fred ward

The Player (1992)

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Every time I search for a particular review from At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on YouTube, for the next month, the algorithm suggests other episodes from the duo for me. And I love it! After checking in to see what the two late film critics had to say about Miami Blues (normally, when the two are not aligned, I side with Roger, but Siskel liked the film and Ebert didn’t, surprisingly), their “Best of 1992” episode popped up in my recommendations. As one would expect, both men loved Robert Altman’s The Player, a neo-noir inverted mystery set amongst the wheelings and dealings of high profile Hollywood studio bigwigs. Although the film is very much a product of the early 1990s, with stars who were household names at the time (playing characters or cameoing as themselves) and may or may not be recognizable to a modern audience, the story itself is still very accessible even if the culture is somewhat alien to us now, nearly thirty-five years later. 

Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is an executive who is respected at his studio for being the “writer’s guy,” liaising between upper management and the screenwriters who come into his office to pitch their ideas, preferably in twenty-five words or less. His long day of hearing concepts as scintillating as “Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman,” “Ghost meets Manchurian Candidate,” and a sequel about Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross’s daughter called The Graduate II (pitched by Buck Henry himself in a cameo) is interrupted by the latest in a series of threatening postcards from a writer who believes Griffin has blown him off. Sensing potential impending career troubles as the result of an up-and-coming exec, Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), abandoning ship at Fox, coupled with the unplanned visit of tacky junior executives from the bank that finances the studio, Griffin combs through his files to try and figure out who might be sending the poison pen notes. 

Concluding it must have been a writer named Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), Griffin visits the man’s house and calls from his cellphone, surreptitiously spying on Kahane’s girlfriend, a painter named June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), when she answers. He flirts with her, and she tells him that Kahane has gone to a repertory screening of The Bicycle Thief. Griffin then unconvincingly “accidentally” runs into Kahane there, and the normally teetotal Griffin agrees to talk business over drinks at a local karaoke place. There, Kahane grows increasingly frustrated with Griffin’s apparent condescension and the two part ways, but when they encounter one another on the street, a scuffle ensues, during which Griffin ends up killing the screenwriter. Coming to his senses, Griffin makes it look like a mugging and flees the scene. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before Detective Avery (Whoopi Goldberg) tracks him down, and she’s clearly not convinced by his protestations of innocence. His girlfriend, story editor Bonnie Sherow (Cynthia Stevenson), can also tell that something’s off, even before he goes to Kahane’s funeral and ends up beginning an affair with June. Perhaps worst of all, Griffin continues to receive threats from his stalker, which means he did it all for nothing. 

The film is, despite the presence of this murder, a fairly soft satire of the film industry. Mockery is made of the contemporary studio system’s flaws: an overreliance on test screening feedback, the inherent difficulties of trying to create art in a hypercapitalistic system, and the resultant way that catering to the sentiments of the lowest common denominator (especially with regards to demands for happy endings and uncomplicated morals) damages artistic integrity. It’s sharp, but it’s not necessarily cutting. As Altman himself noted, there’s not a single agent in the film, just actors, writers, executives, and the occasional director. Just like Griffin himself, he’s not “afraid of ‘political,’” only of “radically political [and] political politica.” Ultimately, it’s very cynical about the world that undergirds the movies that we all love so much, but it never quite becomes as mean spirited as it might have. Although he kills a man in a fit of paranoid, drunken rage, the most cutthroat things that Griffin does are cutting loose his the devoted, professional, and loyal Bonnie for the younger, more buxom, blonder June and deliberately allowing Larry Levy to take credit for signing on a film that Griffin recognizes is impossible, so that he can later swoop in and save the day, thus saving his own career. The most salient thing that the film does is have an intentionally absurd happy ending despite all that comes before, just as the film with the film, Habeas Corpus, originally a downer awards-baiter, ends with a one-liner and a kiss. 

