Actress-director Melora Walters wrote and directed this rough but performance-driven production about a celebrity author, Bob (James Le Gros), who wants to chuck everything that has made his career a commercial success and write a novel-length poem about a 9,000-year-old indigenous woman. The latter's bones are the only human remains coughed up by the La Brea Tar Pits, and at the rate, Bob is going with his alcoholism and general ill health, he's on his way to meet his ancient muse in the afterlife. Taciturn, self-indulgent, and generally miserable, Bob has a long-suffering agent, Bill (Dominic Monaghan), desperately trying to convince him not to change literary course (Bob's books have been a big hit in airport convenience stores). And he has two women in his life even more despairing than Bill: a loyal but exasperated assistant, Wil (Stacey Oristano), and his wife, an artist named Helen (Mira Sorvino). Walters' strictly linear approach to the story is broken up by near-subliminal nudes of women (Helen might be one) that fail to connect with whatever crazy-making romanticism is going on in Bob's troubled head. The film fails to take us into the ether of inspiration that has gripped Bob and accelerated his self-destruction, thus making it hard to care. Walters' handheld shaky camera adds a guerrilla filmmaking element that is out of sorts with the film's chamber-drama aspirations, making the world of the narrative unfortunately remote, not that these lapses really matter. The heart of the movie is the sensational performances by a near-unrecognizable Le Gros, Oristano, and especially Sorvino, who throws herself body and soul into Helen. The most sympathetic character here, Helen, presented by Walters as statuesque and divine, can't save the sinking ship that is her husband, let alone launch a thousand vessels in his writerly imagination, as any wife might wish. Lightly recommended. (T. Keogh)