A degenerate film with integrity!

Now they make pornos. But they're brilliant pornos.

A degenerate film with dignity.


Writer/director John Byrum filmed this bizarre and controversial period picture on one massive set. It takes place in the 1930s, and stars Richard Dreyfuss as Boy Wonder, a once-great Hollywood director, who spends all of his time in decrepitude in his rococo mansion (which will soon be leveled and replaced by a major highway), half-soused, unshaven and clad in his bathrobe and pajamas. Instead of shooting major Hollywood pictures, this impotent has-been is now reduced to shooting pornographic films with a heroin-addled actress, Harlene (Veronica Cartwright) and a moronic leading man, Rex (Stephen Davies). Rex's employer, the financier Big Mac (Bob Hoskins) turns up, bringing along his shy and dim-bulb fiancee, Cathy Cake (Jessica Harper), whom he treats condescendingly but hopes to launch to megastardom as a movie actress. When Harlene overdoses, Rex and Big Mac haggle over her body. Mac then leaves Cathy with Boy Wonder, who tells the burned-out director that her one dream in life is to appear in movies, and asks if she could pose for insert shots for his next stag film. By shooting the inserts, Boy Wonder manages to regain his potency, but he is completely put off by Cathy, who suddenly realizes, after the fact, that the camera wasn't running. At that point, Big Mac returns and catches them in the filmmaking process. Although he is not really sure what went on, Big Mac vamooses with Boy Wonder's camera and paraphernalia and takes Cathy with him. Meanwhile, an aspiring thesp named Clark Gable turns up at the door, wanting Boy Wonder to direct him. The film's raunchy prologue (set in a present day screening room) features an uncredited vocal cameo by an actor who rocketed to A-list Hollywood stardom in the 1980s. ~

Inserts is a 1975 British film, written and directed by John Byrum while he was in his twenties, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Jessica Harper, Bob Hoskins and Veronica Cartwright. Featuring full-frontal nudity, a drug overdose, and no shortage of macabre humor, it was originally rated X but later re-rated as NC 17.
The film's title takes its name from the double meaning that "insert" both refers to a film technique and sexual intercourse. Inserts was filmed like a stage play on one set and filmed entirely in real time.

he story takes place in Hollywood in the early 1930s, shortly after the start of the talkie period. A visionary and gifted young Hollywood director (Dreyfuss) known as The Boy Wonder has fallen out of favor with the studios. This is ostensibly due to his reluctance to lower his standards or abandon his artistic and experimental style (such as using a hand-held camera) for the sake of churning out lesser quality stag films for easy money, due to his alcoholism and his fear of leaving his house. He works out of his decaying mansion, which is the only one left on a street being turned into a freeway.
On the morning of this particular shoot, he hires a heroin-addicted waitress, Harlene (Cartwright), who was once a well-known and respected star during the silent film era. She is now the star in the first of his six-picture deal. She prepares and shoots heroin while The Boy Wonder drinks heavily during a conversation about the changing times in Hollywood.
An actor called Rex the Wonder Dog (played by Stephen Davies) soon arrives in a white suit with grass stains on his knees, having just came from his job working for a mortician. He gullibly believes a man that says he will put him in the mainstream talkies, and has an appointment to meet him in his hotel room.
The Boy Wonder awkwardly attempts to make an artistic film using an actress under the influence of heroin and an actor who becomes increasingly frustrated with the director and all of his poetic talk, much of which he admits he doesn't understand. The scene goes wrong when Rex gets out of control during the action and The Boy Wonder needs to smash a wine bottle over his head to get him to stop.
Enter Big Mac (Hoskins), a porno film producer. He has heroin packets in his jacket pocket, a cigar in his mouth, wads of money for Rex and a pretty wannabe actress hanging on his arm named Cathy Cake (Harper). Harlene takes her payment in heroin and soon dies from an overdose in an upstairs bedroom.
Big Mac offers Rex a part in a mainstream movie in order to convince Rex to help him bury the body and, while the two are away, Cathy and The Boy Wonder develop a chemistry that eventually leads to another ironic high point in the film. He makes love to her believing he has found something of a soulmate, but she is disappointed when she learns the camera was off.
The Boy Wonder realizes that this romantic encounter was simply a ploy to get her into the film, and that she has used and directed him the way he used and directed her. Big Mac and Rex return to find them half naked. In a rage, Big Mac ends his six-picture stag film contract with The Boy Wonder, who by this time is completely drunk. The end of the film finds The Boy Wonder alone in his spacious living room, playing piano and singing, pondering what he'll eat for lunch.

Release Date: February 27, 1976

Distrib: United Artists