Jesus' Son. - Review - movie review

Interview, June, 2000 by Guy Flatley

Directed by Alison Maclean

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. Guy Flatley