I got into this briefly when I looked at Bodied a few years ago, but Simon Rex has had an… interesting career. After his mainstream breakthrough as the lead in an extended 8 Mile spoof in Scary Movie 3, he then proceeded to embrace the meme and became a self-styled hip-hop artist. He’s done collabs with Mickey Avalon, the White Girl Mob, Riff Raff, Andy Milonakis, and other human-shaped memes from the late ‘00s and early ‘10s, and while he’s still been getting acting gigs during all this… the dude is always going to be Dirt Nasty to me. But then this came along and pulled a Best F(r)iends, bringing in an actor who has either been mildly ignored or laughed at instead of with up to this point, and giving him a role he could play perfectly.
Said role is that of an unrelenting bullshit artist, who basically spins giant webs of self-aggrandised grifting from the first spoken word of dialogue to the last. He reaches the same level of hate-watching as Tomasz in The Hater as, while it’s quite obvious that this guy is a douche trying to pull one over on everyone else in the room, it is endlessly fascinating just watching him do so. Most of the rest of the cast is made up of local non-actors, as per Sean Baker’s regular M.O., but it is genuinely cool to see them hold their own against that kind of full-force dickery. They work for the exact same reason that Rex does: They’re not necessarily known for acting, but they’re working with people who can make the most of what they have to offer.
As for the grifting itself, it’s all derived from Rex’s Mikey Saber (even his name reeks of dollar-store aftershave) and his history as a porn actor. Admittedly, Rex also has done some work in this industry IRL, but specifically in regards to this film, we first find him returning to the house of his estranged wife and her mother because, from the looks of things, he’s had both the crap and the money beaten out of him. From there, while doing odd jobs around town, he just wants to get his ‘fame’ back, and he stumbles upon what he thinks will be his ticket back to the AVN Awards: A worker at a donut shop named Strawberry (Suzanna Son as the true MVP of the film, and quite possibly the entire year)… who is 17 years old when we first meet her. Yeah, it’s skeevy as fuck, but it creates a particularly weird vibe when it sets in that this isn’t necessarily a predatory relationship. After all, in order for this to be predatory, Mikey would have to be the one in control, and he categorically is not. With anyone.
This is something about the porn industry that is… noticeable if you frequent its products enough, but the bigger implications don’t really kick in until you think over for a bit. For as much as porn has historically been derided as an inherently misogynistic sector of the entertainment industry (well, more so than the rest of it, at least), women basically rule the roost in this area. The vast majority of porn is designed for the consumption of straight men, meaning that porn actresses are the ones who get their names known. They’re the ones that the camera focuses on, they’re the ones that are given the most attention, and ultimately, they’re the ones that are given the most agency as far as the entertainment on offer. Putting Keiran Lee on the cover won’t get as much attention as Maddy O’Reilly, you feel me?
And Mikey refuses to get that. Hearing him explain why he
won the award for Best Oral three years in a row… well, I’d call it simping,
but that would imply that he could even feign caring enough about someone else
for that to be accurate. His ego is engorged to the point where everyone is in
service to him in his own mind, but the reality as captured through Drew
Daniels’ camera lens sees right through that self-delusion. In every
interaction, especially the ones with Strawberry, he is at the mercy of the
women on the other side of the conversation. Mikey will go on for minutes about
the tall tales of his supposed successes, but the camera is always focused on
the poor woman having to sit through his crap, rather than him trying to sell
it to her. He’s desperately trying to get people’s attention and adoration, and
it doesn’t work because he just can’t stop lying to everyone.
All of this, on its own, would already be a scathing look at fragile masculinity, and shows Sean Baker continuing to walk the walk when it comes to destigmatising sex workers… but there’s an even juicier notion hidden right underneath that. The film’s story takes place in the lead-up to the 2016 election, with quite a few talking heads on TVs in the background talking about Trump and his chances of winning. None of the politics become an overt part of the narrative, but the parallels are quite interesting. It’s the story of a man who wants to present himself as charismatic, successful, and a ladies’ man, but after spending long enough hearing him ramble about nothing with a braggadocio chaser, people around him catch on pretty quickly that he is talking utter nonsense. Add to that the grooming behaviour and a subplot involving stolen valor and… yeah, this is all sounding quite familiar.
So, to recap, this is already one of the funniest films I’ve seen all year just on the surface, with a lot of great performances and a lot of jewels to share regarding the nature of sex work and sexual agency in general. But with that added edge of satirising a political target that, up to this point, has largely been dealt with in absolutely direct terms (throw on some spray tan, a blonde hairpiece, pucker your lips, and you’re basically done), it transcends merely being great and brushes against becoming important. It’s an incredibly entertaining break-down of narcissistic behaviour, and it essentially being about how Stormy Daniels and other women like her rule the world only makes it even more satisfying.
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