Guest of Cindy Sherman fixates on a peripheral nobody residing in the orbit of a somebody, a tack that allows for an intimate, unguarded view of said luminary while simultaneously casting into sharp relief the wrongheadedness of its focus. Beginning in 1993, Paul H-O made a very minor name for himself as the host of Gallery Beat, an off-the-cuff public access television program in which (as director and host) he attended premiere shows and interviewed artists with an enthusiasm and candor that helped deflate the scene’s air of self-importance. A devoted fan who nonetheless refused to simply act the sycophantic PR mouthpiece for those he covered, H-O hardly qualified as a journalist but nonetheless provided a modestly unfiltered view of the art world. His gig eventually brought him into contact with celebrated photographer Cindy Sherman, who, bucking her usual protocol, let down her media-shy guard for a series of interviews with H-O and, later still, became his girlfriend and the frequent subject of his incessant filming, of which this absorbing yet lacking doc is primarily comprised.
Guest of Cindy Sherman’s narcissistic opening tracks the rise of H-O and Gallery Beat, a trifling success story that’s propped up by H-O’s forthrightness even as it fails to register as anything more than a footnote – albeit a sometimes amusing one, as when a confrontational Julian Schnabel denigrates Gallery Beat and, in the process, makes himself the epitome of artistic pomposity. This early material, however, is mere prologue for H-O’s developing relationship with Sherman, whose illustrious photographs feature her embodying various female roles and disguises – a means of confronting, among other things, issues of female/gender power dynamics – and whose public persona is that of the mysterious recluse. H-O’s on-camera chats with Sherman for his program are thus somewhat revelatory, showing a charming, understated personality far different than one might have expected on the basis of her often-confrontational work. It’s that friction, as well as Sherman herself, that soon proves most transfixing, and considerably more intriguing than H-O’s career recap of his famous ex-girlfriend, which indulges in lazy, tossed-off family-history psychologizing and talking-head analysis (from colleagues, friends, and editors and critics of Artforum and The New York Times) that only manages to skim the surface of both the artist and her art.
Though it’s Sherman who clearly warrants an in-depth non-fiction portrait, Guest of Cindy Sherman remains diligently focused on H-O, whose own marginalization in the relationship (and the glamorous, ritzy life that Sherman leads) comes to dominate the proceedings, as well as lends the film its title. H-O’s struggle to exist in the shadow of Sherman’s spotlight is a losing battle. And moreover, it ultimately derails his doc, which quickly devolves into off-putting egomaniacal boo-hooing, with H-O – and the similarly ignored and/or disrespected husbands of Elton John and Molly Ringwald (?) – recounting their trivial woe-is-me anecdotes about being cropped out of red carpet photos and seated at remote dinner tables at galas. Shallowly attempting to cast these second fiddle-plights as case studies of the flawed male ego, Guest of Cindy Sherman instead simply reduces itself to a vain investigation of a former affair in which listening to H-O complain (on radio, or at a public speaking gig) about the disproportionate paparazzi love showered on his star girlfriend is to hear someone mistake themselves as far more engaging and noteworthy than their life story indicates.