JOE GOULD was for decades a Greenwich Village icon, a self-consciously bohemian type who would wander the streets cadging free meals, hitting up old friends for donations to the "Joe Gould Fund," and translating the squawks and quarks of seagulls into English. But Gould was most legendary for his grand, secretive project, a mammoth oral history that he compiled daily. His meticulous recording of the idle chatter overheard on the streets was put down in the belief that this was the level where the most important events took place.

Joe Gould's Secret, a chronicle of the odd friendship that sprung up between Gould (Ian Holm) and New Yorker writer Joe Mitchell (Stanley Tucci, who also directed) may appeal to some, but there's nothing in the movie that I found remotely interesting. At least not the parts I stayed awake for, which was most of it. Three-fourths, probably. Half, at least. You might think this would be a drawback for anyone trying to write a review of a movie, falling asleep -- but if you do, then you've never been lucky enough to have Andy Spletzer as your editor.

Andy, who leaves his post this week at The Stranger, has always understood that film criticism is more than just providing a consumer guide; it's about responding to a film, engaging it in dialogue, and then trying to sit down and capture the tone of that two-way conversation for the benefit of a third party. It's about making snap judgments you know won't hold up next week, let alone till the end of time, and trying like crazy to justify -- aesthetically and morally -- what might amount to nothing more than an erotic attraction for a member of the supporting cast or a preference for slow, lazy camera moves.

So even if I didn't catch much of Joe Gould's Secret, I can say exactly what's wrong with it. Though I may not know much about Greenwich poets, oral histories, or the use of declensions in the Eastern Seagull, thanks to Andy (and others), I know quite a bit about friendship, and this movie doesn't get that at all.