it.
Me: Huh.

We smoked together on the steps in the waning sunlight and I imagined him, holed up in his dreary basement apartment in Southern Indiana, smoking pot, watching TV, and dreaming up film premises.

And, having finally seen this film, I just want to say, maybe it’s better that he didn’t get credit for the genesis of this idea. Because it was total crap.