Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows starts out with a crisp recap covering how Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), the scion of a Maine fishery and lord of the manor at Collinsport, was laid low by a spurned scullery maid witch (Eva Green) and cursed to a life buried in the ground as a vampire. 200 years later, he is unearthed by a construction crew building a McDonalds. Very thirsty, he slaughters them all, and heads on down the road to his manor to reestablish the family’s supremacy. So far, so good. Burton’s economical use of flashback harkens to Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and this looks to be a lot of fun.
It is not. Barnabas in 1972 is rather a bore, and Burton does just about everything you’d expect Dennis Dugan to do as a director. Barnabas marvels at electricity, commands the demons in the TV to show themselves, reads and quotes from Eric Segal’s Love Story and watches Scooby Doo and observes that it is a very bad play. None of it is funny.
Nor is any of it engrossing. Green now runs the town as the executive of a lead cannery, low ambition indeed for such a powerful woman, and Barnabas challenges her – by opening a competing cannery. In the meantime, Barnabas has a series of lame encounters with the surviving Collins’s, who include a droll Michelle Pfeiffer as the matriarch, a wasted Jonny Lee Miller as her brother, a couple of pointless kids (Chloe Grace Moretz and Gulliver McGrath), Burton’s wife Helena Bonham Carter as a live-in psychiatrist, and Jackie Earle Haley as groundskeeper Willie.
There is also a love interest (Bella Heathcote), the boy’s nanny, for whom we have to suffer a second, less interesting flashback showing that she was institutionalized when she was a child because she commiserated with ghosts.
One gets the sense Burton knew this was a hopeless mess and found himself desperately piling on more and more visual wonder and absurdity in the hopes of saving the picture. Hence, Barnabas has a ball for the town and arranges for Alice Cooper to perform (allowing him to say that she is the ugliest woman he has ever seen); Carter tries to transfuse the vampire blood out of Barnabas and then just decides to give him a blowjob; Barnabas and Green have a hate mating and fly about the room and up and down the walls, destroying everything, but at least breaking the tedium; and inexplicably, Moretz turns out to be werewolf. There are also two musical sequences, the tactic of the lazy.
We eventually limp to a lengthy showdown between Collins and Green that is all Robert Zemeckis. Statues come to life, ghosts intercede, and millions are spent wowing us with spectral visions. All wasted, making you nostalgiac for the one-take, live-to-tape format of the original soap opera.
There is a hint at the end a sequel may be forthcoming, though with a production budget of $150 million and a domestic take of about half that, we may be spared.
Matt Damon is a law student, loyal to a childhood pal (Edward Norton). They’re poker players, but guided by law professor Martin Landau and gal with the heart of gold Gretchen Moll (all grown up in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire), Damon tries to walk the straight and narrow.
But just when he thinks he’s out, he’s pulled back in! Norton gets indebted to a brutal, track suit wearing Russian mobster (John Malkovich) and he needs Damon to square him.
I’m a huge fan of Matt Damon, and consider him wildly underappreciated. He’s the engine of TheTalented Mr. Ripley and his villain in The Departed is the most interesting and challenging character in the picture. His grieving fathers in both Syriana and Contagion are deeply moving, as is his shell-shocked soldier in Courage Under Fire. I winced when I heard he was cast in the Glen Campbell role for The Coen Brothers’ True Grit, but I don’t know why. He was the perfect blend of haughty and out-of-his-depth.
But make him the hero and the feeling of somnabulence soon washes over you. His Good Will Hunting was the most boring of his pals, Bagger Vance moved golf on film from tiresome to interminable, his Jason Bourne had you stifling yawns even while he was snapping necks, and Eastwood’s Invictus showed he could be pedestrian with a South African accent.
Damon is a terrible choice for the hero in this picture. He’s dull, knows it, and eventually, just gives up. Damon’s blah performance is underscored by the fact that all the other characters are oozing and sweating and doing noir tough.
Thank God for Malkovich. He’s the only thing that save this hackneyed tripe, and the reason for both stars.
Th signature achievement of the reign of John Hughes. During his run, Hughes wrote and/or directed the following teen dramedies– Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Uncle Buck and Career Opportunities.
Hughes offered a certain corporatized schmaltz and sentiment, and there are worse Hollywood epitaphs. Hughes also provided a silly, devil-may-care ethos for affluent suburban high schoolers (Hughes grew up middle class in tony Grosse Pointe, Michigan) and he could deliver a bravura screwball scene, such as Ferris Bueller’s rock out during a Chicago parade or John Candy crashing a teen party in Uncle Buck. At the end of his films, a trite lesson was always learned, and opposites always came together for a hug of understanding.
Nestled in this treacle, however, was a bit of nastiness fully realized in The Breakfast Club. A group of kids – the geek (Anthony Michael Hall), the jock (Emilio Estevez), the weirdo (Ally Sheedy), the hood (Judd Nelson), and the “it” girl (Molly Ringwald) – all must spend a Saturday in detention together. It becomes a group therapy session, and the archetypes – initially hostile to each other – soon find solidarity in their hatred of the school administrator (Paul Gleason) and the fact that it appears they each have something in common – an oppression at the hands of their cretinous parents. Nelson is burned by cigarettes (given the school, one presumes Dunhills); Hall is so pushed to succeed academically he has contemplated suicide; Estevez is also driven by his overbearing father, and his torture is so great he actually starts to punch himself ; and Ringwald explains her homelife thusly when asked if she can go to a party:
CLAIRE I don’t know, my mom said I was [grounded] but my dad told me to just blow her off.
ANDREW Big party at Stubbies, parents are in Europe. Should be pretty wild…
CLAIRE Yeah?
ANDREW Yeah, can you go?
CLAIRE I doubt it…
ANDREW How come?
CLAIRE Well ’cause if I do what my mother tells me not to do, it’s because because my father says it’s okay. There’s like this whole big monster deal, it’s endless and it’s a total drag. It’s like any minute… divorce…
BENDER Who do you like better?
CLAIRE What?
BENDER You like your old man better than your mom?
CLAIRE They’re both strict.
BENDER No, I mean, if you had to choose between them.
CLAIRE I dunno, I’d probably go live with my brother. I mean, I don’t think either one of them gives a shit about me…it’s like they use me just to get back at each other.
Hall adds: “…I don’t like my parents either, I don’t…I don’t get along with them…their idea of parental compassion is just, you know, wacko!”
Then it is the jock’s turn: “Um, I’m here today…because uh, because my coach and my father don’t want me to blow my ride. See I get treated differently because uh, Coach thinks I’m a winner. So does my old man. I’m not a winner because I wanna be one… I’m a winner because I got strength and speed. Kinda like a race horse. That’s about how involved I am in what’s happening to me.”
Cue the tough, doing his own impression of his house: “(as his father) Stupid, worthless, no good, God damned, freeloading, son of a bitch, retarded, bigmouth, know it all, asshole, jerk! (as his mother) You forgot ugly, lazy and disrespectful.”
The jock rejoins, explaining that he taped a classmate’s ass together. Why? “I did it for my old man…I tortured this poor kid, because I wanted him to think that I was cool. He’s always going off about, you know, when he was in school… the wild things he used to do . . . it’s all because of me and my old man. Oh God, I fucking hate him! He’s like this…he’s like this mindless machine that I can’t even relate to anymore…’Andrew, you’ve got to be number one! I won’t tolerate any losers in this family…Your intensity is for shit! Win. Win! WIN!!!’ You son of a bitch! You know, sometimes, I wish my knee would give…and I wouldn’t be able to wrestle anymore. And he could forget all about me…”
Just to make sure we get the message, Gleason is the biggest prick in the world, an amalgamation of every insecure, bullying teacher in the continental United States.
There’s not a genuine moment in the picture nor a hint of deviation from its blame-shifting orthodoxy.
