Starting with a quotation from Thomas Wolfe that loneliness is the “inevitable fact of human existence,” the film God’s Lonely Man traces in a very tedious manner the life of Ernest Rackman (played by Michael Wyle), whose character resembles Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976). Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when blue laws once closed the town to the sale of liquor and pornography, Ernest left when the repeal of the blue laws brought fundamental changes to his home town. Rather than moving to another town with blue laws, however, Ernest strangely moved to Las Vegas, felt lonely amid the transient environment, and then headed for Hollywood, yet another sin city, where we see him indulge in drugs, preferring Hispanic to African American suppliers while reselling a portion to Caucasians for extra money. To relate to people, thus overcoming loneliness, he works for a year or so in an adult bookstore, where he hassles gay patrons and tries to seduce the owner’s daughter Meradith (played by Justine Bateman). For the latter indiscretion, Ernest is fired by the boss Clarence (played by J. C. Quinn). Loneliness and guilt again overcome him, and at one point he cuts off his left pinkie while high on drugs, and he even kills a drug supplier Rick (played by Wallace Langham). While on the street one day, he encounters Christiane Birsh (played by Heather McComb), a fourteen-year-old prostitute who tells him that her stepfather abuses her. Believing that a teenage girl should not be molested, he cleans up his apartment, stripping the walls of pornography, and visits the Birsh apartment, posing as a police officer who has come to remove Christiane to juvenile authorities. She then leaves home and lives with him, but he resists Christiane’s sexual advances, preferring to provide a protective love. She informs him that her sister Samantha disappeared after agreeing to make a film for a notorious pornographic director. She supplies him with the name of the contact for the filming, Keith (played by Kieran Mulroney). Ernest then locates Keith, shows interest in seeing a film that features women and violence, and Keith offers to satisfy his interest at the price of $1,000 for a screening and $5,000 for a copy of the videotape. Ernest agrees. That evening Keith takes Ernest to the home of the filmmaker, Pollo (played by Paul Dooley). After coughing up $1,000, he sees a five-minute snuff film, poses as vice squad officer, and kills everyone in the house. Afterward, he kills himself, convinced as before that his life has no meaning. For those who believe that God’s Lonely Man also has no meaning, writer-director Francis von Zerneck, Jr., semiautobiographically appears to be saying through his characters, especially Ernest’s voiceovers, that children today grow up in an environment where advertising so sells products through sexual appeals that they believe that teenage sex is the norm, resulting in meaningless relationships, loneliness, sex without love, and violence. The commodification and sexualization of almost everything, he implies, has created a new kind of society at the end of the twentieth century that resembles a jungle. Rather than presenting a role model of an ideal person for the times, all the characters in the film are corrupted by money, sex, and violence. The unsolved question in the film is why a wholesome upbringing in Grand Rapids so unprepared Ernest to deal with all the unpleasantness, but the answer would doubtless explain why taking care of Christiane failed to provide redemption. Filmviewers never really find any redeeming quality in Ernest to feel sympathy for him. Something rotten must have been in the city of Grand Rapids before the blue laws were repealed. Contrary to the title, Ernest is not so much lonely as he is bored, purposeless, and rootless. MH