Kevin Bacon takes his first step on the road to ubiquity in Paul Morrissey’s 1982 hustler hangout Forty Deuce, adapted from Alan Bowne’s 1981 off-Broadway play. Reprising his on-stage role, Bacon shambles and seduces as smooth-talking (and smooth-skinned!) hustler Ricky, the ostensible leader of a loose ensemble that includes titular Mike’s Murder star Mark Keyloun and a baby-faced Esai Morales. Lorded over by Fagin-esque pimp Augie, Ricky and his street brothers spend their days—and nights—cycling between dope scores, flophouses, and pick-ups. When Augie discovers a 12-year-old overdose victim in one of his rooms, it’s on Ricky to devise a disposal method that leaves them in the clear.
What begins as a straight-forward frame-up job spirals into a subterranean web of come-ons, touts, and schemes. The perfect mark arrives via Port Authority, where wealthy john Mr. Roper, played by 1950s game show mainstay Orson Bean, catches Ricky’s operating eye. Over the next 24 hours, Ricky and his partner-in-crime Blow (Keyloun) employ an irresistible combo of sex, drugs, and old-fashioned New York sechel to enlist their unwitting accomplice. Loosely plotted and performed, Deuce displays its theatrical origins proudly in a chamber setting fleshed out with slices-of-street-life, building to a dizzying split-screen finale reminiscent of Morrissey’s salad days on the Factory floor.
Featuring a finger-popping soundtrack by Afrobeat icon Manu Dibongo, of “Soul Makossa” fame, Morrissey’s maladapted character study doubles as an invaluable record of New York’s cruising heyday. Shot on location among its strung-out denizens, the lean and gritty group portrait marked the first of Morrissey and Bowne’s three collaborations before the playwright’s untimely death in 1989. Sharing the sleazy sobriquet of pre-Guiliani Times Square, Forty Deuce contains an ad-hoc glossary of bad-old-days’ street talk and vintage hustler slang. Despite screening in “Un Certain Regard” at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, the film took a backseat to Morrissey’s more palatable projects. Long-unavailable, save for the stray French TV rip, the darker-than-dark comedy finally gets its overdue revival this week in Metrograph’s posthumous tribute to Paul Morrissey’s filmography.
Forty Deuce screens tonight, August 12, and on August 15, at Metrograph on 35mm as part of the series “Leaving the Factory: Morrissey After Warhol.”
