Ray Pride

Mark Moskowitz has spent twenty years making political campaign commercials. In his first feature, "Stone Reader," he's on-camera as much as anyone. Let us consider him a "character" in his narrative, and let me say that I don't like the character he plays. He's sternly square, with frumpy sweaters, a busy mustache and a tendency to show himself on screen thumping objects down a little too hard, raking the leaves in his yard with a small, pissy fury. He reads books. In just over two hours, we will discover how many. (Moskowitz even ends his hosanna to the love of lit with a reading list, prissily listing Shakespeare by his signature, "Sks.")He's fixated on one, first novel published in 1972, "The Stones of Summer" by Dow Mossman. He didn't finish reading the book until 1999. He went looking for Mossman's other work. It didn't exist. And no one had heard of Mossman. If we believe the neat structure of "Stone Reader," Moskowitz, between work and family commitments, takes over a year to build a highway of 16mm film stock that leads him, clue by clue, across ten states, toward Mossman's phantom. It's a remarkable feat, actually, a portrait of overweening narcissism that outdoes Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore, yet can bring you to tears and shocked laughter at how many insights the story holds. It's probably the most cruddy-looking movie that I would be tempted to call a small masterpiece. We hear from the likes of the late literary critic Leslie Fiedler, veteran books editor Bob Gottlieb ("Catch-22" is among his babies) and writer Frank Conroy. The love of writing, books and the lore of writer's lives resonates throughout, as does the irony that Mossman may have been a one-off writer who poured his soul into one tome, and Moskowitz may well be a one-off documentary-maker. "

"Stone Reader" opens Friday at Facets.

(2003-07-09)

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