C.O.G.

Best selling writer and humorist David Sedaris firmly refused to allow any of his novels/writings to be made into movies until now. I’m not sure if that is because  his humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating and often concerns his family life, or the simple fact he would hate the end result.  Now that he has relented and giving permission to newbie writer/director Kyle Patrick Alvarez to convert his essay ‘Naked’ into a full-length feature, I think after sitting through it, it will be a very long time before he allows this to ever happen again.

Grad student David is taking a long trip across country in a greyhound bus to lose/find himself in the back water of Oregon.  In the opening sequences we see some hilarious frenetic encounters with him and the assorted oddball travelers on the bus, but then it seems the moment he arrives at his destination, the director departs and the movie seems to be in totally different hands now.

David has these grand illusions that picking apples on a fruit farm alongside itinerant exploited immigrants is noble and will ground him after the pretentiousness of Yale.  Its none of these things except hard back-breaking poorly paid manual labour, so when the Farmer tells him about a better easier job at the apple processing factory he jumps at it to escape.  He also jumps out of the window in a panic when Curley a handsome fork truck driver who he has been flirting with, takes him home and shows him his collection of sex toys.

He runs off and ends up staying with a very creepy Born Again proselytizing recovering alcoholic Christian who had ‘found God’ after losing his leg in Desert Storm.  Jon puts David up for a while and trains him as his ‘apprentice’ so that he can help make jade wall clocks shaped like the map of Oregon that he hope will make his fortune.

When Curly comes looking for David to hit him up again (or just hit him) Jon realizes that David is gay, but to escape Jon’s wrath, he swaps homosexuality for finally becoming a C.O.G. (Child of God). It makes Jon happily momentarily, but not us in the audience as this  is one of the final weird plot twists that makes us lose faith completely

To give Mr Alvarez his due, he cast his movie very well. David (who called himself Samuel in Oregon) was played by Jonathan Groff (‘Glee’), Denis O’Hare (‘True Blood’) and the wonderful Dean Stockwell played the Farmer. But apart from a few comic and touching moments, the movie ends up  saying little/nothing and leaving young David exactly where he started i.e stranded in life.

Disappointing , flat and bordering on annoying. If it does ever find its way into a cineplex near you, I would suggest you stay home and read Sedaris’s essay instead.