Submitted by admin on Thu, 2007-03-22 08:00. ::
hat Clubland Hollywood is a hipster game preserve wherein the sexy and stylish ceaselessly chase after louder music, cheaper drinks, and madder sex isn't exactly an unexpressed cultural insight. My own inquires into the subject have been massive, inordinate, and packaged to resemble rock criticism, but writer-director Paul Sapiano, in his feisty sex comedy The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down, has a more public-spirited object in mind. A clever update of (and homage to) the raunchy low-budget satires indie film companies like A.I.P. and New World rolled out back in the drive-in 1970s, this movie splatters the larfs and sex into a Baedeker for the young and horny that opens in cinemas nationwide on Friday.
Through the weird-science framing device of a documentary by the Heizakeit Institute, the viewer is initiated into the mysteries of bar-hopping, line-jumping, drug-scoring, and spliff-huffing in the narrow and congested world of Cahuenga corridor nitespots like Star Shoes and the Beauty Bar. The Big Stuff, like “Getting In” and “The Last Call,” are dealt with at length, serving as pretext for such narrative as there is, as we follow a large core-sample of cool kids through abbreviated days and riotous nights. What to do after the early closing time is covered under “Afterparty” and “Sex,” each fraught with its own joy and havoc.
Along the way, gender rules are laid down and many ancillary phenomena (the preferred method of bribing a bartender for free booze, how to fold a cocaine bindle, those mysterious rolls of fat on the backs of bouncer's necks) receive witty offhand explanation. Also, such mobile hazards as the Coke Bore, the Straight-Edger, and the Fauxmosexual (guys who pretend to be gay to get girls) are clearly marked. If you don't know how to titty-bump or are vaguely troubled to hear that God's favorite drug is an MDMA/Viagra cocktail (aptly streetnamed “sextasy”), you'll leave the theater shaken to your moral foundations. This is what American youth is so uproariously Up To as Decade Dubya rounds the clubhouse turn.
The setting is Hollywood dance clubs, but it might as well be anywhere else drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain. Asked as a party professional to pass on this film's authenticity, I can say Sapiano knows the moving parts of his milieu like a barfly Karl Marx, taking you through the cash-greased machine and laughing sourly as your stash-baggie's jacked. The afterparties are better in the trans-Hollywood underground, long-term cocaine use may have deleterious effects on the human personality, and some of the men in this movie could stand a bit of the old savior-faire when exiting a lady's bed, but these are minor cavils. Further on the downhill grade, the film plays into some fashionable race and gender stereotypes as well as sporting a Maggie & Jiggs view of heterosexual pairing. The section about “Pussy Power” rests on the curious idea that women somehow Want It Less, a notion amply rebuked by feminist theory, common-sense observation, and the unlaundered sheets on many a bachelor's bed.
The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down opens Fri. at Mann's Chinese 6 in Hollywood (see Showtimes in Film for info). This weekend, you can exchange your movie ticket stub at nearby hotspots Star Shoes and Beauty Bar for a drink voucher. Party on!
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