"The Single Guy" Grows Up in The Medicine Show, A Gritty Black Comedy About A Young Man's Battle with Colon Cancer.

In The Medicine Show, Jonathan Silverman gives a very different performance from the stylistic tempo of the Neil Simon scripts that he's perhaps most identified with. The actor's technique in this film was less comical and more straightforward and simple, this, despite the fact that it's a dark comedy. He served up the material without comment or affectation. This is a mature Silverman.

Silverman plays Taylor Darcy, a cynical thirty-something-year-old who is diagnosed with colon cancer. Says Silverman, "I did a lot of research by spending time with cancer patients in Los Angeles. There were some people who had just gone through the whole procedure and who were so willing to open up and share, telling me their fears and struggles."

Much to Silverman's credit he manages to make this character likable because as writer/director Wendell Morris says, "The character is a real sarcastic bastard." Luckily, Morris found such an actor in Silverman who in addition to his work in Neil Simon projects is perhaps best known for the film Weekend at Bernie's, opposite costar Andrew McCarthy, and his stint on the successful TV sitcom The Single Guy. While laced with a stinging wit that occasionally borders on being irreverent, The Medicine Show is refreshingly truthful in its account of an irreverent young man facing colon cancer with an unusual humorous perspective. The doctors aren't necessarily depicted as saviors, the nurses aren't always compassionate and modern medicine isn't glorified as a cure-all. Like a Band-Aid the humor is not only welcome, it's necessary to stop the bleeding.

It takes a capable writer to make a routine colonoscopy funny, and at the same time show the gravity of how cancer can rear it's evil head. Screenwriter/director Wendell Morris deserves the credit here. It is his first time directing a feature film, and first time writing a screenplay, which he wrote while in the hospital going through his own chemotherapy treatments. The film is a semi-autobiographical account of Morris' bout with and survival of colon cancer at age 33. "For three months I was walking around with cancer and my doctor was telling me there was nothing wrong with me. I went back and said, "Yeah, there's something wrong and you're going to have to test me. They did an operation and cut out the tumor, sewed me back up, and I had to go through six months of chemo. Luckily it was caught early and I was O.K. and here I am," says Morris, an Emmy Award writer of the Steven Speilberg-produced cartoon, Pinky and the Brain.

Wendell flirts with humor in this otherwise serious film -- and succeeds. Why? Because The Medicine Show is moving without being maudlin, and poignant while at the same time refusing to mimic a sappy movie-of-the-week style sentimentality. This film works because of the solid script and the strong performance by its leading actor.

A mention must also be made of Silverman's talented costar Natasha Gregson Wagner, daughter of the late film actress Natalie Wood. The actress plays Lynn, a leukemia patient who matches wits with Taylor. There's one scene in particular where her character talks about the doctors informing her that as an after effect of the chemotherapy she will not be able to conceive children. She bares her soul, opening then wilting like a fragile flower. Though she bears a strong resemblance to her late mother, Gregson has a talent very much her own.

Note: The Medicine Show premiered at the Austin Film Festival, and screened at AFI Film Festival before heading to Fort Lauderdale where Wendell Morris received its New Director's Award.

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