Harry Little has been making feature films for 36 years and he's desperate to quit the racket he compares to the bubonic plague. The industry has changed. Moronic comic book tentpole pictures for the Illiterati dominate the theaters. Production schedules are set by twelve year-olds glued to their cell phones. Harry's little low-budget gems are lost on vapid executives who would rather lose $200 million on an alien gore-fest than make $50 million on a story about real people. And then there are Harry's wives. Or, more correctly, ex-wives. There are three of them and they've all tried to kill him at one time or another. One is still in prison. And his current wife, too, seems disenchanted with Harry's lack of desire to Go Hollywood.
Such is the dilemma faced by the protagonist in P.E. Marston's A Little Touch of Harry, A Queasy Documentary. Marston's third outing as writer/director and his first feature comedy. Marston's scripts are always relentlessly literate and so layered with references to other films, novels, and historical events that you could have a Pub Quiz night with each one. Harry is no exception; this is a kitchen sink comedy with everything but a banana peel.
Harry's angst is solved for him in the title sequence of the film - a Marston picture always starts with the first frame and doesn't end until the last, wrapping through the titles and credits - when he is gunned down on the set of his latest production. Before we're settled into our seats Marston has set the tone of the picture with winking references to The Player, Chicago, Sunset Boulevard, and Citizen Kane. We're off to the races.
Harry's pal Marty Parisi (Edd Robinson), a Martin Scorsese-type big budget prestige director, does the heavy lifting in terms of backstory, along with Mo Dubinski (Jerry Schaffer), the one-time wanna-be gangster who bankrolled Harry's first four films. Harry himself fills the gaps in bits of archival footage shot by an Italian documentary crew and with quick comments tossed in from his current residence in some ethereal Neverland. Each wife and a number of actors in Harry's films has a say and two news anchors keep us apprised of current events, sketching Harry (Neill Fleeman) as a character who is part Robert Altman and part Woody Allen, with a pinch of Billy Wilder thrown in for good measure. Asked by the Italian interviewer if a recently successful film means he is no longer a small filmmaker, Harry deadpans: "I am small. It's the pictures that got big."
Even if you don't get all the references, A Little Touch of Harry works on enough levels to keep the viewer's attention and pushes enough buttons to insure there's a little something to offend everyone - when they stop laughing. Marston's repertory company of actors you have seen in dozens of movies and TV shows means a talented cast. Editor Ann Riordan keeps the pace spinning like a top and Terry Lennox's cinematography, while not as striking as that in his two earlier Marston collaborations, serves the narrative by keeping the focus on the action. Clever culling of the royalty-free V-Disc Archive provides a million-dollar value musical score of Big Band era hits; Marston's nod to Woody is Sydney Bechet's "After You've Gone" used as underscore as Harry sums up his life in the afterlife: "I know it's not for everybody," he says, "but for me, death is working out a lot better than I expected."
A Little Touch of Harry is probably as close as you can get to screwball comedy in the Twenty-first century. Don't forget to take notes - there will be a quiz later.
