Fast Sofa

Fast Sofa is a cheap, cruddy, smutty film from 2001. It is one of many films that use the world of pornography as some sort of metaphor for a life that is both exotic and dangerous. I will say that of most films I've seen about porn performers, this one is fairly realistic. Perhaps that's because the legendary Ron Jeremy was "adult film consultant" (he also has a small role).

Jake Busey plays a slacker and small-time drug dealer. He is a pretty loathsome character, cursing out cops in their presence and treating his patient girlfriend (Natasha Lyonne) like shit. He likes to lie around and watch porno tapes, especially starring his favorite, Ginger Quail (Jennifer Tilly). In an amazing coincidence, he and his buddy, Adam Goldberg, are out on the town when they see Tilly in a club. Busey is unable to resist the opportunity, and manages to score with her.

Busey confesses his sin to Lyonne, who promptly kicks him out. His apartment has been robbed, and he later sees Goldberg consoling Lyonne a little too intimately. He decides to take up Tilly's offer to hook up with her in Palm Springs, and heads to the desert in a banged-up Buick Skylark (the film's time period is difficult to discern--I suspect it was the 1980s, given the lack of cell phones, the use of videocassettes, and mentions of Traci Lords).

Along the way Busey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an odd man (Crispin Glover, in a bit of typecasting) who has an obsession with birds. These two will go bowling together (where Busey picks up a sixteen-year-old girl, played by Bijou Phillips) and get in and out of scrapes. When Busey catches up with Tilly, he finds that she's married to a sleazy and dangerous guy (Eric Roberts, another bit of typecasting).

The film was based on a novel by Bruce Craven, who is one of the screenwriters. It has the kind of sordid, dusty feel of a pulp novel, but I'm sure that whatever literary qualities it had were lost in translation. Salome Breziner directs with a busy hand, using multiple screen images often, and the low budget shows. Busey makes a distinctly unappealing protagonist, and Glover is, well, he's just weird. The Lyonne-Goldberg subplot gets dropped halfway through the film.