Stanley Tucci and Ian Holm in "Joe Gould's Secret."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Ian Holm and Stanley Tucci Director: Stanley Tucci Rated: R, with strong profanity Length: 108 min

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(May 12, 2000) -- Movies about writers usually fail. Where's the cinematic drama in a guy hunched over a keyboard or sharpening the nib of a pen?

Joe Gould's Secret solves the dilemma by focusing on the special relationship between a writer and his fascinating subject. The result is a marvelous character study instead of a dull portrait of an artistic process.

Superb acting and precise attention to detail further enliven the film. And the natural tension as we await the "secret" of the title holds the film together.

It helps, of course, that the director is actor Stanley Tucci, who's quickly established himself as a master of film subtlety and grace. In the memorable Big Night, Tucci showed you can create great drama through the simple act of cooking an omelet, if the circumstances and performances are right.

Tucci also stars in Joe Gould's Secret, playing the late and highly regarded New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, a Southern-born master of the magazine's famous profiles.

The film is based on two major pieces Mitchell wrote about a colorful and brilliant eccentric named Joe Gould.

Gould held a Harvard degree, had published articles in highbrow magazines, and was a friend of poets e.e. cummings and Ezra Pound. Still, he preferred to live his life through the 1930s and '40s as a Greenwich Village hobo.

"Down among the cranks and misfits and one-lungers and might-have-beens and the would-bes and the never-wills and the God-knows-whats ... I have always felt at home," he'd say.

He bummed drinks and food in taverns, accepted money for what he called "the Joe Gould fund" and dropped into parties where his biting, gadfly humor alternately amused and enraged people.

Gould also claimed he understood the language of seagulls and was translating Longfellow's Hiawatha into "seagull."

More important, Gould said he was compiling The Oral History of Our Time, a collection of interviews and observations that was millions of words long, written in composition books that he stored at various locations around New York City. It was his life's work, and he claimed it would be his legacy.

Obviously, the Gould role offers lots of juicy potential for a great character actor, and Tucci gave it to one of the greatest: Ian Holm.

The veteran English actor has played everything from an android (in the original Alien) to a foul-mouthed restaurant owner (Big Night) to a track coach (Chariots of Fire). But Joe Gould may be the pinnacle of this rich actor'scareer.

Holm captures the oddball charm, conniving wit, demented edges and sad realities of Gould. Never is Holm judgmental or sentimental, nor does he ever carve out an easy caricature.

His Joe Gould is easily the most affecting performance this year. Hopefully, he'll be remembered well into the next Oscar season.

Just as Mitchell put the spotlight on Gould in his writings, Tucci hands his film to Holm, performing admirably in support but never trying to upstage his movie's title portrait.