Wirey Spindell

Wirey Spindell is the name of a character who is a thinly veiled fictional representation of the real-life writer-director Eric Schaeffer. Wirey Spindell is also played by Eric Schaeffer. If you're beginning to think that Eric Schaeffer is a little bit obsessed with Eric Schaeffer, you'd hardly be the first to voice that opinion. Often called “a poor man's Woody Allen,” Schaeffer's New York-centric stories are also semi-autobiographical tales about male figures looking for love, meaning, jokes, and stunning women amid the city's creative chaos. Schaeffer has repeated this narcissistic pattern in his three previous films -- My Life's in Turnaround, If Lucy Fell, and Fall -- but this time he's gone too far. Instead of writing a review of Wirey Spindell, it seems more appropriate to write a psychiatric evaluation of the character. For, indeed, this is one character who tells us much more about himself than we need, or really want, to know. The story takes place several days before Wirey's wedding to Tabatha (Thorne), a woman whom he concedes is the best thing that ever happened to him. Yet he's beset with prenuptial jitters and begins reflecting on the events in his life which got him to this point. It's a flashback history of a contrary childhood, drugs, booze, basketball, and sex. Each relationship is more self-absorbed than the one before, and why Tabatha would want to marry him remains an utter mystery. The story is a complete male fantasy about women who are dying to make love to him all night in college-dorm hallways or while overdosing on heroin or while cruising the corridors of grade school. Schaeffer needs to realize that there are few universals in his stories and way too many specifics, and it takes more than a weird name like Wirey Spindell to make a person really distinctive.