Product Description

Movie star Gray Evans (Giovanni Ribisi) is at the top of his game: a seemingly endless supply of money, celebrity friends (Vince Vaughn), parties, a beautiful wife (Franka Potente)…and his name and image, known all around the world.

But with fame and fortune comes attention, and not always the kind that is wanted. Convinced that the ‘chance’ encounters that he has been having with his fans are not really coincidental, he looks to his bodyguard (Jared Harris) and a video store clerk (Joshua Jackson) for help – despite the protests of those around him. Is he truly paranoid, as they suggest? Or are they motivated by jealousy and spite? Has he found himself in the crosshairs of an obsessed fan…or is it someone much closer to him? Will one of the top movie stars in the world be able to survive, when he doesn’t even know who - or what- he is up against?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56612 in DVD
• Brand: THINKFILM LLC
• Released on: 2006-03-28
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

Features

• The achingly hip I LOVE YOUR WORK arrives with trappings familiar to any keen-eyed independent film fan. With a cast that includes Giovanni Ribisi (LOST IN TRANSLATION) and Franke Potente (RUN LOLA RUN), a big-star-in-a-cameo-role appearance (in this case, Vince Vaughn), and the by now obligatory roles for people you wouldn't expect to see in such a movie (Jason Lee, Elvis Costello), Adam Gold

Amazon.com
Filmed like an art-house project, I Love Your Work offers thoughtful insight to fame from both the celebrity's and the fan's points of view. When you're a celebrity, every fan is a potential stalker. Or at least that's how movie star Gray Evans (Giovanni Ribisi) sees it. An A-list actor married to a sex symbol, Gray wants to see things clearly in black and white. But his world is a cloudy haze of gray. Are his flashbacks of a comely girlfriend (Christina Ricci) hallucinations or memories of a simpler, happier time? Are his encounters with a stoic fan (Jason Lee) the prelude to his demise, or the manifestation of his paranoia? Director Adam Goldberg doesn't make this clear, but that's also clearly his intent. The drama offers a charismatic performance by Franka Potente (Run Lola Run, The Bourne Identity) as Gray's frustrated wife. But Ribisi--at his twitchiest--is an unconvincing movie star, appearing more like a run-down wannabe than a full-fledged insider. I Love Your Work? Not so much. --Jae-Ha Kim

Hollywoodreporter.com, Martin A. Grove
"Intense story that Goldberg tells very effectively hammering home the blinding glare of the media spotlight that stars must endure."

Slantmagazine.com, Nick Schager
"The filmmaker sporadically finds a clever means of blurring the line between reality and silver screen illusion."

Customer Reviews

It had potential; I'll give it that
The last time I saw the names "Adam Goldberg" and "Giovanni Ribisi" together, they were two American Soldiers who perished while trying to save a certain Private Ryan.

Goldberg co-wrote and directed this contemporary psychological drama that has all the ingredients for a great finale but gets left in the oven too long. At times towards the end I was thinking it could have been something perhaps similar to "Memento" or something of that nature. What this film gives you is a plethora of cross analyzing ideas meshed with real time parallels, that ultimately bogs down in a mosh of messy execution. Some of the biggest points and profound themes that it spends so much time getting to in a bizarre and confusingly intricate way are so simplistic they leave you yawning. Despite a stellar cast that besides Rabisi also features Jason Lee, Christina Ricci, Vince Vaughn, Haylie Duff and Elvis Costello, it gets to far out of the main points of what it is trying to convey.

Rabisi stars as Gray Evans, a movie star actor who is having marital trouble. Gray starts thinking amid his days of working on the set, going through fan email, and getting bugged by people, that a fan is stalking him. Relentless in his obsession of this belief, he starts obsessing about others around him. Great ideas here but then the film basically spends too much time zigzagging around to all the different characters and locales. We understand that Gray seems to have a connection with a film grad who is also a fan and is suspected by him at one time, of being the stalker, but by the time 100 minutes roles by it gets to the point of not caring. The ideas are there, I just feel it was a bit over ambitious in the portrayal of it all. The sections that are supposed to be psychological really come off more like psycho confusing, and the parts that are to be rewarding in tying up loose ends towards the films finish end up falling flat.