Hughes has always included some of this foolishness – the parents in Uncle Buck are too committed to their jobs, Alan Ruck’s father in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off cares more for his sports car than his son.
But The Breakfast Club’s attack on the cruel, neglectful parents is the primary theme of the picture and Hughes uses it to portray these five kids (three of whom do appear to be sh**heads of the highest order) as victims.
Look, children can be obnoxious, and teens doubly so, but there is perhaps nothing more unpleasant than encountering a self-pitying teen who bemoans his vaunted station just as he nears the age when lesser forebears were jumping into a hot LZ in Vietnam.
Hughes died recently of a heart attack. He was a bit of a recluse in his later years. I wonder if the stereotype of the suffering, whining rich kid he presented in The Breakfast Club contributed to his distress, either because he was prescient and had to live with it or he felt he had a hand in cementing the mold.
In a Vanity Fair piece after Hughes’s’ death, David Kamp wrote “As hoary as it sounds, The Breakfast Club spoke to a generation.”
All good things . . . Whit Stillman lost his patience and made a lazy film. Rather than allowing us to cozy up to his affluent young characters, understand their milieu, and then enjoy their erudite yet innocent banter, he dispensed with development and jammed the quirky kids right down our gullet.
A transfer student to a tony private liberal arts college is identified by a trio of society girls who decide she needs their counsel and guidance. All four negotiate a lampoon of a Seven Sisters campus replete with neanderthalic frat boys, sneering campus journalists, and neurotic coeds.
There is no subtlety to this picture. The characters aimlessly drift into various Stillman exchanges, waiting their respective turns to say something Stillmanesque, like, “Do you know what’s the major problem in contemporary social life? The tendency to always seek someone cooler than yourself.”
There is more cleverness than that, but little intelligence, warmth or draw. Like Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, which proved Kubrick probably had not had a sexual relationship in decades, Stillman seems too far removed from youth to master even a very broad comedy about young people.
And broad it can be. When one of the girls runs away to sort out her feelings after she finds her boyfriend has cheated on her, she goes to a low-rent motel. “Were you at a Motel 6?” her friends ask. “The Motel 4 – it’s even cheaper.”
Stillman has achieved bad Woody Allen. Not much fun, especially when he takes us out of Manhattan.
The film is often amusing, but the characters, never particularly realistic in Stillman pictures, are cartoons. Worse, every actor knows Stillman, and they’ve brought their Stillman A Game. The dialogue is stilted and even charmless. Oh for Chris Eigeman, who last I saw, stole a scene in HBO’s “Girls.”
The movie borders on a Whit Stillman spoof, though that really can’t be, at least until we get a proper David Mamet spoof.
He also cribs from his own work. A character has a fascination with a dance craze as social movement, just like a character in The Last Days of Disco. When you’ve only made 4 films, this is bad news.
It is no recommendation that it ends with two dance numbers.
Certain films transcend criticism because of the place they hold in the national consciousness. Saving Private Ryan is a forceful, indelible picture with opening and closing battle scenes so visceral I found myself ducking in the theater as a complete stranger in the seat next to me gripped my arm. Shorn of the opening Omaha beach sequence and the fight for the town of Ramell, the film is just north of pedestrian. Robert Rodat’s script is functional but hokey (the constant banter over Tom Hanks’ occupation is an example). The characters – the intellectual, the caring medic, the goombah, the Southern, bible-loving sniper, the New Yahker, the Jew – are unrealistic archetypes. The John Williams score is just so much syrup.
Who cares? The picture means more than its parts and speaks to a certain time and sacrifice. Every American high school kid should be forced to watch the damn thing the next time they bitch about the trials and tribulations of their lives.
In many ways, 9-11 was much like the day American soldiers alit from their Higgins boats onto Omaha. We were wholly unprepared for the savagery of the attack, we reeled at its success, and then brave and innovative heroes, ordinary citizens all, adapted, driving one of the planes meant to decapitate the government into a field in Shanksville, saving the lives of hundred and perhaps thousands of others. Paul Greengrass’s film depicting that day, however, suffers no flaws and accordingly, does not need to transcend criticism.
