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The David Whiting Story or The Cesar Romero Joke By David EhrensteinThere's really nothing quite like The David Whiting Story or The Cesar Romero Joke. A collage mixing a dramatic recreation of a real-life event, an obscure television broadcast and a dramatization of a pivotal scene from Henry James' The Wings of the Dove, Walter Reuben's film might be likened to some avant-garde predecessors like Michael Snow -- particularly his magnum opus Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Denis Young) by Wilma Schoen) -- and George Landow (On The Marriage-Broker Joke ) But what makes Reuben's film different is the engaging way he's put these seemingly disparate elements together. David Whiting was a "personal assistant" to actress Sarah Miles who died during the making of the 1973 western The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, starring Miles and Burt Reynolds. Whiting, who was obsessed with Miles, committed suicide in a manner suggestive of an attempt on his part to make it look like murder and to blame Reynolds for the deed. Gone Girl avant la lettre,as it were. His nefarious plan didn't work, but the scandal dashed Miles' hopes of an American career, and ended her marriage to screenwriter Robert Bolt (they were remarried, however, in 1988).Reuben's film presents testimony from the inquest and a dramatic re-creation of how Whiting might have gone about doing himself in, with a variety of performers (Zachary J. Luna, Woolsey Ackerman, and C. Jerry Kutner) playing different parts. There's also a television interview with actor Cesar Romero, tacked on to the end of a "Saturday Night at the Movies" broadcast from the same period. This amiable but scarcely complex performer "seriously" discusses his craft to unintentionally comic effect.And then there's the The Wings of the Dove scene in which the characters "Kate Croy" and "Merton Densher" plot to inherit the money of the rich, dying "Milly Theale." All three elements are enacted several times with different parties playing different roles – and in the case of some scenes involving Lee J. Cobb,Mike Wallace, and Ayn Rand, with a performer playing a character playing a character. Sounds dizzying? Yes it is. But very entertainingly so, and in an increasingly moribund film world,remarkably refreshing.
