jb-307 Some other reviewers comment positively about this film. I will not mince words. I can't stoop so low. I have to tell the truth about it. This film was a total waste of my time from beginning until the end.Others write that this film is Surreal. Yes it is. They accurately report about the actors and the sadness of much of the story, the drunken writer, his continuing battles with his ex-wife, his deadbeat best friend.Where these other writers fall short is their failure to mention that the story line and the director develop no connection between the audience and the characters. No sympathy. All these characters are just pitiful people, failures on different levels but all failures. Just bums. Gritty, yes. Believable, no. They say it is painful, yes. But then they falsely claim there are rewards. There are none. One writer admits that it is uneven. Understatement. There are creative "dreams" or day dreams, but they do more to interrupt the flow of the movie, than promote it. The day dreams are the best part, so it may be more accurate to say the movie interrupts the flow of the dream sequences.There is nothing wonderful about this movie. Don't waste your time. If it comes in your TV guide, turn on a different channel, any channel. Or turn the set off.

JL Myers (psyopjedi) I enjoyed this movie, not for what Howard and Winger left in from the original literary fiction of Larry Brown, but for what they brought to the story. Winger and Howard are big fans of Brown and the adaptation is brilliant in sections. If this film put you to sleep, it's because you were never awake.The film version of Big Bad Love is based not on the entire collection of short stories in the book of the same title, but only on the novella that ends the collection titled 92 Days. It follows the exploits of an aspiring writer named Leon Barlow and the people that surround him for a period of ninety two days. And the screenwriter/director Arliss Howard chose to interpret the world of Barlow by presenting portions of the original fiction through the use of non-Diegetic sound. The distinction between diegetic or non-diegetic sound depends on our understanding of the conventions of film viewing and listening. Certain sounds are represented as coming from the story world, while others are represented as coming from outside the space of the story events. Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from a source within the films world. That is, sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film include voices of characters, sounds made by objects in the story and music represented as coming from instruments in the story space. Non-diegetic sound is represented as coming from a source outside story space. Sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action such as narrator's commentary, sound effects which is added for the dramatic effect and mood music. A film with diegetic and non-diegetic conventions can be used to create ambiguity or to surprise the audience. This allows the writer/director to present the real world of the writer and what occurs in his mind as simultaneous events.The particular scene in the movie Big Bad Love is called "Rejection Letter Blues" and involves Barlow arriving home from a long day of work painting houses and reading the multiple rejection letters for his novel. Barlow drinks as he does this and the audience hears the voices in Barlow's head reading the rejection letters. The voices are initially in English, but quickly move to Spanish to French to Arabic and so many languages finally overlapping, including cats and dogs, that the audience is given the impression that not only does Barlow believe the publishing world is against him, but the entire world, including animals, dislikes his work.To add to the sense that all are against Barlow, the writer/director has created an imagined negative commentary about Barlow from a radio DJ and within a blues song, in which the lyrics convey a rejection letter to Barlow. Barlow furiously types an angry response, viscerally shouting out some of the words that he is typing. The DJ's commentary attacks Barlow's writing as unread and refers to him as a deadbeat, living in a s***box home. This non-diegetic use of sound in the filmic space allows the writer/director to convey in a short period of film what the author of the original literature spent a great majority of the story to convey: Barlow is alone against the world. The final shot of the scene presents Barlow jumping into a trashcan, casting himself as a piece of discarded trash.The literary version, structured as a first person narrative, relies less on the fact that Barlow is drinking while reading the rejection letters and more on the verbiage of the rejection letter and the reply letter that Barlow writes. The passage sums with the description of Barlow writing through the night and how after finishing his story, addressing and stamping a manila envelope, Barlow walks the envelope to the mailbox and reflects that, "I was knocking, had been knocking for years, but it was taking a long time for them to let me in. I went back inside, turned off the lights, and went to bed. Alone" (Brown 144). Both versions use different techniques to achieve the same goal of isolating Barlow from the world.

raysond During the entire decade of the 1980's and toward the early 1990's,Debra Winger was one of the hottest actresses working in Hollywood at the time and she had a beau of leading actors that took her to the title of the box office queen. Some of her leading men were John Travolta,Richard Gere,Marlon Brando,and Jack Nicholson as well as with actors Robert Duvall and Ed Harris. However,she would win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1983 for "Terms of Endearment",and after that she went in submission for a while.......only to resurface.However,Debra Winger makes her return here in one of the best performances of her career. "Big Bad Love" is a film based on the writings of Mississippi author Larry Brown. She people think that she retired from the cimema in recent years(her last film was nine years ago under the direction of Bernardo Bertlucci),but takes this chance to star opposite her real-life husband Arliss Howard(who stars,directs,and wrote the script). Howard plays,Leon Barlow,a depressive,alcoholic Vietnam veteran and aspiring writer. Aside from holding a candle for hs ex-wife(Winger),most of Barlow's time focuses on daily trips to the mailbox,sending off plies of manuscripts,and following enough rejection letters to wallpaper hs bathroom. He is played as a sympathetic ne'er-do -well,lovable enough to be excused for shirking his familial responsiblities as a father(including his two precious children),until the end of the film,when tragedy strikes and Barlow is forced out of his cynical melancholy.Strong performances from Angie Dickinson as well(in a grand return to the silver screen)as Rosanna Arquette(whom I haven't heard from since the 1990's)and Paul Le Mat. This movie had the heart,the guts and the soul that makes it a piece of grand cimematic work. A must see!Rating: **** out of *****

Group leader This essentially comic movie tells a suitably disjointed story of the crazed writing life in the South. All the players -- Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, the underrated Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette, and Angie Dickinson -- are excellent. Instead of spoonfeeding us, the movie lets us discover the characters' past lives and motivations. It contains grand images: someone's novel scattered in a giant patch of kudzu; a painting in progress on the side of a rusted railroad car. Some people will like it just for the music, including by Tom Waits.