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For sheer entertainment value, few movie sets have had as detailed and readily accessible horror stories as those of Waterworld and Town & Country. Waterworld featured a multi-million dollar set that was never used and that, at one point, accidentally sank in a fierce storm. The producers then decided to leave the set on the ocean floor–since they weren’t going to use it anyway–until they realized that the paint from the set was toxic and would kill every living creature near its resting place, ultimately creating the need to pay over a million dollars to have the set raised. Town & Country made waves when it was learned that the production was forty million dollars over budget and that further reshoots were necessitated by the theft of ten reels of film from the set. Hard as is may seem to believe, Prozac Nation will give these aforementioned Hollywood train wrecks a run for their money. Neither Waterworld or Town & Country could lay claim to having someone intimately involved with the production talk about the World Trade Center’s collapse on 9/11 as a "beautiful" thing, as Prozac Nation’s author, Elizabeth Wurtzel memorably did. Nor did Waterworld or Town & Country have production insiders referring to the movie as "horrible" in print, as Prozac Nation also did. These irritants aside though, the real reason that Prozac Nation has been on Miramax’s shelf since 2001 is because the movie is abjectly cold, detached and, more plainly, bad. Christina Ricci stars in this adaptation of Wurtzel’s novel as Elizabeth Wurtzel herself. Fancifully based upon Wurtzel’s own depressive experiences while attending Harvard, there is little actual plot to this film; most of what is presented to the audience are scenes revolving around the themes of prescription drug usage and self destruction. On-screen Wurtzel writes, talks about her unrequited love affair with Bruce Springsteen, trivializes and sabotages almost all of her social encounters and relationships and does what she can to thoroughly angry up those closest to her. Ironically, Prozac Nation fails precisely because of one of the very few things it does very, very well. As the patron saint of angry goth girls, Ricci is fabulous (and truly despicable) in the lead role. As an audience member though, I hated, hated, hated her version of Wurtzel. Sizing up Wurtzel mid-way through the film, I squinted my eyes at her in contempt and wished that I could somehow hit her in the head with a frying pan; the reality of the matter is that I would have been satisfied with any kind of pain I could have caused her. As created by Ricci, Wurtzel is a horrendous human being who gleefully engages in casual sex with her good friend’s boyfriend, yells at her mother and father and, at times, chooses to stay up for days on end, putting down anyone who dares question her motives or get her help. Wurtzel is an angry woman with a mean streak and Ricci captures this perfectly in Prozac Nation. So perfectly, as a matter of fact, that it ultimately bring down director Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s film in epic Hindenberg-like style. Aside from the sheer hatred I felt for Wurtzel and her manic-depressive states, Prozac Nation suffers from one other major problem: the budget for this film is estimated at just under ten million dollars, but that said, the sad reality of it is that the budget looks significantly smaller than that. The sets are extremely sparsely decorated and it often appeared as though the actors were shot in front of bare walls and in empty rooms. Big party sequences were filled out by an incredibly small number of extras, increasing the shoddiness of the production values yet again. In theory, Prozac Nation could have been an interesting examination of the psychiatric pharmaceuticals that have become increasingly more prominent in American society. However noble this goal or intent, Skjoldbjaerg simply could not overcome his hideously offensive lead character and the desire stirring in the hearts of most viewers that she be run over by a large truck traveling at a high rate of speed. It’s hard to fathom a company spending ten million dollars to make a movie and then shelving the product indefinitely, but upon screening Prozac Nation, Miramax’s logic doesn’t seem all that hard to understand.
chris neumer |
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