The long-sought answer to the question of what ever became of Debra Winger, absent from the screen for seven years since the forgettable Forget Paris. Seems she married Arliss Howard, her co-star in the little-seen and badly named Wilder Napalm, and consented to play a part -- unflamboyantly -- in this vanity project directed and co-written by, as well as starring, her husband. The latter-- with considerably more flamboyance -- plays a divorced (from Winger), scurrilous, scrofulous, hard-drinking, part-time housepainter, who piles up mountains of rejected manuscripts, entitled White Girls with Black Asses and the like, in his quest to become an Emergent Southern Writer with a Distinctive Voice. (An excuse, of sorts, for the whimsically punctuated opening credits: the random comma, semicolon, hyphen, period, asterisk, what-have-you.) The soundtrack offers musical cues as to what's being aimed at: Steve Earle, Tom Verlaine, Tom Waits (but of course). The songs themselves, Earle's especially, get to the target in shorter order, and nearer the bull's-eye, and without the lethargy. Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette, Angie Dickinson. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd