The Substance of Fire (1996) is All Wet

By N.S.

(This is a very short, self-censored version of a review I started writing, hoping to post it as a customer review at imdb.com. But I eventually realized that already my title, “The Holocaust Meets the Stupid Jew Apocalypse: The Substance of Fire,” was going to get me blocked and banned.)

There’s very little I can say about this horrible picture without getting blocked and banned.

I saw it when it opened, after having read rave reviews in the papers of its 1992 stage version. The only thing good I can say is that Ron Rifkin (who had starred in the stage version) gives a bravura performance as the protagonist, in spite of having an underwritten, unsympathetic role to work with.

The other main characters I can recall were Sarah Jessica Parker, Tony Goldwyn, and Gramercy Park (the Park itself).

Rifkin’s character is the publisher of a small family imprint who recently lost his wife, and is sliding into senile dementia. He’s very rigid and short-tempered.

He is obsessed with publishing books nobody wants to read at exorbitant prices, and is driving himself out of business. His current obsession is a super-expensive, elegant Holocaust book.

(I have just read that he was a survivor. I did not recall that.)

Sarah Jessica Parker plays his daughter, a sperled-rotten, JAP feminist with her own kids’ TV show, reprising her role from the show.

Tony Goldwyn plays his openly homosexual son.

Neither of the aforementioned characters has any character. So, why did author Jon Robin Baitz include them?

Back when this show played on off-Broadway, it was before Mayor Giuliani ran the pornographers, prostitutes, and muggers out of Times Square. The Broadway audience derived from overlapping groups of Holocaust-obsessed Jews, JAP feminists (if you’ll pardon the redundancy), and openly gay Jewish men. The “characters” derived purely from Baitz’ marketing strategy. (Today, a substantial proportion of the audience consists of tourists looking to brag back home of the sophisticated, expensive sets and costumes they saw.)

Gramercy Park: The eponymous neighborhood is one of the most overpriced in Manhattan. What I learned from this, er, “thing,” is that every homeowner living around the Park gets a key to its locked gate.

Like the other characters, this one is never fleshed out.

If Jon Robin Baitz had any writing talent, he might have written characters and stories, instead of marketing niches.

I see, from reading previous reviews, that Timothy Hutton was also in the show, er, picture, playing the publisher’s non-homosexual son. I’ve liked Tim Hutton ever since I saw him in his Oscar-winning turn in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1981) in West Germany. He’s a handsome, Irish boy. (nota bene: I am an Irish Jew, as well as being Russian, Hungarian, German and Canadian.)

So, how does a Holocaust survivor who married a nice Jewish girl, have an Irish son?! That’s why I didn’t remember Hutton! What market niche was Baitz looking for with this brilliant idea?

No sale.

If I had told my Hungarian-born Nana (1893-1976), Mrs. Fanny Frank Simpkins, that the likes of Jon Robin Baitz would pass for “brilliant,” Jewish writing talent, she would have scoffed, and told me to stop talking such foolishness.

I could write a much better script than this, but it still wouldn’t be very good, so why bother?