.Directors: JACKIE & KERRY DONELLI

Still Reeling
Director's View Film Festival is Back for a Fifth Installment, Loaded with Star Power and Little Guys by Brita Brundage - February 12, 2004

Titillating Steven:
Directed by Jacqueline & Kerry Donelli, L.A. 83 min.

I like the cartoonish low-budget feel of this modern day comedy of errors. A pair of twins, Sherry and Jane, have given up scholarships to work as waitresses in Hollywood and risk a movie career. They write a screenplay and are determined that famous director Steven "Spielstein" will direct it. When flamboyantly gay next-door-neighbor Brian stops by with old fruitcake (literally), they gain a friend to share in their series of rejections and desperate attempts at making it. Every guy in the biz is appropriately sleazy--short or fat or greasy--and expecting much more than talent. At auditions they are groped by overacting slobs, and drooling men slither over them during various waitressing excursions. At a diner spot where they pick up a job they meet the hard-talking chain-smoking Lily who seizes upon their screenplay idea and says, "We're gonna titillate the pants off this Steven Spielstein." Lily convinces them they have to fine-tune the product they are selling--themselves--so they start working out furiously, putting on blonde wigs, posing for pictures. As in every great comedy nothing goes right, and the timing is kept to a clip, making this a truly fun movie-watching experience. I actually laughed out loud.