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Permanent Midnight is based on the 1995 memoir of the same name by Jerry Stahl, who rose to fame during the 1980's as a screenwriter for shows such as ALF, Moonlighting, and Thirtysomething. At the same time, he was wrestling with a drug habit.
Jerry (Ben Stiller) gets off on the wrong foot the minute he decides to move from New York to Los Angeles. Why? "To get away from drugs," he naively explains. His next misstep comes when he marries Sandra (Elizabeth Hurley), a script reader who needs to get a green card. After one of his scripts makes its way to her boss, Jerry suddenly finds himself with a high-paying job -and plenty of fuel for his growing habit.
The combination of that habit and an off-kilter imagination make for some interesting script ideas. To come up with them, though, Jerry needs a steady supply of drugs; he ends up shooting dope all day at the office, then cruising to L.A.'s less-than-stellar neighborhoods to get enough for the next day. He keeps the juggling act going for as long as he can, but when the balls come down, they take everything with them: his job prospects, his money, his health, and his family.
If you're expecting anything like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, forget it. Permanent Midnight differs from the adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's work in two respects: it's coherent and it's good. The hallucinations are kept to a bare minimum, so the film doesn't veer into "junkie-vision."
Stiller plays Jerry with just enough of an edge to make both halves of his role believable. He becomes a human pendulum, swinging from the world of high-powered agents and story meetings to the ratholes of the most pathetic junkies in no time. When he's trying to play it straight, all he can think about is his next fix; when he's shooting up, he does everything he can to function . A tough act, but Stiller makes it work.
Sandra can put up with a lot from her slowly self-destructing husband (this is Hollywood!), but eventually has to draw the line for her sake and her daughter's. Hurley projects that patient-up-to-a-point air very well. Maria Bello is commendable as a woman in rehab that Jerry meets, who knows where he's coming from.
David Veloz's direction might seem a bit erratic, moving at full speed for two-thirds of the film and then slowing down greatly for the rest. However, this approach drives home one of the side effects of drug addiction: time goes by at warp speed during a trip, slows to a crawl during the crash, and seems to stop dead when you're trying to kick. Jerry Stahl's life doesn't paint a pretty picture, but there's a lot to be learned from it.