Howard Stern's Naked Truth -- Surprisingly Entertaining `Private Parts' Reveals Talk Radio's Bad Boy Is Fairly Human After All

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XXX "Private Parts," with Howard Stern, Robin Quivers, Mary McCormack, Fred Norris, Paul Giamatti. Directed by Betty Thomas from a screenplay by Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko. Alderwood, Auburn Cinema 17, Crossroads, Everett Mall 4-10, Factoria, Gateway, Issaquah 9, Kent 6, Kirkland Parkplace, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Puyallup 6, Renton Village. 111 minutes. "R" - Restricted; includes profanity, nudity, adult situations. -----------------------------------------------------------------

"I grow on people like a fungus," Howard Stern says as he wraps up telling his life story to a co-passenger on their first-class flight.

Well, Hollywood has put that fungus in a culture and released it as "Private Parts." In Seattle, where people generally have enough trouble with mold, we might be tempted to collectively pour our lattes on this creeping mildew from the East. But that would be a mistake.

"Private Parts" is a surprisingly sweet, painful, funny, gross and entertaining movie about the rise and rise of "shock jock" Howard Stern. Not only is that an uninteresting premise for a movie, it's a lousy premise for a book. Leave it to the audacious Stern to turn both into surprising successes.

"Private Parts," like its namesake autobiography, recounts one man's love and fascination with radio. From his early years, where he's continually told by his father that he's an idiot, to his turn as an awful college DJ, Stern is the object of scorn and derision. He's homely, gangly and entirely ill at ease with himself. What Stern does, and part of what makes him so amazingly popular, is to take that inner self-loathing, pain and doubt and expose it. Boy, does that sound fun or what?

Well, it is. Just not at first, and particularly if you don't know what to expect. No Seattle radio station carries Stern's syndicated show, and reluctance was high in the theater we attended, especially when the first scenes recalled Stern's ill-advised national appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards as Fartman. It's a lame bit, but what catches your attention is the voice-over of Stern berating himself for his own stupidity. He hates the skit. He calls himself an idiot and then sheepishly shuffles past a gantlet of MTV stars and former stars who confirm his worst fear: He's a moron.

It's Stern's self-effacing, embracing celebration of just that moronic quality (read: being human) that won him his rabidly loyal audience as well as the loathing of his station managers. There's a succession of bosses who try to rein Stern in; each seemingly more inept and myopic than the one before. This all culminates in Kenny, the scheming programming director at Stern's biggest job, WNBC in New York.

Paul Giamatti wonderfully plays Kenny, the embodiment of smarmy duplicity and seething rage, and he nearly steals the last half of the movie. Kenny informs his superiors that he'll tame Stern and in his quest tries to break up the team that constitutes the show. Robin Quivers plays herself as Stern's newscaster, on-air sidekick and voice of reason, and Fred Norris plays himself as the show's engineer and sketch writer. They're all in the line of fire as Kenny and Howard butt heads in the funniest scenes in the film.

Ample credit for making this movie work goes to director Betty Thomas. She builds the comedic aspect of the film slowly. She lets you get used to the characters.

A wincingly painful sequence involving his wife Alison's miscarriage, and Howard's brutal, unflinching and sadly funny on-air discussion of it, is handled objectively and with intelligence. And the chagrin of Alison (played by Mary McCormack) listening to her leering husband interviewing the first nude woman on radio could have been overlooked in less thoughtful hands. Thomas chooses to highlight the one aspect of Howard Stern that seems to gratify so many of his fans: his open, frank and professed fidelity to his wife.

Even so, Stern is not everyone's cup of tea. His mix of burlesque, psychoanalysis and confessional humor is seasoned with smashed scatological and sexual taboos. That "Private Parts" reveals the author of all this to be a nebbish could be truth, could be all a part of the Stern publicity machine, but it's effective and fun.

It wasn't my intention to like "Private Parts," but I was infected by the Howard Stern fungus. And it kinda grows on you.