The Player goes more for the darkly comic than the noirishly gritty, but what it sacrifices there it makes up for with its nearly constant stream of witticisms and dependably funny players. Fred Ward is a lot of fun as the studio’s fixer who also waxes poetic about the golden years of Hollywood; Richard E. Grant is as impeccable as ever as a director with a grand vision for an unworkable Oscar bait film (alongside a typically hyperactive Dean Stockwell as his manager); even country musician Lyle Lovett gets in on the action as the unsettling man following Griffin around the city in a role that feels like it was written for Crispin Glover. The only place where this really falls flat is in the performance of Whoopi Goldberg, who is not on her A-game in this picture. The actors who appear in cameo roles were encouraged to ad-lib their dialogue, which offers up great opportunities, like when an unprompted Malcolm McDowell insults Griffin, leading to real befuddlement on the part of Robbins, but Whoopi does several painfully unfunny bits that all seem to go on forever, especially the one about trying to find her tampons. It’s also worth noting that Greta Scacchi’s performance here is nothing to write home about either, but at least that’s potentially an intentional acting choice, as her general blank slate nature allows for Griffin to project whatever he wants onto her. In contrast to loyal, flat-chested Bonnie, June is forever dressed in silks and thin fabrics that do nothing to disguise her nipples. She is breasting boobily at all times, and she play-acts at having depth through her art. When speaking of her late boyfriend, she says that she never really thought of him as talented, ironically standing in the midst of several “artworks” that are composed of the word “ice” surrounded by cool colors. I might not be giving Scacchi enough credit for making her such an effective representation of a boring-but-hot woman trying to seem deeper than she is, but if it’s a deliberate choice, it’s relatively successful. 

In a modern context, the most off-putting thing that an audience may have trouble with isn’t the murder of Kahane, but getting lost in trying to keep up with the cavalcade of stars in the film, and tracking who’s playing themselves and who’s playing a character within the film itself. I’d also wager that an uninitiated viewer may find themselves distracted by the never-ending series of cameo appearances, especially for those whose stars have diminished in the intervening decades. Any audience would still know Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Burt Reynolds, and Cher, of course, but Sally Kirkland, David Alan Grier, and Robert Wagner? If you’re reading this, then those names are probably at least somewhat familiar to you at the very, very least, but to the under-thirty set? Probably not so much. The best advice I can give to someone coming to this film so long after the film’s release is to just go with the flow and have a good time. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Miami Blues (1990)

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What happens when a sociopathic California criminal flies to Miami to start a new series of con jobs and thefts and is surrounded by the most absurd people on earth (i.e., baseline Florida residents) in a film that proves 1990 was still basically the 1980s? You get Miami Blues, the second of four films adapted from Charles Willeford’s novels, and the only adaptation that came from his popular series of novels about hardboiled detective Hoke Mosely. Directed by the late George Armitage, one of Roger Corman’s many disciples, fourteen years after his last film (1976’s Vigilante Force) and seven years before his most famous (1997’s Grosse Pointe Blank), Miami Blues is a bizarre picture that combines elements of neo-noir, erotic thriller, dark comedy, crime drama, and action flicks into something fascinating, funny, and thrilling. 

A man calling himself “Junior Gottlieb” (Alec Baldwin) arrives in Miami, and he’s barely made it off the plane before he’s stolen a stranger’s suitcase and broken the finger of an obnoxious Hare Krishna. He slips onto a courtesy shuttle and checks into the luxurious hotel that it takes him to, where the lead bellhop offers to send up a prostitute, and Junior accepts. When the young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) arrives, Junior reveals that he has no interest in her sexually, and that he was hoping to instead convince her to purchase some of the clothing in the luggage that he stole. Junior sees through her sex worker alias and tricks her into revealing that her real name is Susie, and the two end up sleeping together anyway, as the naive girl from Okeechobee falls for his dubious charms. Unbeknownst to Junior, the cultist that he assaulted at the airport died of shock, and the case falls into the lap of homicide detective Hoke Mosely (Fred Ward), a grizzled oaf of a man with terrible fashion sense, sharp observational skills that bely his slovenly appearance, and false teeth. He catches up with Junior at Susie’s apartment in less than 24 hours, implying that he knows the young man is guilty and highlighting the telltale signs in his behavior that indicate he’s served time, but also drinking up most of the young couple’s beer and (maybe) playing the dumb drunk in order to ingratiate himself. Junior sees through the act and tracks Hoke down to his residence, where he savagely beats the cop, stealing his badge, gun, and dentures, making him more dangerous than ever. 

