The Boost (1988) from Tuna |
The Boost begins with a struggling couple (James Woods and Sean Young) living in New York in near poverty. She supports him, while he tries to make a good score selling tax dodges. Their lives change dramatically when he applies for a director of marketing job for a new shopping center. The committee hates him, but one of the members, a huge investor, likes his style, and invites him to move to LA and work for him selling real estate tax dodges. They are greeted by a limo at the airport, and driven to their Beverly Hills house complete with pool. It turns out that Woods is a great salesman, and it is a sellers market. Success goes to his head, however, and when the IRS threatens to close the tax loopholes he exploits, he is left with several hundred thousand dollars worth of debts, and without earning power. It is at this time that he tries his first hit of coke. The rest of the film traces their descent into the world of drugs, leading to the unique and startling conclusion that drugs suck. I have no idea why so many filmmakers think "drugs suck" is a good enough premise for a film. I have liked a few of them very much
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In general, however, it is one of my least favorite movie themes. There was nothing wrong with the way the film was made, and the acting was just fine. It is just not a story I needed to see, and taught me nothing about drug addiction or human nature. |
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Scoop's notes in yellow:
I've never seen The Boost, which came and went virtually unnoticed in its theatrical run, but I have certainly read enough about it. While the movie itself may not have made a significant contribution to the history of cinema, its filming was a landmark in the world of celebrity gossip. James Woods alleged that Sean Young harassed him after the pair starred in this movie. On the set, rumors flew of an affair between Woods and Young. That may have happened, probably did happen, but they both denied it at the time - Woods was then sharing a home with Sarah Owen. (They have since married and divorced.) The post-filming plot twists were truly bizarre. Ms. Young pestered Sarah Owen with late night phone calls, and she was said to have arranged for a disfigured baby doll to be left on the doorstep of the home of Woods and Owen. You have to think that Young and Woods might have been lying about not having an affair. Young's actions would represent some remarkably psychopathic behavior if the pair had never been lovers. Even if she was his jilted lover, she still had more fury than society, Hell, or even William Congreve would have expected from a woman scorned. The situation deteriorated to the point where Woods actually ended up filing a civil action against Young. The tabloids competed vigorously to print the charges and counter-charges between the two stars. In popular mythology, the 1988 Young/Woods situation was compared to the relationship in 'Fatal Attraction', Adrian Lyne's much discussed 1987 film about a woman who exhibits extreme behavior when cast adrift after an affair. ============= The movie is based on a novel called "Ludes: A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream". I was flabbergasted to see that this book was written by Benjamin J. Stein. Yes, the Ben Stein, the intelligent and avuncular guy with the comically phlegmatic voice and matching Buster Keaton face; the host of "Win Ben Stein's Money". His flat-voiced and soporific economics lecture in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, punctuated frequently by "Anyone? Anyone?", and "Bueller?" is familiar to all cinema buffs. Stein was no stranger to that material. He got his undergraduate degree in economics from Columbia, and his father, Herbert Stein, was a noted economist and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. |
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Stein himself was valedictorian of his class at Yale Law in 1970, and has actually written sixteen books, including "how many novels ... anyone? anyone? - seven novels." | |||||
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