Before I Go (Eric Schaeffer, 2021)

So this item randomly came up on a torrent site I frequent, and it occurred to me that I had never actually seen an Eric Schaeffer film. While this didn't exactly strike me as a major lack in my viewing history, it did make me feel as though I'd missed out on a strain of Schadenfreude specific to my generation of cinephiles. Nearly twenty years ago, when I started talkin' 'bout movies on the Internet, Schaeffer was a popular critical punching bag, purveyor of a kind of sub-Sundance American indie cinema that was choking out the arthouses in the early aughts. 

Part of the ire directed at Schaeffer resulted from the fact that for awhile his films were as omnipresent as they were maudlin. Still best known for his studio-backed misfire If Lucy Fell, co-starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Schaeffer seemed able to keep making films regardless of the utter indifference with which they were invariably met. And so my working-critic friends -- Mike D'Angelo, Bilge Ebiri, Scott Renshaw, Noel Murray, Scott Tobias, Steve Erickson, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting -- were forced by professional obligation to endure reportedly putrid offerings like Wirey Spindell and Never Again.

Back then, there was in fact a "Schaeffer discourse," none of it kind but all of it amusing. Much of the hatred directed at the auteur, it seems, had to do with the perceived arrogance of his work, particularly when combined with its utter pedestrianism. Schaeffer was an actor-writer-director, always committed to casting himself as leading man opposite generically-hot young actresses. This egotism never plays well with critics, but by all accounts Schaeffer the Actor was a black hole onscreen, a place where charm and charisma were snuffed out on a molecular level. (Back in the Usenet days, Schaeffer did have one staunch critical champion, a mysterious fellow by the name of Orson Locke. At the time, it was widely speculated that Locke was a pseudonym for Schaeffer himself.)

I feel weird reporting all this second-hand, but I'm not entirely in the dark about Schaeffer. I could not avoid his short-lived sitcom "Too Something," and I spent a few hours rubbernecking at his dating show "I Can't Believe I'm Still Single." In these productions, Schaeffer struck me as oleaginous and faux-sensitive, the sort of guy who thought he knew exactly what women want to hear but is constantly sizing them up and finding them wanting. Mentally transposing this persona to the indie-film universe isn't very difficult. I just took Schaeffer to be the Adam Duritz of cinema, exuding a phony sincerity that's even more embarrassing than the more commonplace middlebrow cluelessness.

So I guess I was surprised, and even a little bit impressed, that after all these years, Schaeffer was still at it. Was he independently wealthy, like Henry Jaglom and Neil Breen? Did he have a sugar-mama subsidizing his efforts? How was this still happening after nearly thirty years? 

But it would be inaccurate to say that I watched Before I Go simply to retroactively include myself in a semi-private joke. I was lured by the presence of Annabella Sciorra in a starring role. Sciorra, as you are no doubt aware, was a prominent actress in the 90s, working with the likes of Spike Lee, Noah Baumbach, and Abel Ferrara. She seemed poised for stardom following her breakout role in Curtis Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle opposite Rebecca de Mornay. But it never really happened. 

Years later, we learned why. Sciorra was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, and after rejecting his further advances, the mega-producer blackballed her in Hollywood, effectively ending her career. And although she has been in various supporting roles over the years, Before I Go is really her first starring vehicle since What Dreams May Come in 1998. What was she like now? Could this be a performance that reflected decades of frustration and under-utilization? Would Before I Go be Sciorra's Michelle Pfeiffer / Mary Kay Place moment?

Sciorra is fantastic. Robert Klein, who plays Sciorra's father, is also wonderful, in a role that could have been a disaster. The movie is only so-so, but it actually has some darkly poignant moments that approach the middle-high water mark of Nicole Holofcener. In other words, this Eric Schaeffer film is . . . actually worth your while? As Adam Curtis likes to say, we live in strange times.