It’s here that the film takes a fascinating turn. It’s very funny from its earliest moments; when Susie tries to beg off of spending the night together because she has a “lot” of homework that night—she has to write a haiku—Junior robs her neighbors while she takes a bath, all while extemporaneously composing several of them like “Breaking, entering / The dark and lonely places / Finding a big gun.” But once he has Hoke’s badge and gun, he opens up a whole new way to terrorize and rob people, which he gets away with for quite some time largely because he just … behaves like a cop. After shooting a would-be smash-and-grab thief at a dockside restaurant (only calling out “Freeze or I’ll shoot” after pulling the trigger) and realizing the power he wields, he tries to strongarm the bellboy/pimp who sent Susie to him by pretending that she was underage, at which point the man claims that he knows this isn’t true because her ID was checked by the cop he’s already bribing weekly. Junior interrupts several crimes in progress and takes advantage of the situation by “allowing” the perps to get away then making off with their loot, but what one notices the longer this goes on is that a violent psychopath is consistently responding to burglar alarms, purse-snatchings, and drug deals when the real police are nowhere to be found. At one point, Junior “busts” two musclehead drug smugglers and has them handcuff themselves to a metal bar, then he steals their product; Hoke’s soon-to-retire partner Henderson (Charles Napier) informs him that one of the two men was the killer in “The Dumbbell Murders,” a homicide that Hoke has been working for over a year, and jokes that maybe Hoke should let Junior close a couple more cases before apprehending him. 

The performances here are excellent. Jennifer Jason Leigh is almost unrecognizable, sporting a blonde pixie cut and an equally audacious southern accent, and although Susie’s under-written and dim-witted to a fault, Leigh still imbues her with a sense of pathos that demonstrates her understated abilities as an actor. Fred Ward is one of the great unsung character actors of his generation, and he is an absolute delight in this role. There were three more Hoke Mosely novels published after Miami Blues, and one gets the feeling that there was an attempted franchise in the making with this film that simply never continued, which is a shame; I would have loved to see him play this sleazeball a few more times. Perhaps the reason this never came to fruition is that Alec Baldwin simply steals the show here as the dangerous, deranged Junior. Miami Blues may be the best non-Jack Donaghy performance of his career, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that so effectively utilizes his icy, cold eyes as well as this one does. His ability to flip back and forth between dealing out unhinged violence and playing house with the beautiful young woman he’s conned into falling for his sob stories is truly something to behold, and he plays every scene with Leigh with a bizarre glee, as if he can’t believe he’s getting away with such an obvious farce. He thinks he’s hit the jackpot, but his cons mostly succeed because he’s facing off against deviants, simpletons, and deviant simpletons. It’s also worth noting that this is a film that isn’t hesitant to play on Baldwin’s contemporary sex appeal; he’s clad in nothing but his underwear or otherwise shirtless for long portions of the film, and the camera spends more time ogling his semi-nude form than it does Leigh’s. Fred Ward is also quite attractive (this was only two years after Big Business, after all), but the film keeps him covered up in tacky screen-printed silks and hospital neckbraces so as not to distract from the fact that this film is partially selling itself on Baldwin’s taut torso. 

The smaller roles here are also delightful. Charles Napier has a lot of fun playing off of Ward; their introductory scene finds them arguing about who has to break the news to the family of the deceased Hare Krishna, with Napier’s Henderson begging off even though it’s his turn because he took “the fat lady who sat on the kid,” which he claims “counts for two.” The exposition that he’s only one week away from retirement sets up the expectation that he’s going to die in the final reel, but he makes it to the end intact, firing off bon mots as he heads into the sunset. Nora Dunn gets less to do as Hoke’s new partner, Ellita Sánchez, but she’s memorable nonetheless, and it was probably more surprising to see her in a more serious role in 1990, fresh off of her five season run on SNL. Miami Blues is also a film that’s chock to the brim with one scene wonders. Paul Gleason, probably best remembered as the principal in The Breakfast Club, is a lot of fun playing against type as the vice cop who’s on the take with regards to the hotel prostitution ring, who finds and beats up the real Hoke after Junior tells the bellhop pimp to send money to him at Hoke’s apartment. The best minor performance, however, is probably the Honeymoon Killer herself, Shirley Stoler, as a no-nonsense pawn shop matron who sees through Junior’s act almost immediately and is one of the only characters who ever manages to get the better of him. 

