An awkward and unsuccessful writer (Crispin Glover) who dates a playwright (Tatum O’Neal) and shares a room with an unsuccessful actor (Steven Schub) steals the poems of a deaf-mute (Matthew Hutton); claiming them as his own, he shows them to a literary agent (Rik Mayall) who is so impressed that he immediately advances the writer hundreds of dollars. It’s hard to imagine how a movie this terrible and unrealistic ever got made, much less distributed; perhaps some filmic equivalent of vanity publishing is responsible. Directed and cowritten (with Jon Zeiderman) by Jane Spencer; with Tate Donovan, John C. McGinley, Nina Siemaszko, and Carole Shelley. (JR)