Joe Gould's Secret

Stanley Tucci's development as a filmmaker continues...slowly but steadily...in reverse. Big Night, co-directed with Campbell Scott, was a low-key gem; The Impostors was slight but amusing; and Joe Gould's Secret is a fairly inert bit of Americana. It's the fact-based story of the relationship between 1950's New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell (Tucci) and one of his more fascinating subjects: Joe Gould (Ian Holm), a Harvard-educated homeless man said to be working on a million-word-long oral history of the people of New York. The eccentric Gould makes for just as interesting a character today as 40 years ago, but Tucci just never seems to know exactly what to do with that character. He fiddles with analogies between Gould and Mitchell as deliberate writers and human chroniclers; he toys with notions of celebrity; he nods at the fine line between artistic genius and madness. And that's about all he does with any of his themes, leaving the story to drift along in search of a point. Mostly Tucci indulges Holm, who sometimes does find the sad soul of the flamboyant, exhibitionist Gould (and other times just lets loose in a showy role). While Tucci occasionally makes the kind of interesting filmmaking choices that show what he's capable of, too often I found myself wondering about Campbell Scott's contributions to Big Night. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)