Rhinoceros Eyes

Directed and Written by

Aaron Woodley

Starring: Michael Pitt, Paige Turco, Gale Harold, Matt Servitto and James Allodi

Rated R for language, some sexuality, drug use and violent images

92 minutes runtime

USA Release Date: April 23, 2004

Michael Pitt plays Chep, a troubled warehouse worker adrift in a fantasy world of cinema swirled with life, obsessed by the desire to please an apparition of love, Fran, played by Paige Turco.  Pitt (Murder by Numbers, Dreamers) continues his cinematic context from Bertolucci's "Dreamers" in this fantastic story of a boy growing up and discovering the difference between the screen and real life, but not before going through some hair-raising initiations at his own hand, and the hands of others.

Like Bob Fosse's angel of death in “All That Jazz” (Jessica Lange), Fran appears to Chep as if in a dream.  Asking him a big favor and promising him eternal devotion if he will do her bidding.  The big favor is that she needs a very special prop for a movie she's working on.  She is the art director and the movie is over budget and so she can't really pay much, if anything.  But she would be eternally grateful if he could only provide her with....a pair of rhinoceros eyes.

Since the audience has already witnessed ten or fifteen minutes of Chep sleeping in beds of mannequin arms and finding a 50 pound cherry in five minutes inside a warehouse apparently the size of Rhode Island, we are not surprised when Michael replies that he does, indeed, have the requested rhino eyes.  But he adds that it will take special efforts to get them (they are in use on the set of a porno movie).  Nonetheless, he sneaks onto the set of the of the movie starring Betty Bumcakes, and successfully steals the eyes, and the show as well.

Chep is an idiot savant, explains the prop store proprietor Bundy (Matt Servitto) to detective Phil Barbara (Gale Harold).  He is very good at what he does, which is to work in the warehouse and memorize the locations of the 50 pound cherries and the rhino eyes.  In fact, he doesn't just work there; he lives there--sleeping amongst the mannequins and facades, the crosses and the overstuffed furniture, and the loose flotsam and jetsam that occasionally take on a life of its own, at least to Chep.

His only exposure to the real life outside the warehouse is the theatrical fighting of the neighbors across the street, who he spies on when he hears their stage lines being recited along with some very real flogging and breaking of china, and the girl at the ticket booth at the cinema, where he goes almost every night to see the same movie, a romance set in the 30s where the studly star struggles to express his love to the beautiful, but unattainable, goddess that is his female lead.

The girl in the ticket booth falls in love with Chep, but comes to learn that he is on a different path.  She is no more able to have him than the star in the movie can have his costar.  After all, there are rules, and there is duty.  Chep is being called by a higher order, and Irish wooden prosthetics requested by his angel, Fran, must come before the favors of the girl next door.  He breaks into the house across the street, in the middle of one of the never-ending, always repeating fight scenes, dodges the blood and does what he has to do.  Successfully avoiding capture and reality at the same time.

An invitation to a Halloween night on the town by Bundy and his pal Hamish (James Allodi) leads to a costume for Chep and an altercation with four monkeys.  Well, not exactly monkeys, but gorillas, silver-backs, we are reminded by Hamish.  The gorillas apparently know their bananas better than Bundy, for they break his arm and he swears revenge, tracking them down through their rented gorilla costumes, taking a prop shotgun to their fraternity house, and returning with a treasure trove of oddities to add to the warehouse.  But trouble is brewing at the warehouse.  Reality is closing in slowly on Bundy and Hamish, who are beginning to suspect that doing absolutely nothing in the way of work might be catching up with their balance sheet.

In the meantime, things are not going well for Chep, who is approaching a crossroads.  Detective Barbara has begun to put two rhino eyes together with one prosthetic arm and is not just getting Betty Bumcakes as the bottom line, but Chep, a sheep in Tor Johnson's clothing.  And Fran, rather than coming through with the promised favors for her knight in psycho armor, is raising the ante on the already Herculean tasks she sets for her suitor.  When the final prop, a human first digit, severed and preserved in a jar, is named, Chep is forced to think fast or be fingered by Detective Barbara.

A classic blackest of black comedies, “Rhinoceros Eyes” has its funny points as Chep's all-to-human foibles are blasted across the silver screen.  Who of us has not fallen for the beautiful and unobtainable, only to serve our time running from our guilt?  If we have no eyes, arms or lives other than those we steal from others, what do we have to give back in return?

A well-acted movie, and certainly a great look at Michael Pitt, an actor who we will see a lot more of in the future.  The movie is filmed almost entirely either indoors or in the dark, which denies the viewer any sense of worldly reality whatsoever.  This is a great movie for those who like fantasy; because they can make any fantasy they want out of the bizarre backdrops that form virtually every scene.  A bit slow at times, the movie drags through some scenes.  But others more than make up for it.  If you miss the days when Johnny Depp was playing roles like Edward Scissorhands, don’t miss “Rhinoceros Eyes.”  Michael Pitt can be quite a cut-up himself when he sets his mind to it.