Akerlund, whose experience before making this first feature film has been in music videos, uses his background throughout, particularly in the many surreal sequences and in one gem of an animated scene that could have come out of Tom Tykwer's "Run Lola Run." He resorts freely to expressionistic views with which we're familiar from Darren Aronofsky's more disciplined and refined "Requiem for a Dream." Based in part on an actual adventure by scripter Will De Los Santos, the film centers on Santos's alter ego, Ross (Jason Schwartzman), a short, sometimes awkward guy who looks to score a stash and winds up in the proverbial roller-coaster ride of an adventure. Had he been able to get his amphetamine from his regualr dealer, we'd have no story. Instead, dealer Spider Mike (John Leguizamo), whose crib houses a bevy of the zonked out, including stripper Nikki (Brittany Murphy), his girl friend, Cookie (Mena Suvari) and a vid-game, pimply freak, Frisbee (Patrick Fugit), has lost his stash. In return for free dope Ross agrees to chauffeur Cook (the aptly named Mickey Rourke) on some rounds as Cook digs up ingredients to prepare his crystal.

Road-tripping about, Ross and Cook run into a bunch of John Waters-like characters, none of whom could be called normal, including a couple of weird Latina clerks in a convenience store, a queen (Eric Roberts), a couple of cops out to pin the drug rap on the paranoid Spider Mike (Peter Stormare, Alexis Arquette) and assorted lesbians, a bully and the one normal person in the movie, Ross's former girl friend Amy (Charlotte Ayana).

The downside of the venture is its repetitiveness. Akerlund cannot compensate adequately by his assortment of MTV-like animations and surreal visions. Though "Spun" could not be called a narrative but is more of a one-damned-thing-after-another, the movie scores for originality, the zest of the performers, and a nose-thumb at Puritan America, in particular the MPAA who would undoubtedly slap the Blockbuster-busting NC-17 rating on the project.