Deconstructing Dunning Reflections: The Stench of Failure

On watching the long-overdue documentary on the eccentric Douglas

I can't exactly “review” a movie that I'm in, however briefly, and do so with any credibility, so this is not that, and will not be linked on Rotten Tomatoes. However, I did recently have the pleasure of watching, for the first time, the documentary now entitled Deconstructing Dunning, available free with commercials as of this writing on Tubi.

Anyone who has been around the general screening scene in Los Angeles, from free previews to guild events to rep houses, has probably encountered Douglas Dunning at some point. He's one of those L.A. characters like the late Dennis Woodruff, or Angelyne, but while virtually every longtime entertainment writer in L.A. has written a story about spending the day with Angelyne, Douglas is someone most would probably rather avoid. Caked in the stench of a back alley in broad daylight in August, Douglas looks like he smells, a man who hasn't bathed in decades...and he talks like Christopher Lee, with an “English” accent that was surely affected at one time, but may simply come naturally now.

He's like the reverse of the man with the twisted lip in the Sherlock Holmes short story – that title character was a wealthy man pretending to be a beggar and making good tips by reciting Shakespeare. Douglas, by most appearances, is an actual homeless beggar who pretends to be a successful Shakespearean actor instead. Many are the theater managers who've had to kick him out, and many are the indie filmmakers who've received angry, threatening phone calls claiming they owe him money. Yet at the same time, in normal conversation he can be funny, charming, and highly knowledgeable about cinema. Whether via scamming or legitimately spending what money he has, he's one of those cinephiles who compulsively goes to see everything he can. One filmmaker of my acquaintance who knew that Douglas was constantly stealing from him nonetheless kept hiring him because he found him endlessly (and sometimes unwittingly) entertaining.

He has a pretty high opinion of himself too, despite the fact that, as the documentary reveals, his acting career barely resembles his self-description of it, to say the least. Check out this interview – not from the movie, but an easter egg on the Mad Cowgirl DVD -- that basically gives him enough rope to tie himself in knots:

When I was interviewed for the movie, it was tentatively called Resurrecting Doug Dunning, and later, Douglas Dunning: Act. Tor. The filmmakers paid for him to get full new dentures and a pretty high-end wig, and clearly had it as their goal to give his career another chance. As the movie goes on, it becomes clear that the latter is absolutely not going to happen, and that Douglas is stuck in self-destructive behavioral patterns of poor hygiene, threats in lieu of negotiation, and deceptive or delusional claims and promises. So now it's Deconstructing Dunning instead.

It reminds me a little of Confessions of a Superhero, which interviewed several of the regular costumed characters who pose in photos for tips along Hollywood Blvd. The late Christopher Dennis, who always dressed as Superman, was the most notable of these, though he had some lofty claims similar to Douglas, like being related to Sandy Dennis, which the documentarians mostly debunk. The Dunning filmmakers, while having full access to Douglas to the point of seeing his piss bottle, clearly don't have the budget or resources to try and debunk his loftiest assertions, probably assuming that they self-evidently come across as false. In the on-camera interviews, Douglas blinks a lot and puts his hand over his mouth, two common “tells” of deception.

Douglas tries to trade on his early, brief fame as the Max Headroom ripoff character of Sir Miles Headlock on the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, even though he also saw the job as beneath him. We see him attempt to sell Sir Miles autographs at a convention, and managing to find three buyers in total. A wrestling promoter mentions trying to work with him again, only to realize that Douglas actually knew nothing about pro-wrestling holds. It mirrors one time I was on a shoot with Douglas – yes, we're in the same level of films -- and my father was there, and Douglas asked him why I wore the colorful pants I did. My dad replied that he thought it was some kind of pro-wrestling style, which led Douglas to talk about how he used to do Greco-Roman wrestling – his need to one-up the conversation, even with transparent “exaggerations,” never faltered. Another time, he claimed his father was in the British spy agency OSS, though in the movie he says his father is from New Jersey and disowned him for being an actor. Douglas also claims to have ten illegitimate children he doesn't know; the best the filmmakers can produce is a supposed ex-lover who more or less describes him as a con-man and stalker, but never a date.

Werner Herzog could have a field day with Douglas. Director Tracy Tuffs often shoots out of focus, and has varying sound levels, but adds an inspired touch in getting Douglas to reenact some of his own accounts of allegedly being falsely imprisoned. When Douglas ends up moving in with a young aspiring actress who clearly sees him as her pet charity project, the viewer cringes, understanding by that point more than she does about what she's in for.

I can't say the film is particularly slick or necessarily as enlightening as one might hope. But so long as you don't have to negotiate with him, or smell him – which you can do several blocks away – Douglas is a compelling figure to watch, and the sort of personality uniquely drawn to Hollywood. I hope he winds up better off than Christopher Dennis, who died trying to take clothes out of a charity bin. I'm not going to be the one to get him there, though. Even the filmmakers realize he's beyond their tough love, and we're all left to speculate what it would take.

Deconstructing Dunning is now viewable on Tubi.

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