The screening of Susan Mogul’s latest movie last night was a combination film premiere, birthday party, and political demonstration. About twice as many people showed up as AFI had seats. The filmmaker gave her own seat to a friend and passed the last moments before show time sitting (nervously) in my lap. She needn’t have been anxious: the crowd cheered Driving Men.
A friend once told me that one of the biggest challenges of becoming a mother was being awake so often at night you start to review your life. Driving Men takes as its material that kind of self-analysis. But because it’s by Susan Mogul, instead of depression the result is hilarity.
Not to say that it’s entirely a comedy. Included in SM’s adventures with men and cars are her father and brothers (and rest of her family) about which she is movingly earnest. And even the jokes had a way of emitting delayed explosions as I thought about them the rest of the evening. Talking about herself she ends up talking about me and you and everybody else.