Film Review: 'good Money'

There are a million stories in the naked city. "Good Money" is among the more colorful ones.

Re-enacting seven event-filled years of his life, writer-director-star Jeremiah Bosgang spins an engaging, amusing, rags-to-riches-to-rags account of one man's attempt to follow his dreams.

Recently screened at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., "Good Money" could make just that for the right theatrical distributor; but given the subject matter, television's probably a more logical fit.

Bosgang, who comes across as a genetically spliced melding of Woody Allen, Jason Alexander and Albert Brooks, plays himself in his own story, which begins with the struggling actor-writer paying rent by serving as superintendent of his East Village apartment building.

Opportunity first knocks with an Orlando writing gig on "The New Mickey Mouse Club," but just as Bosgang packs his bags and says his goodbyes, the show is canceled. Having given up his job and place, he jumps on his motorcycle and heads for the beckoning palm trees of Los Angeles, where he takes a variety of odd jobs while waiting for his big break.

Surprisingly, it comes at an outdoor party where Bosgang is working as a waiter. A producer asks if he'd ever considered a network executive job, and next thing you know, Bosgang's taking pitch meetings at NBC as a junior programming executive. Among his responsibilities is a struggling-in-its-time-period sitcom originally titled "The Seinfeld Chronicles."

He then takes an executive gig at the fledgling Fox television network, but Bosgang soon realizes that he misses the talent side and trades it in for an ill-fated, two-week tryout as a writer on "Saturday Night Live." Jobless but true to himself, Bosgang again sets out to make it on his own terms, armed only with blind determination and unflagging support from his wife Wendy (Wendy Perelman).

Interspersing a running monologue featuring not-so-dramatic re-creations of the often-comical chain of events, Bosgang and cameraman-editor Kevin Rafferty ("Roger & Me") keep things relatively simple and unforced. Functioning as the guilty pleasure highlight of the piece, however, are real-life supporting players whom Bosgang has recruited to play either themselves (the "Seinfeld" gang) or facsimiles of people he met along the way.

The ploy doesn't always work. Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter as a pair of bickering clowns rapidly outstay their welcome, but major compensation comes in the form of the late Brandon Tartikoff as a groveling production company executive with a can't-miss pitch -- the California Raisins in a swinging London flat -- while Dick Cavett is an absolute hoot as a smarmy casting director who attempts to make