‘Don’t Worry’ star brings cartoonist’s biopic to life
A posse on horseback gathers around and stares at an empty wheelchair overturned in the desert. “Don’t worry,” the sheriff assures his deputies, “he won’t get far on foot.”
It’s a typically edgy cartoon by the late John Callahan and a wry title for a potent biopic, loosely adapted from his 1989 autobiography by master indie director Gus Van Sant.
It’s also a terrific showcase for Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the iconoclastic Callahan as a chronic slacker alcoholic, even in his teens.
In raspy narration, he recalls, “The last day I walked,” waking up after a bender and immediately heading out for more booze. He gets a bottle, looks for chicks on the beach, offers one a swig — not a surefire pickup technique. Plastered by evening, he meets Dexter (Jack Black) — an even bigger, crazier boozer (“Some people tell me I look like Burt Reynolds, but I don’t see it — do you?”).
They get even more wasted before stumbling into Dexter’s car for the illfated ride.
Out of sequence, we find Callahan at home in a wheelchair, screaming at an attendant’s late arrival: “You left me three hours without a drink!” He has lost the use of his arms and legs, but not his alcohol addiction which, if anything, has increased. So has his denial, which is noisily reminiscent of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s deathly quiet bank embezzler in “Owning Mahowny”: “I don’t have a gambling problem — I have a financial problem.”
When Callahan finally, reluctantly enters treatment, his 12 steps seem more like 12,000. The first step of powerless admission is terribly tough. The second and third, even tougher: What if you HAVE no higher power to believe in or turn yourself over to? Luckily for him and the other assorted outcastes comprising his group, their leader is low-key, soulful Donny (Jonah Hill).
Callahan’s legs were permanently paralyzed, but with enormous effort he regained partial use of his arms. Holding a pen in his right hand, he learned to steer it with his left across a sheet of paper and turn the resulting shaky lines into dark, deadpan jokes about disability. That gift for politically incorrect and irreverent cartoons would gain him a national following (syndicated in 200 newspapers) during the 1970s and ‘80s, and a new sobriety-based lease on life.
Director Van Sant is fascinated by people on — or over — the edge. Especially if they’re from or near Portland. We are blessed to have his brilliantly original entries from “Drug Store Cowboy” (1989), “My Own Private Idaho” (1991) and “Good Will Hunting” (1997) to the Columbine-based “Elephant” (2003), the Kurt Cobain story “Last Days” (2005) and “Milk” (2008).
His freewheeling style suits Mr. Phoenix’s own idiosyncratic approach perfectly. As a pre-millennial graduate of the National Bad Boy School of Acting, Mr. Phoenix has long been famous for off-screen antics that may (or may not) have been promotional stunts. Now, at the less tender age of 43, he may (or may not) have settled down personally — but not professionally, thank God. Here, he capturesCallahan’s angry wit and determination, from callow rebel to stunned survivor, with the same smoldering realism of his performances in “Walk the Line” (2005) and “The Master” (2012). I predictan Oscar nomination.
Jack Black is over-the-top but chilling as a drunk driver who launches a drunk passenger into a telephone pole and paralysis, while emerging unscathed himself. Pixie-gorgeous Rooney Mara as Callahan’s romantic rescuer is a bit too luminously good to be true. The fiery flashes and exchanges between Callahan and the other intriguing members of his AA group suggest that, had the film been less about him and more of a group portrait, it might have been less didactic, and more well-rounded.
But that’s not Gus Van Sant’s way. His way is to grab — or be grabbed by — a single theme and compelling character, then doggedly hammer them home. At heart, though, “Don’t Worry” is sweeter and more life-affirming than his other films. Ditto, come to think of it, for Joaquin Phoenix.
The healing power of art never ceases to amaze. Nor does the power of forgiveness. Nor the power of gallows humor. In my favorite of Callahan’s cartoons, one Ku Klux Klansman leaving home in his sheet says to another: “Don’t you just love it when they’re warm from the dryer?”
(Opens today at the Manor Theatre in Squirrel Hill and AMC Waterfront.)