"Asteroid City": Bleak 1950s play within a play within a play, with one tiny gay kiss and some bonus butts and dicks

Movie night was Asteroid City (2023), which I thought would be about atomic testing in Nevada in the 1950s.  Instead, I was watching the Theater of the Absurd.  Maybe Ionesco, where your mother turns into a giraffe and offers you brownies,  or a Monte Python episode where one sketch bleeds into another, so Vikings are suddenly talking to the Minister of Finance about the hippodrome tariff. 

Link to NSFW version

As far as I can tell, there are two plays with plays.

1. In an old-fashioned black and white tv studio, a narrator tells us that what we are witnessing is a story, not real. The curtain opens to reveal:

2. The Playwright (Edward Norton, top) auditioning an actor for the lead in his play (Jason Schwartzman), who brings him ice cream, changes into a different costume, and delivers a nonsequiter monologue.  They kiss.  But don't get excited: it's in the distance, and never referenced again, while there are three or four heterosexual romances coming up. We cut to the main story:

A lot of people arrive for the Junior Stargazers' Convention in Asteroid City, Nevada, where an asteroid crashed a long time ago (they mean a meteor).  During the opening speeches, an alien descends from a spaceship and grabs the asteroid.  Everyone is put under quarantine, while the government tries to convince them that nothing happened.  After a week, the government is about to lift the quarantine, but the alien returns and gives the asteroid back.  The quarantine is on again, but everyone riots, and the next day they are gone.  Maybe it was all a dream.

While all this is going on, there are several soap opera stories.  Steinbeck (Jason Schwartzman again, I think) arrives with his son and three young daughters.  He was going to leave the son and go on to his wealthy father-in-law's house to bury his wife's ashes, but his car broke down.  During the quarantine his three daughters, who are witches, bury the ashes in the desert and perform a spell to resurrect her.  She isn't actually resurrected, but she apparently appears in a flashback or flash-sideways scene.

Left: This is Jason Schwartzman's penis.  It is not Jason Schwartzman's penis, it is a salami.  It is not a salami, it is the diary of a 17th century French poet who wrote about salamis.

I figured that Steinbeck must be the famous novelist and nude model, who was active in Hollywood at the time, so I went scurrying to wikipedia for his biography.  It doesn't match.

Matt Dillon plays a mechanic who is examining Steinbeck's car, when a part he has never seen before falls out and starts sputtering. He never appears again. 

More nonsequiters after the break.

Steinbeck falls in love with the famous actress in cabin next door.  Mostly they gaze at each other and don't speak for interminable minutes.  (Grossness alert: she takes off all her clothes, top and bottom  both).  

And his son  Woodrow (Jake Ryan), a 40-year old playing 14, falls in love with her daughter.

Also an extremely religious lady who is chaperoning a bunch of kids, trying to continue her lessons on the planet Neptune amid the hoopla, falls in love with a singing cowboy (Rupert Friend).

And someone, I don't know who, buys a parcel of land out of a vending machine.

And a Dad and son have to live in a tent, because their cabin burned down.

Left: Liev Schreiber, one of the Dads.

Eventually the story spills out into the playwright's world (where we find out that he died in an auto accident), and then to the studio. Along the way there are several nonsequiter scenes that don't fit anywhere. 

1. An actress on a train receives a note apologizing and saying they work well together.  Woodrow, the boy delivering the note, spends the night with her.

2. A woman tells a guy who lives on sound stages that she wants a divorce; they kiss.

3. A man says he needs some air ("You won't get any -- it's all sound stages"). He goes out onto the balcony of a soundstage street, where he interacts with the woman on the balcony of the sound stage next door.  They gaze at each other and say nonsequiters.

4. A lot of people in various situations tell us: "You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep," over and over until it becomes painful.

Maybe our takeaway is that life is meaningless, so art should be, too. 

Beefcake: None.

Left: Seu Jorge, one of the singing cowboys.

Gay Characters: The Playwright and the Actor, for about a tenth of a second.

Heterosexism: Everywhere.

My Grade:  The owls are not what they seem, but Liberace had three grand pianos in his apartment, and by the way, my chocolate milk is getting cold.

Several butts and what may be either Mat Dillon's dick or a python on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends