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By STEPHEN HOLDEN
hen the handsome, blond title character of "The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name)" is first glimpsed in the film, he is sashaying bare-chested
through the streets of Greenwich Village flirting shamelessly with everyone who catches his eye.
Before long this smirking midnight cowboy (Thomas Jane) winds up in the vicinity of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where he rescues a drag queen fresh off the bus who has just been beaten up by some gay-bashing teen-agers.
He literally picks her up out of the gutter, slings her over his shoulder and strides off into the sunset.
These opening scenes set the panting, febrile tone of a movie that romanticizes Gary and his world of all-night doughnut shops and phone-sex office work to the nth degree. The bulk of the movie, which opens Friday, focuses
on Gary's relationships with Valentino (Vincent D'Onofrio), a shaggy-haired bisexual porn star who falls in love with him, and Mary Carmen (Salma Hayek), Valentino's clinging, hysterical sex fiend of
a girlfriend.
Although the movie, directed by Dan Ireland from a screenplay by James Still, is set in New York City, its real location is an erotically overheated never-never land where everyone stands around drooling enviously at the
two hunks who have found each other. The camera can't resist zooming in for extended, extreme close-ups of their entwining tongues.
The story takes a dark turn when Valentino collapses on the street and AIDS is diagnosed (although the word AIDS is never actually mentioned). There are many interminable scenes of Gary, Valentino and Mary Carmen squabbling
in hospital rooms and in the seedy apartment they share. But Still's dialogue is so hopelessly ham-handed and stagy that nothing they shout at each other sounds especially real.
At least "The Velocity of Gary" isn't afraid to be pretentious. As Valentino slowly expires, what book should his friends be reading out loud to him? Why, of course, the same book we would all wish to have
read to us on our deathbeds: Bram Stoker's "Dracula"! It's a metaphor, you see, for these demimondaines' insatiable appetites.
PRODUCTION NOTES
'THE VELOCITY OF GARY '
Directed by Dan Ireland; written by James Still; director of photography, Claudio Rocha; edited by Louis Colina; production designer, Amy Ancona; produced by Dan Lupovitz; released by Next Millennium Entertainment. Running
time: 100 minutes. This film is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sexual situations and strong language.
With: Salma Hayek (Mary Carmen), Vincent D'Onofrio (Valentino), Thomas Jane (Gary), Olivia d'Abo (Veronica) and Chad Lindberg (Kid Joey).
