Heat

HEAT is the third in the trilogy by director Paul Morrissey, in collaboration with Andy Warhol, which captures the essence of some failed American lives. In Morrissey's detached and thoroughly Warholian take on Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD, Joe Dallesandro plays Joey Davis, an oversexed has-been child star who arrives at a seedy and sex-drenched poolside motel. There Joey meets Jessica, a frumpy and burned-out fellow motel resident, and learns that her mother is the aging and fading movie star Sally Todd, who was also his former costar. Joey's half-baked aspirations for stardom lead him to the beds of almost every character he meets, and he eventually forges a sordid liaison with Sally and moving into her crumbling Hollywood Hills mansion. Joey half-heartedly fends off the advances of Jessie, as well as Sally's ex-husband's live-in lover and anyone else who comes along with something to offer. The mostly ad-libbed dialogue and ramshackle cast of characters create a shambling and hysterical chain of nonevents that lead to a torpid California poolside anticlimax. Morrissey's meandering camerawork and loosely structured plot structure allows the actors' magnetic and manic personalities to take over, as the minutiae of their failed ambitions and sordid habits are scrutinized by the lazy and all-seeing eye of the handheld camera.