Near the film’s end, there’s a scene in which vinegar pie, a nineteenth century custard pie that allowed for vinegar to be substituted as an acid for the more difficult to obtain lemon, plays a vital role. For contemporary critics, Miami Blues seems to have been a vinegar pie in and of itself, something that was almost unpalatable, too sweet and too sour at the same time, but it’s managed to become a bit of a cult classic, as indicated by its current presence on the Criterion streaming service. It’s definitely worth finding the time to enjoy.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988)

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We’ve said it before around these parts, but it bears repeating: Tubi really is the people’s streaming service. While recently browsing through the “leaving soon” section of the app after rewatching the underrated Earth Girls Are Easy, some friends and I stumbled across a movie none of us had ever heard of entitled Prince of Pennsylvania. As the service auto-played a scene from the movie, we did a quick review of its credentials: a staggeringly low 14% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a caustic Roger Ebert review of not just the movie but the trend in which the movie is a participant and society as a whole (he’s just like me!). We gave it a shot, partially because my best friend loves to needle her boyfriend about the acting talents of one Keanu Reeves (a trend that started after we all watched Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula a little while back) and partially because, well, it’s been an arctic vortex, and what else can you do? 

The film follows Rupert Marshetta (Reeves), a recent high school dropout in the coal town of Mars, PA. His mother Pam (Bonnie Bedelia) has had only one wish for him and his brother their entire lives, which is that neither of them would end up working the mines like their father, Gary (Fred Ward). For the time being, Rupert is living in his parents’ garage, which is filled with various gizmos that the boy has built, and working at the local ice cream shoppe owned and operated by disillusioned hippie Carla (Amy Madigan), on whom he has a crush despite her on-again, off-again relationship with “Trooper” Joe (Jay O. Sanders). As the film opens, the philosophy-quoting Rupert goes to a junkyard and happens upon some bikers, and a biker girl close to his own age gives him a (very stupid looking) punk haircut, just before he is supposed to attend the christening of the most recent addition to the neighboring Sike family, which enrages his father. Things in Rupert’s life get turned even more upside down when several major life events happen in succession: he follows his mother to a run-down trailer that belonged to Gary’s father and discovers her in a secret tryst with new father Jack Sike; he and Carla sleep together after her most recent split from Trooper Joe; his father reveals that he has gotten an offer for his father’s old land that will change the life of the family immeasurably; and, finally, a fire in the mine traps Gary and Jack below ground where the latter, believing that they are about to die, confesses his affair with the former’s wife. 

In his review, that lovable curmudgeon Ebert laments that this movie represents a then-contemporary movie trend that “forces realistic characters into an absurd plot, and expects us to accept the plot because we believe in the characters.” And he’s not wrong about that; the film does have a bit of a tone problem. You see, the complicating action is that Rupert hatches a plan to get himself and his mother out from under their father’s thumb by kidnapping his father, under the assumption that this would somehow allow his mother to convince the courts to let her sell Gary’s valuable land in order to pay the ransom, which Rupert would collect and then split with her. He doesn’t loop her into this plan until after he and Carla have already gone through with the kidnapping; once Pam is informed, she attempts to go along with it, only to learn that Gary already sold the land and took payment in cash, which complicates the plan. 

