Interview

"Interview" is Steve Buscemi's remake of a film by Theo van Gogh before he was assassinated for profaning someone else's Sacred Cow. (profanities, of every sort, were the younger van Gogh's stock-in-trade.) this film is about a middle-aged journalist whose career is on a downward trajectory, whose personal life is in shambles, and who has been assigned to interview a beautiful young actress whose own personal life seems akin to, say, Lindsay Lohan's.

The journalist is bitter that he has been assigned to do a fluff piece about a spoiled celebrity brat, instead of being sent to Washington to cover an unfolding scandal at the White House. the actress is an hour late to the trendy restaurant where they meet, because she couldn't seem to pull her lips from those of her (female) co-star in a "Sex In the City" inspired TV serial. she is annoyed from the outset by the journalist's not having bothered to read the little backgrounder her PR people always provide to interviewers.

He starts out by asking her how she got the name "Katya". while she is explaining that though it is a Russian name, her mother is actually from the Netherlands (like the van Goghs), he interjects with helpful remarks like, "oh yeah, prostitution is legal in Amsterdam".

She finds him so off-putting that she soon cuts off the interview, and leaves the restaurant, though a couple had already happily given up their table because it was *her* "favorite table". however, because of the kind of coincidence that only happens in movies, minutes later she invites him up to her fabulous downtown Manhattan loft.

There they set about to continue the interview, with each trying to maintain the upper hand -- him, as the war-weary international correspondent who hasn't the slightest interest in her sexually; her, with the "oh, are you gay? ..... then i want you to tongue-kiss me right now!" routine.

They are constantly interrupted by phone calls from her beau, to whom she fabricates new reasons with every call for her not being able to talk at that moment, and her female co-star, with whom she gabs at great length, while lying on her bed with her legs spread apart and pointed at the ceiling, or dancing about her bedroom after the manner of Isadora Duncan.

When not on the phone with her girlfriend, the actress jokingly says things like, "i'm a crack whore". the journalist's gallant response goes something like: no, no, no -- i've been with whores all over the world, and you're no *crack* whore.

After consuming a great deal of booze, and other mood-altering substances, they expose their scars (physical and emotional). for example, while the two of them are dancing romantically, she lets it be known that her famous acting teacher made a pass at her during a private lesson.

Eventually the journalist hears himself loudly denounced as "sleazy", "sick", "disgusting", "weird", a "son-of-a-bitch" (as in, "i want to *kill* you ... you son-of-a-bitch"), and, of course, "unprofessional".

He apologizes for his being "unprofessional".i won't give away the ending, but let's just say that times have changed since "My Fair Lady" first came out.