Greengrass made his mark with a style blending documentary and drama in his depiction of a 1972 Irish civil rights protest march and subsequent massacre by British troops, Bloody Sunday. As in that film, in United 93, Greengrass keeps us just over the shoulders of the military authorities, the air traffic control personnel, and the passengers of United 93 as the horror of what is occurring dawns on them, paralysis sets in, and then the process of acceptance and adaptation commences. We’re there, but we are not, and we feel thankful for both the intimacy and the remove.
The casting is brilliant. A decision was made to use actors who are familiar but who are not stars. You know you’ve seen many of these people, but they do not bring any recognizable persona, so they feel real. For the passengers on the plane, Greengrass went out of his way to cast actors who looked like the person they were playing. Moreover, he wanted people who had a tie to the project. As explained by Greengrass, “What we did on this film was to gather together an extraordinary array of people wanting to get this film right, aircrew from United Airlines, pilots, the families of the people who were onboard, who gave us a sense of what their family member might have done given the type of person he or she was in any given situation; controllers and members of the military. We had a lot of expertise that in the end allows you to get a good sense of the general shape of events.”
Finally, Greengrass at no point indulges in communicating a larger message. In Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg, as always, just couldn’t trust his audience. He had to have Hanks tell Matt Damon “Earn it” even though the story was told skillfully enough to leave it unsaid. Greengrass is a neutral, not in the ideological struggle of 9-11, but in the explication of evaluating these people at this critical time. The result, for me, was a clearer vision of just how extraordinary the acts of heroism were.
Five college kids – the jock, the stoner, the brainiac, the slut and the virgin – go away for a party weekend at a remote cabin in the woods. They are warned off by a creepy hick who runs the nearest gas station, but they are young and confident and will have none of his superstitious guff. In the cellar of the cabin, they find a diary, unlock a mystery, unleash a trio of zombified monsters, and . . . Well, you know the rest.
You don’t know the half of it. I thought the good reviews were the result of a reprise of Sam Raimi’s creepy, zany approach in Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, with maybe some clever Kevin Williamson (Scream) thrown in. I was way off, though the picture does feel as fresh as those movies when they came out. Certainly, some of the lines are slyly self-referential, but wrapped around the standard “don’t go in the woods” approach is a whole different twist. I can honestly say I’ve seen nothing quite like it in the horror genre.
Producer/co-writer Joss Whedon is after my own heart in his summation of the plot: “On another level it’s a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies. I love being scared. I love that mixture of thrill, of horror, that objectification/identification thing of wanting definitely for the people to be alright but at the same time hoping they’ll go somewhere dark and face something awful. The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances. Drew and I both felt that the pendulum had swung a little too far in that direction.”
Again, I can’t say much, but of particular note are the contributions of Richard Jenkins (the ghost father in “Six Feet Under” and the beleaguered one in Step Brothers) and Bradley Whitford (Josh, from “The West Wing”). ‘Nuff said.
Judge Dredd is a mix of Soylent Green,Robocop, Escape from New York, and Assault on Precinct 1 – minus the scripts. A nuclear, environmental disaster has reduced American society to one massive city, spanning from Boston to D.C. Crime is rampant and police officers act as juries and executioners at the point of arrest, if warranted. Judge Dredd (a wasted Karl Urban, who played McCoy in Star Trek) and his new rookie partner (Olivia Thirlby), are called to a triple homicide in a massive skyscraper, public housing structure run by ex-prostitute turned drug dealer mogul (Lena Headey, the villainous Queen Cirse in “Game of Thrones”).
Her newest narcotic is slo mo, taken via inhaler, and it alters time for the user. Better, for the director, we get to see bullets slowly enter and exit flesh through the eyes of the drug users. Pretty cool.
