JESUS' SON ****

CAST: Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Holly Hunter, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper, Denis Leary, Will Patton, Mark Webber, Greg Germann, Denis Johnson

DIRECTOR: Alison MacLean

SCREENWRITERS: Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, Oren Moverma


By GUY FLATLEY

Patched together from Denis Johnson's collection of short stories set in the hot-sex-and-hard-drugs scene of the '70s, this quirky road movie manages to be simultaneously sad, hilarious, horrific, and haunting. As a stoned, perversely Christ-like scam artist whose efforts to play savior to his friends earn him the name of Fuckhead, Billy Crudup possesses the charisma from which stars are born. Samantha Morton hooks us, too, as his pregnant, heroin-happy sweetheart, and there are standout turns from Jack Black as a hallucinating hospital orderly, Holly Hunter as a surprisingly horny handicapped woman, and Dennis Hopper as a pill-popper whom Fuckhead meets in rehab.

An exhilarating tale of sin and salvation, “Jesus' Son” is the most unlikely miracle since the transubstantiation.

TO READ GUY FLATLEY'S 2002 INTERVIEW WITH BILLY CRUDUP, CLICK HERE; FOR GUY'S 1999 INTERVIEW WITH SAMANTHA MORTON, CLICK HERE; FOR HIS 2000 INTERVIEW WITH JACK BLACK, CLICK HERE; FOR HIS 1970 INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS HOPPER, CLICK HERE.