M O V I E S
![[Howard Stern, Private Parts]](stern970307.gif)
BY CHARLES TAYLOR + + + + "Private Parts"
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Although "Private Parts" reveals the likable side of Howard Stern, it would be a lot funnier if he left his grudges behind. HOWARD STERN is a regular guy whose uncensored radio persona is light years away from his life as a dedicated and loving husband and father. That's the premise of the new comedy "Private Parts," based on Stern's bestseller, and if you've seen him being interviewed, talking about his dedication to his wife, Alison, and his determination to guard the privacy of his children, it's not so hard to swallow. In fact, the conflict between those two roles is a pretty good idea for a comedy. "Private Parts" has been getting generally positive reviews, often from people who are surprised it's not the sleazy movie they expected from Stern. But the real surprise of "Private Parts" is that it isn't very funny. It's a flat piece of work with long, slack stretches. Director Betty Thomas' last picture, "The Brady Bunch Movie," worked because she sustained a unified tone -- the dippy, squeaky-clean Bradys seen in a '90s context -- throughout. Here, she can't stick to the right tone. And because she tries so hard to show us Stern the man, Stern the performer winds up getting left behind.
Stern is best when he's parodying his early days in radio, writhing hyperactively behind the mike, spilling out patter in a voice as smooth as motor oil and generally not sounding much different from hundreds of other jocks. The exhaustion, the "what the hell was that?" expression that comes over him when he's off-mike, suggests why he had to break out of that pattern. By the time Stern finds success and a huge audience at WNBC in New York (after crisscrossing the country from station to station), his newfound style has to share screen time with domestic scenes and the tale of Stern's battles with his NBC bosses. Maybe Thomas felt it would be too static to just keep showing a guy in a radio studio. But the scenes of Stern cutting loose behind the mike are the only ones in which the movie finds a comic rhythm and holds it. There's a hilarious bit where a listener (blonde and buxom, natch) calls and tells Howard she can't get out of bed in the morning because all she can do is listen to his voice. He "cures" her by instructing her to lay her stereo speaker flat on the floor, turn the treble down and the bass up, and apply pudendum to woofer; he then hums her to orgasm. I laughed even harder at a "Match Game" parody in which Stern insinuates obscenities with fill-in-the-blank lines like "blank willow" and "blank-a-doodle-doo." It's infantile and obvious and gross, and, like the best scatological humor, its absolute disdain for respectability and responsibility has a liberating grubbiness. These bits work because of Stern's infectious delight at his own naughtiness. Thomas, who admitted she was not crazy about Stern when she started the movie, seems not entirely comfortable with the adolescent voyeurism of some scenes -- for instance, when Stern gets an on-air massage from a nude cutie played by porn diva du jour Jenna Jameson. The movie offers fairly mild examples of Stern's jokes about blacks and gays, although it doesn't stint on Alison's anger when he joked about her miscarriage on the air, and it doesn't offer up any easy resolutions to her unease about hearing their private life discussed on her husband's show. None of this is going to win over the people who hate Howard Stern. As an occasional Stern listener, I won't lie and say I've never been offended by him (though it's his arrogance that I find most off-putting), but I can honestly say it's the people who get really offended by him who bug me more. There are always prudes who shake their heads at low humor and wonder what the culture is coming to. In last Sunday's New York Times Book Review, literature's leading Luddite Sven Birkerts chastises John Leonard for asserting that 10 minutes of Mozart improves brain activity but failing to warn that "comparable exposure to ... 'Married ... With Children' might have a lowering effect." (If Sven Birkerts has seen even five minutes of "Married ... With Children," I'll kiss his Kafka.) But the disdain of Stern's detractors goes beyond this sort of prissiness to something a bit more highhanded. When "Private Parts" first came out in hardcover, I was working in the leading book store in Harvard Square. The chief buyer, a woman who had never learned to make the distinction between her tastes and her those of her customers ordered only six copies. When they were gone in under an hour, she turned up her nose as if to say, "Who are these barbarians?" That didn't stop her from stockpiling more for the next day, although she still refused to display the book on the front of the new titles table. I couldn't help thinking of that during the scenes of Stern's battles with the WNBC bosses who watch in disgust, bewilderment and helplessness as his ratings go through the roof. (Scenes that would play better if the movie gave the actors a chance to be funny instead of just setting them up as targets. Paul Giamatti as Stern's chief nemesis is particularly bad; his cheeks appear to be bulging out from the large amounts of scenery he chews.) That hypocrisy may explain why, despite creating a top-rated radio show, a cable show, two bestsellers and what's certain to be a hit movie, Stern still picks at old wounds with an obsessiveness that tells you he can't relax enough to enjoy the last laugh.
On Stern's show this week, Richard Lewis said this movie's initial good reviews are a great "get back" at the people who assumed that anything Stern touched would turn to scum, and he was right. But there's a difference between using your life for material and brooding over insults that clearly don't matter in terms of your own success. When it works, "Private Parts" has a let-it-all-hang-out zip. But that only points out the ebullience that the rest of the movie lacks. Howard Stern's success is a lot like the powers of his superhero character Fartman: They both depend on unchecked emissions. "Private Parts" would be a lot funnier if Stern could stop and, uh, smell the roses.
-- Charles Taylor is a regular contributor to Salon. Seen "Private Parts"? Did you laugh? Join the Howard Stern discussion in Table Talk. P R E V I O U S R E V I E W S "Donnie Brasco" By Charles Taylor (2/28/97)
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Stern's not bad. He begins playing himself at age 20, wearing a hilarious wig that's no more ridiculous than his real hair looked in photos taken at the time. (At 6-foot-6, he's like a mop designed to reach those hard-to-get places.) Stern is amusingly geeky, and when he wins Alison (played appealingly enough by Mary McCormack, who bears a striking resemblance to Mary Louise Parker), his disbelieving, blissed-out look captures the amazement felt by every guy who can't quite believe he snagged such a beautiful wife.
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