Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1976 dark comedy that for all intents & purposes is not for everyone. A sardonic writer is strapped for cash & looks for any way to refill his coffers. He lives w/his dying, neglected wife & his brother, who is virtually non-communicative, loves to play w/dead flies & occasionally pinch the breasts of any strange woman who visits their apartment. Our anti-hero may not share his bed w/his hausfrau but he does invite a hooker over to the house for love-play (his wife has to foot the bill) & he tortures a number of sycophants (female of course) who fall sway to his supposed powers of verse while bilking them of any funds they have on hand. Not to mention the fact he killed a woman in the first reel & an annoying police detective keeps coming around sniffing for clues. More of an attack on creative pursuits (in this case the artistic scribe) than an out & out laugh-fest, this is an excoriation of all things literary (at one point our blocked writer declares he has broken through & begun writing again only to be found out he's merely a plagiarist) w/all the attendant lunacy & fake hosannas mere mortals thrust onto writers when in reality there may be no there, there. Not a particularly likeable fable to be sure, this film still should be screened for those Fassbinder's completists (for a man who made so much in so little time before his untimely demise) hoping to gain some insight into the man's work & his outlook on the vaulted elite.
