Pecker

I still don't fully understand the movie Pecker. I assume that a lot of the humor is reserved for those inside the NYC gallery scene and the very, extremely gay. But there is a growing list of indicators that it is a much more serious movie than it first appears.

First of all, there are serious people featured in the film. Cindy Sherman is hilarious as some version of herself - as a casual fan of her pictures I prefer to not know too much about her personal life - in Pecker she comes to the rescue of the manic, sugar-addicted character Little Chrissy, who is in the throes of a terrible jones, "Do you want a valium, honey?" The film also features Christina Ricci, who is probably the closest female professional-acting-career analog to Johnny Depp, so that bodes well. Lily Tayler is in it, too.

But I was most surprised by this movie, which I viewed for the first time last week, when this morning I caught up with the New York Times' Lens Blog, which ran a story on a blind photographer. This very improbability is presented as satire in Pecker.