In this uneven but likably unslick romantic comedy – a feature debut for director and co-writer Dan Algrant – Kathleen Turner really heats up her small role as Dana Coles, a sexy pot-head from TV soaps with a yen to get back onstage. "Are you a boy or a man?" she asks young playwright Jake Briggs (Eric Stoltz). "Don't worry," she says, seeing his confusion, "I'mpartial to both."

Jake, however, is partial to Joanne (Mary-Louise Parker), the photographer he met in college and lives with in Cambridge, Mass. While Jake's in New York getting his play produced and fending off advances from Dana and Chris (a surprisingly intriguing Ralph Macchio), Joanne is back home being seduced by her boss, Elliot (Timothy Dalton).

Naked, which includes coyly whimsical interludes of Jake chatting to himself and visions from his past, feels like several small films in one. It's not surprising, since Algrant, a former student of Martin Scorsese (Naked' s executive producer), is an award-winning maker of small films. The grittily comic section about the theater works well, as does any scene with the beguiling Parker. Though Algrant shows promise, the rest is a mess.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.