Light Sleeper
1992
Manhattan, New York
Paul Schrader
Slow-Burn Crime Thriller
What’s it all about: You know that scene in Carlito’s Way where Al Pacino breaks the lock to Penelope Ann Miller’s apartment to make mad passionate love? This movie has a sex scene just as memorable, but for different reasons. Willem Dafoe is a streetwise drug dealer who keeps a diary and flips through photo albums in lieu of sleeping or taking a shower. Dana Delany is his bowl-cutted ex, the kind of woman who lets you buy her a salad in the hospital cafeteria and then leaves without eating it.
Prostitute Index: low
Death By: running into your ex
Relics: dystopian saxophone as the soundtrack to New York; XL Renaissance wallpaper at the Paramount hotel; gay sidekick with dangle earring
Hoops: philosophizing about god and the universe while doing lines of coke; ordering takeout and gushing about how fabulous it is; squeezing in lines of dialogue between tiny bites to seem real
Heartthrob: Jane Adams
Pass/Fails the Test of Time: TV’s Dana Delaney; Susan Sarandon being extra
LoFi Magic: a secret hoodlum bar where Street Fighter 2 characters can go to hang out, buy guns and support each other; random woman shoving people on the sidewalk
Words to live by: “That’s quite an erection.”
Makes me want to: get read by Mary Beth Hurt
Candotti Take: n/a
Worth a watch/rewatch: Yes
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