Pizza Man

Stars: Bill Maher (House II, ACE award winner for his HBO comedy special), Annabelle Gurwitch (HBO's "Not Necessarily the News," "Tales From the Crypt"). Written and directed by J.D. Athens (a.k.a. J.D. Lawton, screenwriter of Pretty Woman and Under Siege), Pizza Man mines a rarely opened vein: political satire. Bill Maher stars as Elmo Bunn, pizza man. Known for never delivering a cold pizza and always collecting on the bill, Elmo gets caught up in a strange conspiracy when he delivers an extra large pizza with sausage and anchovies to a warehouse and doesn't get paid his $15.23. Set in Los Angeles during the summer of 1990, Pizza Man follows Elmo's attempts to get his $15.23. Along the way he encounters Ronald Reagan in the sack with Geraldine Ferraro, a very talkative Michael Dukakis, reporter Bob Woodward looking for a new book/movie deal, junk bond master Michael Milken as a janitor, Dan and Marilyn Quayle plotting to takeover America, and a new slant on Donald Trump's rise to economic power. While aping the conventions of the hard-boiled private eye flick (including the tongue-in-cheek voiceover narration), Pizza Man is loaded with lots of toppings in the way of political jibes, but the underlying crust is a little doughy. Audience: People who are politically savvy enough to get Pizza Man's numerous political jokes, are also people who have probably heard Mark Russell and Dennis Miller do it better.