Movie Reviews for Writers: Skin Deep

This is clearly Blake Edwards territory. Know that before you go in. It even has a gag with a glow-in-the-dark condom swordfight. But it’s so much more than that too, just like a Blake Edwards film. Beneath all the sex jokes it actually has something worthwhile to say. 

Zach, played by John Ritter at his comedy best, is a best-selling writer who has lost ‘it’ and can’t find his muse anymore. Granted, he’s too busy looking into the beds of random women and at the bottom of bottles of alcohol. 

The opening scene puts it all right out in front. It doesn’t hide anything. Zach is having sex with the woman who is cutting his hair when he is discovered by his mistress, who then is discovered by his wife, Alex. Bam. There it is. Pissed, Alex tosses his typewriter out the window. 

This sets up the single most important bit of dialog in the flick:

Zach: What have you got against my typewriter?
Alex: You used to write on it. Books and plays and movies. Once — once you wrote a poem on our second anniversary and gave it to me. And you were happy. You exorcised your demons with credible thoughts and good words on that typewriter and your talent turned me on. I really thought we had a chance “until death do us part.” And then one day you stopped. You gave up.
Zach: I dried up. It happens to writers.
Alex: Oh, so you bury yourself with the first young female that comes along, in the hopes she’s going to magically restore your lost talent? …
I threw out that typewriter because it represents everything that could have been loving and lasting, and wonderful, and everything that wasn’t.

There’s so much that can be unpacked from that exchange. 

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