NOTES ON PIPE DREAM ( 2002)

As David(Martin Donovan) and Toni(Mary Louise-Parker) taunt each other across the park set location, they reverse the usual roles implied by their headsets. Instead of Toni barking commands to David, David challenges her characterization of his amorous adventure with Marlis (Rebecca Gayheart). Far from a disinterested observer, Toni's interference accompanies her role as the "ghost director" of Pipe Dream, the movie within a movie. She mocks David's rendez-vous with Marlis by letting her jealousy seethe to the surface. David's defense returns to the incontrovertible nature of a revelation gained while eavesdropping: she dismisses him as her plumber after a romantic encounter with him in her apartment. John Walsh's Pipe Dream (2002) describes the plumber's lament borne of his glaring mistreatment based on status. His agent customer can stare at him in the face and not even realize that he has met him previously on the movie set. For David, it is a bit of sweet revenge to overcharge his more well-to-do clients. But he continues to labor in the shadows. He wants rescue from his obscurity.

Not only does David labor among the unappreciative, he is condemned to the sludge and dank of plugged sinks and overflowing toilets. An obnoxious client asks him to tone down his racket while he works on her bidet. She tells him to take off his shoes as if he inhabits an underworld. When Toni has to suddenly leave the set, David hastily improvises the inspiration for Marlis from his experience as a plumber. He encourages her not "leak" in making connection with her co-star. His crude metaphor furthers his apparently lascivious intent in devising the script readings. Here, he seems to most intently beg for the agency of an authorial voice to guide his more benevolent impulses. At another point, he uses his knowledge as a plumber to extricate the crew from a sure disaster with the New York World's Fair Fountains. His motives seems transparent. He views life somewhat mechanically.

Toni's script is the perfect accompaniment to his pipe dream. A bevy starlets fawn over the supposedly European-trained director. The script can now permit the actresses to share their dreams with him, and he can probe their creative aspirations. He tells a reporter: "There's a naturalism to the romance in Pipe Dream. Even though the plot is pure farce, the characters are not." His grasps describes how these comic cinematic devices, the pipe dreams, do not interfere with the emotional vibrancy of the romance. David delivers his commentary with an intelligent confidence. But his insightful commentary is being fed to him by Toni. When he meets Marlis for Dinner, you almost expect Toni's lines to carry him through any emotional discomfort. Toni watches desperately from across the street. In a potentially embarrassing moment a plumbing customer reminds him of some work that needs further service. Marlis wonders about this confusing detail. He hastily recovers by convincing her that he simply teased her about a past as a plumber. She has gazed at him in horror at the possibility that he could actually be a plumber.

David's mistreatment is no less a dramatic device than Marlis's rather brittle naivete. When David asks her to imagine if she has lost her job as a technique to develop emotional identification with a scene, she literally believes that he is considering firing her and breaks down. Her literal-mindedness is a rather cruel exaggeration used for effect. Similarly, the actresses are no less than extras to David's visions. He collects their eight by ten glossies as the audience is enticed by the multiple facets of his fantasy. A truly carefree reading by Marina Peck, an accomplished actress, cannot attain the garish seductiveness of Marlis. Her acting technique is entirely wasted on David. Instead, he imposes his power to make the final casting decision for Marlis.

The movie scheme turns drastic when a television expose on plumber overcharges shows the "real" David. He brazenly wanders into the obvious sting. The audience assumes the role of condemning judge. Of course, the source of the judgement is the tawdry lighting of the expose. Marlis is also transformed by the lights of the film set. When David and Toni watch her on screen, she seems to have surpassed the bumbling novice and attained her star. It is the camera which separates the angels from dogs.

. The movie world provides David with the smooth transition from plumber to accomplished director. The audience craves the charming ease of the director David Koppelberg. Even when he is discovered, the camera returns to his apartment and give him a final reprieve. The romantic comedy longs for the new creative partnership. Toni is rehabilitated as director as only she has the assurance to relate her script to the actors. David is added as the crafts person and his insightful comments serve the perfect foil to her viewpoint.