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What’s
Wrong With Dorfman?
Something is definitely wrong with screenwriter Martin A. Dorfman, but what?
Is he a hypochondriac? In the throes of a mid-life crisis? Has the wolfpack of
Hollywood agents, development executives, and producers he has to deal with
finally driven him over the edge and into the snake pit?
His therapist thinks his illness is psychosomatic, with roots in a childhood
spent endlessly lathering his hands at the insistence of his
obsessive-compulsive father—a doctor who sent his son off to college with
photos of syphilitic penises to encourage abstinence. (Martin’s mother
eventually solves the problem of living with Dr. Felix Dorfman by succumbing to
mysterious illnesses and life-threatening accidents, thus realizing his fears in
the most gratifying way and giving him something to do in his retirement.)
None of the above, insists Martin. There is something physically wrong with him—something
the medical professionals are duty-bound to identify and cure.
It’s true he’s a mass of symptoms, but Martin Dorfman is so damn funny that
you’re tempted to write off his agony to undiagnosed Henny Youngmanitis or
Woody Allenosis. Author John Blumenthal makes Martin’s litany of physical
ailments and their possible underlying causes—diseases terminal, crippling, or
merely disfiguring—into an unlikely source of riotous humor.
The story bounces back and forth between Martin’s current-day quest for a cure
(or even a diagnosis), and flashbacks to his unexamined childhood. His
increasing desperation leads him to every medical diagnostic test known to
mankind: MRIs, CRTs, blood tests, urine
analysis, colonoscopies, you name it. When modern medicine fails him, he tries
Chinese herbs, chiropractic, hypnosis, he contemplates suicide—in short, he
does everything but join a cult.
Meanwhile, each time Martin is about to make a breakthrough with his therapist,
whenever he comes close to expressing his true feelings about his parents or to
uncovering some pivotal event in his past, he looks up at the clock and what
do you know? His hour’s up.
Who would have thought that a trip through someone’s private hell could be so
entertaining? The witticisms jump out at you like muggers around every corner.
You’ll be desperately trying to remember them when you close the book, in case
you should ever need a snappy comeback to a proctologist who’s pitching you
his screenplay as he greases up the latex glove.
As you may have guessed, Martin’s quest is a thinly veiled search for meaning,
or at least for some kind of accommodation to life. And what’s at the end of
the journey? A cure? Self-knowledge? God…? (Whom Martin refers to as “my
Maker, i.e., Him.”)
Suffice it to say that he arrives at some sort of resolution. He even offers up
a stunning bit of philosophy at the conclusion which I will not spoil for
you, but which is as eloquent a statement of the human condition as I have ever
read.
The bottom line on What’s Wrong With Dorfman?: It’s a comical howl in the wilderness by a turn-of-the-millennium everyman that will have you rolling on the floor. You gotta read it. Jennifer Colt is the author of The Butcher of Beverly Hills: A Screwball Mystery Featuring Kerry and Terry McAfee.
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