Permanent Midnight (1998) – David Veloz.

Motormouth Hollywood scriptwriter Jeff Stahl's (Ben Stiller) reality bites deeper than he can cope with as his work, and frosty relationship with vapid studio exec partner Sandra are royally fubar'd by a rapacious dope habit. With a well-written text, and credible performances, this laudably unsentimental grunge-era Drugstore Cowboy drama is imbedded with a blackly funny, Bret Easton Ellis-inflected wit. Blandly beautiful, perfectly vacant Elizabeth Hurley is perfect casting as a status-hungry Hollywood animal, greazy electric loon David Greene is deliciously degenerated as Jeff's perma-tweaked drug connection, and Stiller is almost unrecognizable as the twitchy, doom-seeking scribe Stahl. This deliriously descending Hollyweird drug memoir proved unusually compelling, but I do have to deduct points for the blithely suggestive, entirely fallacious Zalman King artwork?? Like, what the proverbial F were they thinking????? I would have enjoyed seeing more of Garafalo, in the chastest possible sense, and sassy Maria Bello provided the wholly undeserved, witheringly lovely love interest for the increasingly beleaguered Stahl.