Caliquivocation

Originally posted October 1, 2007.

Transplanted New Yorkers Karen (Natascha McElhone) and her ex-partner Hank (David Duchovny) contemplate their new life in Los Angeles, with shades required.

Californication

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

I like the new Showtime series Californication, but I’m not sure why. At the beginning, Hank Moody (subtle!), played by former X-Filer David Duchovny, was so pricky that one wondered what the creators were up to. Anti-hero: sure, but it seemed clear that we were supposed to like him (and that women, including his ex, for all her protestations, couldn’t resist him). And then there were all those breasts jiggling above him in medias coitus. Was this just an intellectual soft-porn show for pricky men? Hank delighted in insulting his sex partners, saying weird, almost old-fashioned things like “Consider yourself defiled” (or was it “violated”?). And then he blindsided a blind date, a friend of his agent’s wife, by derogatorily sizing up her background, based on nothing but a pleasantry or two from her (and you got the feeling that he was supposed to be, somehow, spot-on).

Which brings me to another problem with the show: it keeps stealing from movies. Hank’s instant character assassination of that unfortunate date has to derive directly from the scene in Annie Hall in which Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), nervous before his stand-up act at Columbia University, takes a look at Allison Portchnik (Carol Kane) and does the same kind of synopsis, only without the snideness and with an admission that he’s acting imbecilic. (“No, that was wonderful,” she replies. “I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.”) Also, unless it’s common in L.A. for women to stand naked in front of men and ask for a sober appraisal of their body—in Californication this happens twice—the writers have borrowed from Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing as well. Moving along, in the third episode, Hank’s agent (played by the ever reliable Evan Handler, Charlotte’s Jewish love on Sex and the City) gets an S&M thing going with his assistant—or should I say Secretary?

The show’s rogue protagonist also gets away with some ridiculous antics, such as stealing an extremely valuable painting—hello, Hank? Does the word larceny ring any bells?

All that aside, there’s something very engaging about the show. For one thing, it holds good writing in esteem. We’re constantly told what a genius Hank (currently suffering from that famous disorder writer’s block) is, and though the passages we hear—from a blog he reluctantly agrees to do for an L.A. magazine, as though blogs had not become an accepted form of expression for writers from James Wolcott to Jane Smiley (and, hey, me!)—aren’t exactly brilliant, they’re occasionally evocative and even moving.

Also, lately Hank has become more of a good guy (focus groups unhappy with the anti-Christ?). I was glad when the maligned blind date reappeared, in that TV way where people always run into people, and Hank offered a true apology and started seeing her (with nary a breast in sight for what Nancy Franklin, in The New Yorker, called the ta-ta cam). In addition, despite his own transgressive ways (his ex tells him he’s drowning “in a sea of pointless pussy,” a phrase deemed so good Hank resurrects it for us in voice-over), Hank attempts to save his agent/friend’s marriage—in the only way he knows, by suggesting maybe his wife is as much a “dirty girl” as his assistant (and within another episode or two, she is). As perhaps a safety catch, Hank has an adolescent daughter, an aspiring rocker with gothic bangs, that he is crazy about and always tries to do right by; and his ex’s pompous fiancé appears to have no redeeming value other than making Hank seem great in contrast, even to the man’s teenage daughter (whom, oops!, Hank has slept with before learning of her age and paternity). Also, Hank is played by Duchovny, whose slightly off good looks (the lower lip and short chin somehow bespeak both poutiness and detachment) and innate intelligence and in-on-the-joke-ness prevent him from being truly villainous.

So this is the balancing act the show now seems to be trying to perform: How far can this contemporary Ginger Man—an allusion Hank would need to explain to most of his young conquests—go while still remaining lovable as well as edible?

And how long will it take for Hank and the series itself to find a unique voice?

Hank Fakes It All

This post originally ran October 13, 2009.

Hank Moody (David Duchovny), of Californication, with his novel, now published by Simon & Schuster.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

What to make of God Hates Us All, the new—and yet not—novel by, um, Hank Moody. Moody, as you may know, is a Californian-by-way-of-New-York, often blocked writer whose reputation as a brilliant bad-boy novelist rests on God (which was made, to Moody’s soul-blighting horror, into a sappy romantic comedy starring Tom Cruise). And, oh yeah, Moody is fictional, the protagonist of Showtime’s series Californication. The red-white-and-black cover of Moody’s novel has shown up on a few of the series’ episodes, most notably one in which he’s about to give a reading at L.A.’s famous bookstore Book Soup when—naturally, Hank being Hank—he gets into a fight with a man whose wife (ex-wife? it’s hard to keep Hank’s women straight) he’s slept with.

Now God Hates Us All, published by Simon & Schuster, is in real bookstores—is this meta enough for you?—no doubt including Book Soup, complete with that familiar front cover and back-cover copy stating that it’s “a wry literary masterpiece.” Well, who can argue? It’s a bit like the time country singer Garth Brooks took on the persona of rocker Chris Gaines, forcing Katie Couric—though she couldn’t suppress an embarrassed smile—to ask him questions about his devastating (fictional) car accident on the Today show. Next Hank Moody will show up on David Letterman to commiserate about their sexual escapades (hey, Hank, new book title: The Sex Capades). Throw in that David Duchovny, who plays Moody, confessed a while back to being an Internet-porn addict, a problem he (coincidentally?) shares with Charlie, Moody’s agent and best friend, and even your avatar’s head may start to spin.

Curiously, there’s another name attached to God, but only on the title page, and it’s connected to a “with”: Jonathan Grotenstein. Yes, apparently Moody, being essentially nonexistent, needed a little help to write his book, which he received from Grotenstein. I’m going to assume they met at a poker game, because although Simon & Schuster does not acknowledge Moody’s “with” on its Web page for the book, a site search does reveal a Jonathan Grotenstein as the co-author of a book called Poker and subtitled—wait for it—The Real Deal. (I couldn’t find a reference to God on any Web page or profile for Grotenstein, and Showtime holds the copyright.)

So what is the real deal? As “Heather” succinctly posted in a review on God’s Amazon page (#8,069 at the moment, and you know Hank is checking his number, even if he doesn’t let on), “This novel wouldn’t receive the same level of recognition in the real world as within the show, but it’s not bad.” I read it in an afternoon while zonked out on the couch with a virus, and appreciated its easy style. It pretty much zips along like a little Match car, not really doing anything important (belying its nihilistic title) but nonetheless keeping the reader entertained. Unfortunately, its story—confused young man in N.Y.C. with plenty of drugs and a dying mother—can seem like watered-down Jay McInerney, and the Chelsea Hotel scenes pale to vapor in comparison to those in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a true literary masterpiece.

But what does “true” have to do with it? Just as in Moody’s world every single woman—even if she’s married—who comes in contact with him is ready to have sex within about five minutes, in his world every book he writes will be “wry,” hip, and as cool as he is, no matter what the publishers, critics, or anyone else thinks. He may be a bad boy, but his fictional nature guarantees that he will never write a bad book.