I presume this picture is derived from a comic book or graphic novel and that the producers figured 90 percent of the audience would have some idea of the backstory or would not care. So, we learn nothing of Dredd (though human, he is less expressive and fleshed out than Peter Weller’s Robocop or even Schwarzenegger’s Terminator). Heady is cruel (she skins rivals and slaughters innocent bystanders). The partner lost her parents to nuclear-related cancer and she is nervous, this being her first day on the job. This is dystopia Okay. No chit chat. Let’s start shooting everything up.
Other than a brisk pace, nifty action, Avon Barksdale from”The Wire” (Wood Harris) and a few snappy lines, there’s not a lot to this movie, but it’s a worthy shoot ’em up.
Sylvester Stallone wrote this gem and wisely insisted on starring (possible replacing, if you can imagine, Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds or Robert Redford), leading to many more Rocky movies, and some Rambos, and a dozen other mumbling portrayals. Say what you will about what it spawned, but Rocky is near flawless.
Rocky is a busted up club fighter living in the bleak hell that is mid 70s Philadelphia. He’s a sweet guy, but he is an admitted bum, getting a fight every few weeks and paying the rent by collecting for a local loan shark. We meet Rocky after a sixth round knockout of another bum nets him $40, and he’s just been unceremoniously evicted from his gym by its manager, Burgess Meredith. His best friend is a meat packing cretin (Burt Young) who lives with his paralyzingly shy sister (Talia Shire), who Rocky is sweet on. Rocky’s fortunes change, however, when the champion, a Muhammad Ali figure named Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), has a ranked contender drop out from a well-promoted fight. Creed fixes on a gimmick – give a nobody – the “EYE-talion Stallion” – a shot at the title.
This is often heralded as the quintessential boxing movie, but boxing is secondary to a moving, beautiful love story between Shire and Stallone, and the portrayal of a Philadelphia so cruel and cold that Rocky seems like its only validation.
Shire is so withdrawn, a character taunts Rocky, suggesting she is “retarded.” She is not, but she is painfully muted. Rocky’s persistence, and the innate sweetness in him, pulls her out. The scenes of their first encounters, and particularly, the scene where he takes her on a first date, are realistic, poignant and heart wrenching. As they come together, you can see that each provides the other a confidence and support they’d never known. Stallone and Shire share a haunting chemistry of losers, and their story really is the movie.
As is the city. Director John Avildsen uses the gritty corners and grimy haunts of poor and working class Philly and the verisimilitude contributes heavily to the drama. Rocky lives in a hell, where folks sit on the cold streets, trash is strewn everywhere, and it is not enough to ignore someone – you must abuse them. So, Rocky’s loan shark boss has a driver who mocks Rocky mercilessly. When Rocky tries to tell a neighborhood girl to get off the streets or she’ll get a “rep,” she responds, “Screw you, creepo” and when he is kicked out of his gym, Burgess Meredith humiliates him publicly.
Of course, when Rocky gets his shot, Meredith, hat in hand, comes to help. The result is one of the most beautiful scenes in Hollywood history:
The picture received 10 Oscar nominations, including ones for Stallone, Shire and Meredith, and it deservedly won Best Picture.
The only fault is the fight itself, which is hampered by fighters who look buff and have some moves (Weathers simulates a nice stinging jab), but unrealistically degenerates into a clumsy brawl. While Avildsen does the best he can with the budget (a mere $1 million shot in less than a month), his interspersing of stock arena footage cannot save the fact that the Rocky-Apollo fight looks very small indeed, and you can see empty seats in the background of various shots of the fighters. Given the budget and the quick pace of filming, these weaknesses are easily overlooked.
