1998 in Review: "Zero Effect"
This is the first in a year-long series of essays about the films of 1998, a crucial year in my evolution as a film lover. I didn’t see many of them in the theater—I was busy that year being a dumb, rambunctious senior in high school—but the following year I started collecting DVDs, and the films from 1998 were among the first that I bought and watched. And rewatched. And rewatched some more. In many ways, these are the films that formed me, and none more so than the one you’re about to read about. I present to you: Zero Effect.
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This much is true. Actor Bill Pullman and writer-director Jake Kasdan first met in 1987 during the filming of The Accidental Tourist, the Oscar-nominated drama directed by Jake’s father Lawrence. The elder Kasdan was kind of a big deal at the time, having written and directed The Big Chill and Body Heat, and co-written a couple of Star Wars movies. The Accidental Tourist was a smaller film, a character study of a man who has gone through life unable or unwilling to emotionally connect, a condition that worsens after the tragic death of his son. Eventually, he meets a woman who helps him open up and experience life, not just visit it. The main character, a writer of travel guides, is played by William Hurt. Pullman plays his editor. Jake has one line in the film as a teenager in a department store.
How did Kasdan (age 13 at the time) hit it off with Pullman (34), a rising star coming off a pretty decent one-two comedic punch of Ruthless People and Spaceballs? If you’ve ever been on a movie set, you know how much downtime there is for the actors. I picture young Kasdan and Pullman making chit-chat at the craft service table, and striking up a friendship. Maybe it was a meet-cute, with both of them reaching for the last club sandwich at the same time. Or maybe they just looked into each other’s eyes and knew it was meant to be.
Then at the end of the shoot, Jake comes up to Bill and says, “Mr. Pullman, when I make my first movie, I want you to be the star of it.” Bill smiles with that twinkle in his eyes and says, “Mr. Kasdan, when you make your first movie, I’ll be there.”
This is the kind of fantasy conjured by someone who worships the ever-loving hell out of Zero Effect, the first film by Jake Kasdan and featuring the best performance Bill Pullman has ever given. It was released on January 28, 1998. Dumped, in other words. Back then, January was a graveyard for films deemed unworthy of Oscar season and not flashy enough to fit in among the summer blockbusters. Often, they were films their studios had big plans for until they screened them, and decided not to bother with a heavily-marketed release.
Zero Effect had no business being in that category. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival the year before in the “Un Certain Regard” program for up and coming filmmakers. It was the debut of the son of one of the most popular filmmakers of the 1980s. It also happened to co-star Ben Stiller, one of the hottest young actors around. So why did it get dumped in January? I can only presume the person in charge of its release date didn’t get it. Which I understand. It’s a weird movie.
It doesn’t start that way, though. At first, it just seems like a conventional private eye movie about a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller) sits in the office of Gregory Stark (Ryan O’Neal), hyping up his boss to a prospective client. He regales him with his resume and a catalog of his skills (“He has a deeply nuanced and functional understanding of human behavior”). In between, Kasdan cuts to Arlo at a bar with his friend, complaining about the very same boss, telling him how he’s a recluse with no social skills, how rude he is, and how inexperienced he is in romance (“I don’t think he’s even kissed a girl. He’s like 35 years old”). It’s a brilliant way to set up both stories in Zero Effect. Yes, there’s a twisty mystery to solve. Stark’s case, which the detective eventually accepts, is a nasty one. But the real mystery is Daryl Zero (Pullman) himself, a man whose life is split in two. He’s the world’s greatest detective, who on the job is the “smoothest operator you’ve ever seen.” When he’s off work, he is too terrified of the world to leave the house, form a friendship, or even attempt to find a girlfriend.
It’s a remarkably economic storytelling by the precocious Kasdan that pays off in the next scene when we finally meet Zero at his fortress of an apartment. (Side note: I love a movie in which a powerful, eccentric character is talked about before we meet them, like Harry Lime in The Third Man.) Arlo finds Zero in his bedroom, dressed in Bermuda shorts, with an acoustic guitar strapped to his chest, and a goofy smile on his face. His hair is a greasy mess. He could be the lead of a Jim Carrey movie or some other zany comedy. True to Arlo’s previous description, he acts like a total asshole, insulting Arlo, ignoring the heavy workload he has burdened him with (When Zero asks him what day it is, Arlo squeaks back, “It’s Sunday!”), and bragging about his recent amphetamine use. In short, he seems like not a great guy.
I’m not going to go through the whole movie this way, but these first scenes are vital to understanding what Zero Effect is doing and how it’s doing it. We think we’re getting a wacky private eye comedy, but that’s just the beginning. Zero Effect isn’t just one thing. It’s a mystery. A very loose adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story, “A Scandal in Bohemia.” A buddy comedy between Arlo and Zero (A to Z). It’s a character study. A classic Generation X movie. And it is most definitely a romance.
