Pretty pathetic creature. He hides out at the local bar and tries to forget his troubles by downing shot after shot of whiskey. When he finally seeks help for his woes, it is not A.A. he calls but another broken soul who has sipped himself into a perpetual stupor. So what do you think? Is Roger Rabbit an alcoholic?
Bud Yorkin thinks so. And, as director of this summer's flop Arthur 2 on the Rocks, he should know. Yorkin is steamed at critics who torpedoed his movie for its portrait of an insouciant inebriate. "Arthur is a fantasy , character," he spumes, "just like Roger Rabbit. But that movie is all about drinking, and it's being called one of the great movies of all time."
Yorkin may be ignoring a few variables: that sequels often fall on their prats, that Stars Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli have been on a 0-for-ever streak since the original Arthur in 1981, that critics didn't make Who Framed Roger Rabbit a hit, and they didn't break Arthur 2. Still, Yorkin deserves sympathy for getting caught in a zeitgeist warp. Seven years ago, at the dawn of the Reagan era, a movie drunk could seem a sweet anachronism, a throwback to giddier times with fewer responsibilities. Today Americans know there is a price to be paid for every excess, fiscal or physical. And in a town where, as one wag notes, "there are more stars at a Rodeo Drive Alcoholics Anonymous meeting than there are at the Academy Awards," a few moviemakers are taking the pledge to put drug and alcohol addiction onscreen.
Two biographical films, soon to be released, will limn the twin toxicities of heroin and pop celebrity. Bird is Clint Eastwood's meditation on the pioneering jazzman junkie Charlie Parker; Wired adapts Bob Woodward's book about the life and drug-induced death of John Belushi. Both movies fit a familiar genre: a star is born, a star falls into the black hole of self- abuse, a star dies. But a third drug-and-alcohol drama, Clean and Sober, which opened last week to generous reviews, goes for the grit without the name- dropping glamour. It has eyes to be the Lost Weekend, the Days of Wine and Roses of the late '80s.
Michael Keaton plays Daryl Poynter, the very model of a white-collar slime mold: he's a thief, an accessory to murder and a meanie to his mom. He can't even admit he has a drug problem -- cocaine and alcohol -- until a tough-love therapist (Morgan Freeman), an A.A. veteran (M. Emmet Walsh) and a nervy fellow addict (Kathy Baker) help him see the dark before the light. Some of the early scenes ring as inauthentic as the Philadelphia accents; each supporting junkie pushes too hard, as if he were part of an Actors Lab experiment that failed. But there are home truths here. Mostly, the film shows, not preaches. And Keaton proves how fully a fine comic actor can inhabit a serious, potentially solemn film.