The Tenants is a 2005 film drama starring Dylan McDermott

Dylan McDermott

Mark Anthony McDermott , better known by his professional name of Dylan McDermott, is an American actor, known for his role as lawyer and law firm head Bobby Donnell on the television legal drama The Practice and his role in the series Dark Blue as Lt. Carter Shaw. McDermott currently stars in FX...

 and Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg

Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. , better known by his stage name Snoop Dogg, is an American rapper, record producer, and actor. Snoop is best known as a rapper in the West Coast hip hop scene, and for being one of Dr. Dre's most notable protégés. Snoop Dogg was a Crip gang member while in high school...

. Screened at only one theatre, the film received harsh criticism due to what some critics discerned as anachronistic depictions of the racial tension between the principal characters and a lack of multidimensionality. Consequently, the film was not screened further, being released on DVD directly after its ill-fated theatre release. The film is an adaptation of a novel of the same name that was published in 1971 by author Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...

.

Plot

The film is very loyal to its source material, depicting the labored and painstakingly slow efforts of main character—Jewish Harry Lesser—in drafting what is to be his third novel. Lesser is the remaining tenant of a dilapidated tenement. The landlord—for reasons not revealed—cannot or does not evict Lesser, though he periodically offers increasing amounts of money to entice Lesser to move. At some point Lesser becomes aware that another tenant—an Afro-American squatter named Willie Spearmint—has taken up residence in the tenement, and that this other tenant is also a writer who has determined to type his book at the tenement as well. The two eventually become acquainted and become embroiled in a deadly conflict over Spearmint's Jewish girlfriend, Irene.

External links

• Box Office Information