Zero accepts the case, and travels to Portland, Oregon, where he begins his investigation. Do the details of the case matter? As with any mystery, yes and no. Stark is one of those monsters among us who looks and sounds like a reasonable man but actually has thrived by eating the souls of those who threaten him. He’s old money. Timber money. Who knows how many spotted owls he has murdered? Now he’s being blackmailed for something else he has done, although he refuses to tell Arlo what it is. O’Neal is wonderful here, all sweaty desperation, and brilliantly cast. Without giving away too many details, I’ll tell you that Zero Effect is a film about bad fathers, and O’Neal is one of the most famous bad fathers in Hollywood history (and it’s a long list). It’s fascinating to see him receive his reckoning.
Stiller is equally great. It’s strange to see him in a supporting role in this little film, but he was hardly established as a leading man at this point; There’s Something About Mary came out later in 1998. Still, he channels all his Gen X angst into his portrayal of Arlo, the aggrieved sidekick. When asked by his friend why he works for such a jerk of a boss, Stiller’s frustrated response: “I quit my law firm, I didn’t know what to do, and one day, I get this message on my machine. He watched me argue a case in court. Said I was the only person for the job.” He plays Arlo as a man searching for something, rejecting the world he inherited from his parents but still unable to escape his need for a father figure. In the hands of Stiller and Kasdan, a stock part becomes a rich character and an essential part of the film’s emotional texture.
More could be said about its cast. As Gloria Sullivan, Kim Dickens is the toughest, cutest kidnapper you’re ever likely to come across, and while Zero solves the mystery early, his affinity for her keeps the case and the story going. Dickens makes it feel warranted. “There’s a definite intensity about her,” he says to Arlo, and we know he’s stricken by love before he does. There is also a roster of wonderful faces in small roles—shoutout to Sarah DeVincentis, who plays Daisy the receptionist at the fitness club and matchmaker for Zero and Gloria—and even silent background work. On the DVD commentary track, Kasdan spoke about casting all the small parts with local actors. Years before Portlandia, he recognized a thriving arts scene full of weirdos and made it part of the film’s visual character.
The film, however, belongs to Pullman, who gives a marvelously restrained performance full of grunts and grimaces, while steering his character’s evolution from wacky private eye to romantic hero. We never know quite why Zero falls for Gloria. It’s not like she is his equal, at least it doesn’t seem that way at first; he’s a better detective than she is a blackmailer. I dunno. He just loves her from the minute he meets her, and as he lingers in her life for much longer than he should, his coiled soul slowly begins to unfurl.
On the job, he is still cool and detached. With Arlo, he’s still an angry wreck of a man. But with Gloria there’s a calmness that seems genuine, not just an act to get through the situation. And miraculously, she sees it, too. As they gently court each other, she locates and extracts his true self. She coaxes him to put aside his fears about the world. And the film becomes something far different, far more complex, far richer than what it promised. In the climactic scene—I’d call it the climax, even though it has little to do with the plot— Gloria and Zero sit at a diner, sharing a milkshake like lovestruck teenagers. She asks him a personal question, and he recoils. “I know I’m prying,” she says. “But what can I say? I’m prying. I want to know about you.”
I won’t spoil what Zero reveals in this scene. I’ll let him tell it. On the one hand, it’s a clever way for Kasdan to reveal Zero’s backstory without it feeling like exposition. On the other hand, this is the whole point of the movie. It’s not exposition. It doesn’t get us to another plot point. His willingness to open up to another person is a major turning point in his life, and a rejection of the defense mechanism that has so far earned him lots of money and an enviable reputation but has been entirely wasted because he was unable to share it with anyone. For once, he is not observing the world. He’s living in it.
Which is a long way of saying that Zero Effect has a lot in common with The Accidental Tourist, another film about a man whose personality is defined by his job. The more I sit with this movie, the more I think Kasdan is in some way talking about his own father, who at the time was, like Zero, considered the greatest in his field. In fact, the relationship between Arlo and Zero often feels like that of a father and son. And I wonder if Jake ever saw his famous father behave one way to the public and another way at home and was frustrated by it, and maybe this film is his way of speaking to his father about it, or maybe just processing it in the way that all artists do.
And then I wonder if the reason I love this film so much is because my father was just like that. Sometimes I think the difference between a very good film and a great one is simply how much we personally connect to its themes. My father was beloved to his friends, his girlfriends, and his work colleagues, and admired even more by strangers. He was a fantastic conversationalist, as long as it was what he wanted to talk about. It wasn’t uncommon for people to meet him and leave thinking they’d just had the best conversation of their life. He was a gregarious presence. Quick-witted and a great listener. The smoothest operator you’ve ever seen.
Except he wasn’t that way with me. Or he was, and then he wasn’t. He was split in two. Ya know, it’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell it to you one day over a milkshake at a diner.
Until then, watch Zero Effect.