A movie I actually want to see: Walker Payne

It is July, the middle of the summer, and although I love nothing more than a big dumb blockbuster--or, alternately, a small quiet art film--I've seen only a few films in the past few months and most of them have been really kind of awful, or at least disappointing. I walked out of the high school noir thriller Brick after losing my patience with its inane dialogue. I was disappointed with An Inconvenient Truth, although that may be because I learned about global warming 35 years ago in the first grade. In a fit of desperation I went to The Devil Wears Prada and had to deal with its self important lectures about how serious and important the fashion industry really is.

What I'd reallly like to see is Walker Payne, a film that apparently still doesn't have a release date. It stars Jason Patric as a poor man who needs to raise cash in order to maintain custody of his daughters. The website is a bit oblique about what it is that Sam Shepard gets Patric involved with in order to make fast money. But Julia Szabo has seen the film and reports it is really all about dogfighting. And that it is really, really good. So maybe if enough people go over the the Walker Payne site, someone will finally release it.

And here's a story on how the dog fights were safely faked for the film>