There is no more overrated talent in Hollywood than Oliver Stone. His career is supported by the twin pillars of excess and machismo, encased in a childish political ideology that reveres Chavez and Castro but reviles Bush. Three of his films – U Turn, Alexander and W – are mind-numbingly awful, The Doors ends up, like its protagonist, a bloated mess, and even some of his more solid films (Platoon, Wall Street) age very poorly with the simplicity of their characters and binary nature of their struggles. Born on the Fourth of July has its moments, but it’s propelled by Tom Cruise’s sweat glands more than anything else. JFK and Nixon are better, but they are no more than historical cartoons and do not wear well with time either. And why Stone is lauded for the abattoir that is Natural Born Killers has always escaped me.
So, where can a garish, shallow auteur obsessed with manhood and devoid of nuance find his milieu? Professional football.
Al Pacino is the coach of the Miami Sharks, world-weary and past his glory (in Any Given Sunday, you win Pantheons, not Super Bowls, and Pacino has won 3). His mentor, the team owner, is dead, and the franchise is now run by the owner’s daughter, Cameron Diaz. His star quarterback, Dennis Quaid, is breaking down, and after a mid-season injury, Pacino must rely on a selfish, gifted third stringer (Jamie Foxx). Pacino must teach Foxx how to run the team, to leeeaaaaaddddddd, and in the end, how to become a better man. As he does it, a whirlwind of images (Lebaron, Lombardi, Tittle, Unitas) whoosh by, and then there is lightning and thunder claps. It’s pretty heady and kind of exciting if you don’t dwell on how stupid this all is.
Stone doesn’t give you much time to dwell because the picture moves like a freight train even while capably handling numerous subplots. There’s the star linebacker (Lawrence Taylor, who does a fine job), literally one hit away from paralysis, yet one tackle away from a $1 million bonus. There are the team doctors (James Woods and Matthew Modine) who square off because Woods lets the players play with dangerous injuries and Modine objects. There is Quaid and his driven wife (Lauren Holly) who will not give up her throne as the quarterback queen, even slapping Quaid when he suggests he might have to retire because of injury. LL Cool J is a the selfish RB, all about “getting mine” and Aaron Eckhart is the whiz kid offensive coordinator, stunted under the old school style of Pacino.
We get games in monsoons, whiz-bang on field collisions, gruesome injuries, frenzied and ferocious linemen, hot Miami chicks galore, perfect spirals, and more. There is also a hell of a pep talk by Pacino, alternately absurd and inspiring–
Beyond the speeches, there are nice exchanges in the script, such as this one between Foxx, who is just starting to show his chops, and Pacino, where Foxx explains the other side of the schmaltzy, “no I in TEAM” crapola
FOXX: You can feed the press that whole sacrifice and glory-of-the-game crap. But I been there. I seen a long line of coaches… with that same old bullshit halftime speech … You know it’s bullshit because it’s about the money. The TV contracts, fat-cat boosters in the skyboxes. Coaches trying to up their salaries. You looking for the next black stud to take it to the top 10. Get you in a bowl game. It’s the same way in the pros. Except in the pros, the field hands get paid.
PACINO: Don’t play that race card on me, kid. 25 years I work with men of your color.
FOXX: Maybe it’s not racism. Maybe it’s placism. Brother has to know his place. Right, boss?
PACINO: I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You don’t trust anybody because of what happened in college? You knew the rules. You were the one that broke them.
FOXX: How did I break them? How? I lost a million-dollar signing bonus because I took a $300 suit from a booster to go to a wedding. What’s a brother supposed to do in college? He ain’t got money. He wants to go out on a date. Wants to get some nice clothes. Everybody had their hands out but it was me they suspended. I dropped six rounds in the draft because of that. The coaches labeled me: “He’s trouble. He don’t wanna play ball.” You talk about sacrifice. I sacrificed $10 million because dumb rednecks like the coach in San Diego made me a cornerback because I got quick feet. He separated my shoulder tackling 250-pound motherfuckers. I don’t do that! I was a great football player. But nobody let my shoulder heal, and they traded me out of there.
PACINO: You go ahead. Blame everybody but yourself.
FOXX: Whatever.
PACINO: Because that’s what a leader’s about. Sacrifice. The times he’s gotta sacrifice because he’s gotta lead by example. Not by fear and not by self-pity.
