Inserts (1975; dir. John Byrum), once rated X (now NC-17), is one of those weird, dirty little art movies that could only have come from the ‘70s. The movie wears the patina of a scuzzy Hollywood fever dream, but beneath the grime, it’s just a self-conscious stage play in pervy tones—smirking at its own audacity.
Buy Inserts Blu-rayIt takes place in the crumbling mansion of Boy Wonder (Richard Dreyfuss), a washed-up silent film director now reduced to shooting skin flicks to get by. Fresh off Jaws, Dreyfuss lounges in a bathrobe, swilling cognac and clinging to the wreckage of his ego. Boy Wonder, an enervated, whacked-out riff on Josef von Sternberg, is all decadent decay—no gas in the tank. Meanwhile, Bob Hoskins, always great, brings a grinning menace to Big Mac, the money man. A two-bit producer and wannabe mogul, Big Mac oozes Louis B. Mayer vibes—a hustler who could make you a star or have you tossed in the gutter with equal ease. Jessica Harper, Veronica Cartwright, and Stephen Davies round out the cast, each taking turns bouncing off Dreyfuss in the tight little sinkhole of Hollywood misery in which Byrum traps them.
Like The Day of the Locust (1975), The Wild Party (1975), Valentino (1977), and the earlier They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Inserts is another product of the ‘70s love affair with what I call ‘old L.A. hell’—the soul-sick flip side to the Hollywood dream. It turns the rock over on a lost era in Tinseltown. Characters drift in and out, chewing on arch, self-conscious dialogue that’s often witty—occasionally brilliant, but just as often, insufferable. They drink, get high, and screw their way to oblivion, all inside a single, claustrophobic set that Byrum shoots like he’s mounting a putrid little off-Broadway production. Yet amid all this squalor, Shirley Russell’s impeccable period costumes lend the film a richer authenticity than the script sometimes deserves.
You might find yourself caught up in Inserts. Maybe it’ll click for you.
For me, it was both fascinating and tedious. A strange, intriguing misfire.
Dreyfuss is on his A-game, but Boy Wonder never connects. The film dwells on his literal and figurative impotence, but Byrum never makes us care. Harper gets the movie’s only real arc, while Cartwright, playing a has-been, hophead flapper, steals every one of her scenes. But it’s Hoskins—a smiling, enterprising shark who’s a step or two ahead of everyone else—who damn near wins the movie. His menacing grin feels like it beamed in straight from a rotten casting couch.
For all its posturing, though, Inserts isn’t shocking so much as… tame. Yes, there’s plenty of nudity and explicit talk, but Byrum is after a cold provocation. The result is more a stylized exercise than anything transgressive. Whether the movie is a hidden gem or a puzzling misfire depends on your taste for self-aware Hollywood navel-gazing. And even if Inserts slowly goes nowhere, it still has that seedy, dissipated ‘70s burn they just don’t make anymore.
I doubt I’ll ever revisit it—but I won’t forget it, either.
MGM’s Blu-ray release lands with barely a whisper—no special features, just the film, grainy and unvarnished. Warts and all, Inserts stands alone.