If you like Independent films, or want to try something different, by all means give it a try. I don't see it as being something I would watch again, or have in my collection for killing time on a Sunday afternoon with.

I don't love your work
Oh joy. Another movie about how tough it is to be famous, rich and liked.

Actor/director Adam Goldberg's "I Love Your Work" attempts to tackle that subject, but the "poor little rich actor" storyline merely ends up feeling self-indulgent and whiny. Several of the actors are talented, but most of them -- except for star Giovanni Ribisi -- are misused.

Gray Evans (Giovanni Ribisi) is famous, rich and miserable. He married Mia (Franka Potente) after seeing her in a French film, but their marriage is crumbling because he thinks she's cheating with Elvis Costello, who is friendly with Mia. Distraught, Gray ends up in a video store, where he becomes fascinated with a young video store clerk (Joshua Jackson) and his loving girlfriend (Marisa Coughlan).

As his sanity begins to crumble, Gray stalks the couple, and starts to have visions of an ex-girlfriend (Christina Ricci) who reminds him of a happier time. He begins to reimagine his past, pre-fame life through the clerk and girlfriend, and soon the world of sanity is beginning to fade away.

Perhaps this movie would be more palatable if it hadn't been done by an actor. In the hands of someone like Wes Anderson, this movie would have been brilliant, dark and understatedly satirical. From Goldberg, it just seems self-indulgent. It has nothing new to say, and it doesn't add any sparkle to the old stuff.

And while Goldberg tries hard to make this a dark satire, he takes his Big Message too seriously. It starts off well, with Gray teetering on the edge of insanity, and imagining that everybody is watching, touching and pursuing him. For a short time, it has the elements of a lightweight Fellini movie.

But after the first half hour, Goldberg goes wild with the camera tricks and the plot. He's trying so hard to be arty and insightful, that he ends up almost making the film a parody of itself. And not a good parody either. It aspires to be a bizarre, surrealist experience like "Mulholland Drive." But it's too unfocused and self-conscious to even come close.

It doesn't help that Gray is not somebody we're going to care about. He's egotistical, self-absorbed, suspicious and whiny. And for all his complaints about his terrible life, it never seems to cross his mind to do the obvious thing. Quit acting. Retreat from the limelight. Maybe he secretly likes complaining.

Ribisi is definitely the center of the film, and his turn as a crazed movie star is wonderfully unsettling. Yes, it really is that weird, even though Gray is such an annoying character. Potente isn't required to do much more than sit there and look glamorous, but Ricci is brilliant in her small role as Gray's nebulous ex.

If you want to see navel-gazing, then "I Love Your Work" might be the ticket. But for anyone looking for clever, ingenious, entertaining filmmaking, look for someone else's work to love.

Some things are best left unexamined!
This movie is to film and celebrity what watching a colonoscopy is to medicine. We all want good medicine, but some things are best left unwatched. Somewhat quirky and interesting at first, this movie turns into a redundant and confused two-by-four in the back of the head, an unflinching look at one sad hollywood story of a twitchy drunk with a serious inferiority complex complicated by delusions of non-grandeur in full melt-down. Giovani Ribisi is not at his "Boiler Room" best as this annoying self-loather who can get into all the best bars but can't get in with his wife or over his old girlfriend, who he hated for being between him and fame anyway, which now makes him so touchy. By the end I was so glad to see it end, at least I felt better about my life. For a better look at the celebrity/movie industry madness thing try "Swimming with Sharks" and "The Player". At least they did not forget to entertain the viewer by trying to be conceptual art first. This movie is a disturbed over-reaching conceptual masturbatory bummer. If you use the word "film" a lot instead of "movie", maybe you'll like it.