FOXX: Who you think you’re talking to? Half my career is over and you want me on the bench.
So, I like this film very much, and I like it even more every time I see, which never happens with Oliver Stone flicks. That does not, however, mean it is a good film.
For example, Oliver Stone cannot write women who aren’t whores or connivers, but at least here, he concedes the point and just makes Diaz a mannish ballbreaker. Her character is the most macho one in the film, which is not a good thing.
Stone also could not or would not get the rights to use actual NFL franchises/logos. I’m sure the cost was prohibitive or perhaps the NFL didn’t really want its brand tarnished. But if you’re going to make up teams, the Dallas Knights need to have uniforms a little less ridiculous than this:
“I shall tackle thee, m’lady”.
Stone also casts himself as a sports announcer so he can say “Holy Cow!” or “What a play!” But Stone does not have “the voice” and he sounds like he’s eating sunflower seeds. It’s not as bad as Spike Lee playing a reporter in Summer of Sam but it is pretty bad.
The theme is also oppressive. Men and lost fathers are everywhere. Foxx is fatherless, Pacino lost his in WWII, Quaid is a little boy in Pacino’s hands, Diaz was the son her father never had. All of this is served in one big syrupy ladle.
Last, in the final game, a dude’s eyeball is knocked out of his head. Come on.
A small town is run by the ruthless Ben Gazarra, who shakes down the local businesses to support his decadent lifestyle. He lives in the gaudiest mansion, and he is surrounded by a thick, loyal squad of yokel goons. He also has a few 80s trashy blondes in his coterie, like Julie Michaels–
Interesting note on Julie. Roadhouse was her debut. In her subsequent roles, these were the names of her characters: Naran Anie, Professor, Professor (uncredited), Accident Victim, Accident Victim (uncredited), Sandy, Mom, French Patron (uncredited), California Blonde, California Blonde (uncredited), Pedestrian, Female Bar Patron #2, Barrista, Fashion Show Patron, Florist, Slutty Woman, Female Fan, Julie Mermaid mother, Harem Girl (uncredited), Groupie (uncredited), Female Club Goer, Maggie, Woman on Bike, Laundry Wife, Marilyn Monroe #2, Catherine Moore, Caitlin’s Sister, Frat Girl, Woman (uncredited), Vampire, Jane (uncredited), Catherine, Tami, Sillicate UC, Cage Dancer, Agent Elizabeth Marcus, Susan, Irene, Waitress, Waitress (uncredited), Amy Cutler, Freight Train, Susie Q, Cinnamon.
I digress.
One business won’t knuckle under to Gazarra – The Double Deuce. Instead, bar owner Kevin Tighe calls in a zen master bouncer with a degree in philosophy (not joking – the script references that the professional bouncer has a degree in philosophy from NYU). That bouncer is Dalton (Patrick Swayze) who stands up to Gazarra, calls in a bouncer compadre (Sam Elliott), cleans up the bar and the town and says all of the following:
“Pain don’t hurt.”
“Nobody ever wins a fight.”
“My way… or the highway.”
“All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary. And three, be nice.”
“Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee and he’ll drop like a stone.”
“You’re too stupid to have a good time.”
“It’ll get worse before it gets better.”
Roadhouse also features Kelly Lynch, the emergency room physician who patches Dalton up.
The year this picture came out, she was in Drugstore Cowboy. I wonder which film she is most proud of? Regardless, I’ve had stitches like 5 times and there’s never a Kelly Lynch at the emergency room. Ever.
By now, Roadhouse has become a cult classic, but when I saw it, I knew it was something special taken at face value, no sniggering. To this day, I can’t stop watching it. It’s an awful film, and the inquiry should end there, but there is such earnestness in the effort that at 2 am, having just had 5 beers and a half bag of gummy bears, when Swayze says
“I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”
I’m like, “Hell, yea. Dalton. That’s some heavvy ass shi**!”
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