Every year, Hollywood publishes The Black List.
The Black List is a survey of the unproduced screenplays that are considered the “most-liked” by various studio executive and producers. It comes out the second Friday of December and it’s always the top news story for at least half the weekend. After the weekend, everyone promptly forgets about it.
Now, I will admit that some good movies have been made from Black List scripts. The King’s Speech, Hell or High Water, Argo, Promising Young Woman: they all appeared on the Black List. But, to be honest, I’m far more interested in the amount of forgettable and downright bad movies that appeared on The Black List, some of them often listed near the top of list. Anonymous, The Bucket List, Cedar Rapids, The Beaver, Broken City, The Ides of March: they all appeared on the Black List too. Appearing on The Black List is no guarantee of quality.
That’s bring us to Borderline. The screenplay for Borderline appeared on the 2020 Black List and evidently that appeared paid off because the script was put into production with screenwriter Jimmy Warden making his directorial debut. (Undoubtedly, it probably helped that Warden’s wife, Samara Weaving, agreed to star in the film.) The film was released in March of this year and, if you’re so inclined, you can currently watch it on Peacock.
Borderline takes place in the early 90s. Weaving plays a vacuous pop star named Sofia. Ray Nicholson plays Paul Duerson, who is obsessed with Sofia and believes that he’s destined to marry her. When we first see Paul, he’s stabbing Sofia’s head of security, Bell (Eric Dane), and then dancing around Sofia’s house. At the time, Sofia is out. However, when Paul returns 6 months later, Sofia is home. Paul somehow has managed to gather some crazy associates who are willing to work with him. Penny (Alba Baptista) is just as unstable as Paul and I’m going to assume that her character was meant to be an homage to Sandra Bernhard’s character in The King of Comedy. (Indeed, the film seems to owe a lot to The King of Comedy.) Sofia and a Dennis Rodmanesque basketball player named Rhodes (Jimmie Falls) finds themselves trapped by Paul and his fantasy of marrying Sofia.
It’s easy to see why this screenplay would get the attention of the studio execs who voted on the Black List. It mixes comedy, drama, and horror in a way that is very trendy right now. It also features a lot of crazed monologuing on the part of Paul. Unfortunately, as a director, Jimmy Warden doesn’t seem to know how to manage his own script’s frequent shifts in tone and the film itself drags to such an extent that it could almost be mistaken for a Project Greenlight film. (Seriously, remember The Leisure Class?) Add to that, the film features some remarkably bad acting. There are undoubtedly worst performance out there than Alba Baptista’s but I doubt I’m going to see more annoying one for a while.
For this film really to work, Paul would have to be at least interesting in his insanity. It’s possible to make a character like Paul compelling but having Ray Nicholson do an imitation of Christian Slater imitating Ray’s father Jack is not the way to go. Ray Nicholson bears a passable resemblance to Jack and he throws himself into playing Paul as being a nutcase. What Ray Nicholson doesn’t have is Jack’s screen presence. Ironically, that means that Ray Nicholson probably gives a pretty realistic performance as the type of anonymous loser who would fantasize about marrying his favorite singer but who wants to spend 90 minutes watching one of those people?
In the end, Borderline is another mediocre Blacklist film.
Through the Shattered Lens 