+ another review of Chuck & Buck by Cynthia Fuchs
Boys to Men
Stalkers have been fodder for comedies from Bringing
Up Baby to There's Something about Mary, thrillers
from Fatal Attraction to Scream, and innumerable
Very Special TV movies of the week. Rarely, however,
has the matter been approached cinematically with any
sense of humanity. Chuck & Buck -- one of those
Sundance success stories written up in Entertainment
Weekly in January but not released to U.S. cineplexes
until late summer -- may be packaged as an "edgy
comedy," but it's not the occasional chuckle it
elicits that makes this film interesting, but the
complex ways in which the viewer is asked to identify
with a stalker who is neither a psycho nor necessarily
a comic hero.
Best friends at age 11, Chuck and Buck spent some
charmed times playing spy games in the back yard.
Eighteen years later, the pasty, sucker-addicted Buck
(Mike White, who wrote the script) still lives at home
with his mother. When she dies, he invites Chuck
(Chris Weitz, the producer half of the brothers-team
who made American Pie) back home for the funeral.
Chuck, the traditionally attractive (tall, dark,
handsome) type, has since moved to Los Angeles and
become engaged to Carlyn (Beth Colt). At the ceremony,
Buck is giddy at the sight of his long lost pal. He
has not, by all indications, had a single friend since
the two were parted years before. Later, at Buck's
house during the reception, he makes a pass at Chuck
in the bathroom. Chuck, understandably, is freaked out
by the incident -- hitting on a guy at the toilet is
just bad manners. Soon thereafter, Buck decides to
move to L.A.; where better to keep tabs on his old
friend and plague him with phone calls and unannounced
visits? A man with no profession or
discernible skills, Buck decides to do the L.A. bum
thing: become a writer.
Buck composes a fairy-tale play called Hank and
Frank, based on his relationship with Chuck, whose
fiancée he portrays as a witch, naturally. The theater
manager-turned-director for Hank and Frank, Beverly
(Lupe Ontiveros, a wonderful character actress finally
getting a significant role) keeps Buck and his
crackpot ideas in check as best she can. "It's like a
homoerotic misogynistic play," she says of Buck's
script. (Wanna bet that criticism came from an real
person about the guys-obsessed Chuck and Buck
screenplay?) But Buck simply doesn't get it. In
essence a child awkwardly outfitted in an adult's
body, he plans to use the play as a means to "win"
Chuck back: if only Chuck sees the play, Buck
imagines, he'll know who really loves him.
Unfortunately for Buck, the now-straight Chuck has
"grown up": he has a career, a house, a BMW, and a
woman, and now goes by the more suave moniker,
"Charlie." Buck, on the other hand, is a severe case
of arrested development. And yet, for all of his
irritating naiveté, Buck is an intriguing protagonist,
because he resists cultural expectations -- not in
that now-clichéd James Dean sense, but in the sense
that he's an utter misfit who only partially realizes
this. He dresses in clothes his mother bought him
(presumably in the 80s), decorates his room with
action figures, and even drinks alcohol like a
youngster - he hasn't moved beyond the rum & Coke
stage. When Buck does "grow up" at the film's end --
that is, realizes he has no romantic future with Chuck
-- it's bittersweet. He may be have an easier time
fitting in or having a professional life now that he
has lost his obsession, but without a central passion,
he doesn't seem happier or to have any sexuality left.
When he is scoped out by a gay man at Chuck's wedding,
Buck does not seem to even register what is happening.
All he cares about is satisfying his sweet tooth with
some cake. At least Buck has not be cured by meeting
the "right woman."
Although Chuck and Buck is being niche-marketed
heavily toward gay audiences, and some (straight) film
critics may reduce it to a comedy of clashing sexual
orientations, Buck's desire for Chuck has less to do
with sexuality (homo-; or otherwise) than childish
expectations and admiration. The only time Buck
appears to be attracted to a man other than Chuck is
when that man, Sam (Paul Weitz, the director half of
the American Pie team) functions as Chuck's
substitute, literally: Sam plays the Chuck role in the
play. Repeatedly, Buck's sexual propositions to Chuck
are adolescent (a naughty reference to wanting to
"suck and fuck"), irrational (phrased as an
ultimatum), and awkward (copping a feel). Eventually,
Chuck and Buck's prepubescent tomfoolery is revealed,
and Chuck concedes remembering and enjoying his
experimental phase. If this film only accomplishes one
thing, it's this: acknowledging that even straight
boys explore their sexuality with their male friends
and come out of the experience more aware of
themselves, not necessarily fucked up. Boyish
infatuations on other boys are a normal part of
adolescence.
Such a sensitive observation is not so surprising,
considering that both White (who write the screenplay)
and director Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) also worked
on the ill-fated but finely observed Freaks and Geeks. Perhaps because White seems so genuinely to
embody Buck, he quickly ingratiates himself with the
audience much the way Buck does with Chuck. His
convincing performance is compounded by the TV- and
home movie-encoded "realness" of Chuck & Buck's
digital video origins (transferred to 35mm for
distribution, but the original format remains
discernible). The "realness" the film conveys breaks
down the dramatic distance for the audience, making
the film much more in-your-face than >Freaks and Geeks, which had an affectionate, distanced tone. In
response to Buck's ignorance, the film has a mocking
perspective of him and his relationship to Chuck. The
audience is provoked to laugh at him, at his socially
inept abruptness in conversation and at his private
weeping. Watching the tv series, we laughed in
recognition of the characters and situations, as they
reflected us. Either White and Arteta should have been
more provocatively cruel, or they should have given
their characters some sympathetic breathing space. As
the film stands, it sheds some light on what happens
between young boys, but very little about what happens
between men after they have grown up ... whatever that
means.
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