It’s an utterly absurd premise that is completely at odds with the extremely grounded nature of the relationships at play and the characterizations of the people we’ve met. We learn a lot about each of them, and what motivates them. All Gary wanted was to give his own children a better opportunity than he had growing up in his father’s little trailer, and although they are better off, his inability to connect with (or even understand) his eldest son pushes him to a breaking point, and the revelation that his wife has been infidelious enrages him further, as if the two of them are in some kind of conspiracy together to make him angry when it’s his inability to let go of his fantasy of how things “ought” to be that has driven both of them away. (It’s worth noting here that his speech about this is where he mentions that he thought of himself and Pam as the “king and queen of Pennsylvania” with Rupert as their prince who would inherit everything one day, and it’s one of the worst, most belabored title justifications that I have ever encountered, made only worse when it is called back to in the film’s final moments.) Carla’s life is no picnic either; she and Trooper Joe used to live in another state where they had an affair that resulted in the birth of a little girl, whom Carla turned over to Joe and his wife to raise. The couple moved out of state and by the time that Carla was able to save enough to move closer to them to be nearer to her daughter, they had already divorced and Joe didn’t fight his ex-wife for custody of his and Carla’s child. 

The film is excellent at creating rich, full backstories for its characters, and I’m not surprised that Ebert found the tonal dissonance between this and the goofy kidnapping plot to be an insurmountable problem when trying to enjoy the story. “Give me a great big break,” he wrote. “A movie about any of these people might have had a chance, if the filmmakers had retained a shred of sanity.” I don’t have that same problem, however, because (whenever we aren’t getting backstory about Carla’s baby and Gary isn’t smacking his wife around after finding out about her adulter) this movie is one of the most genuinely funny comedies that I have ever seen. Reeves is adorable in his role as a hapless, gifted-but-aimless layabout teenager whose lack of ambition is only matched by his lack of opportunities. From the moment that he shows up with his (very, very stupid) punk haircut, it’s impossible not to enjoy his antics, whether he’s futzing about with the light-up ice cream cone on top of Carla’s shoppe, running from a burly man in a towel after knocking the guy’s coffee out of his hand as a distraction while Carla impersonates Gary for the sake of the kidnapping plan, or playing at espionage, he’s utterly magnetic and a total joy to watch. 

There are two scenes here that will stick with me forever. The first is an amazing setpiece; following his interruption of the altercation between his parents that results in a physical fight with his father, Rupert goes to the ice cream parlor and sees Trooper Joe’s car, enraging him, and then he is baited by some kids on the way to their homecoming dance. Angered, Rupert goes to the bikers from the opening scene and invites them to come raise hell at the dance, which is themed “Nights of Dallas” (“You can’t come in here unless you’re dressed from Dallas or Dynasty,” says the ticket-taking girl who wonders where he’s been all year). It’s all very hilarious and tacky and Texan, with the band performing in front of a giant Texas state flag while wearing cowboy hats, a punch bowl shaped like an oil derrick, a papier-mâché armadillo the size of a VW bug, and a model drilling platform that’s got to be over two stories tall. The whole scene is a delight even before Rupert is chased offscreen while trying to make a quick getaway. But what really made me fall out of my seat laughing was a scene in which Carla, wearing a trench coat and a Freddy Krueger mask to disguise herself while taking care of the kidnapped Gary, attempts to keep the man calm with written messages that have a very distinct and recognizable style from her restaurant. It’s comic gold, and I’m still laughing about it days later. 

By the time that you read this, The Prince of Pennsylvania will likely be long gone from Tubi, but it seems like exactly the kind of cheap, easily licensed movie that will end up on another streaming service sooner than later. Adjust your expectations before going into it, and you’ll have a good time. Or just fast forward to the homecoming and kidnapping scenes; I’m not your dad.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Movie of the Month: Big Business (1988)

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EPSON MFP image

Every month one of us makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month Britnee made Boomer, Brandon, and Erin watch Big Business (1988).

Britnee: Many years ago, there was a local video rental shop in my hometown called Slick Sam’s (sounds more like a dirty sex shop), and that’s where I first came across one of my all-time favorite movies, Jim Abrahams’ 1988 comedy, Big Business. I can still see that sun-damaged, styrofoam-stuffed VHS cover sitting on the shelf just waiting for me to grab it. Needless to say, I was thrilled to find out that no one in the Swampflix crew had seen Big Business before, so I was able to make it my Movie of the Month selection for February. There’s not much love out there for this comic masterpiece, and it really does deserve some recognition.

In a small town called Jupiter Hollow, two women give birth to two sets of identical twin girls at the same time at a local hospital. One woman, Binky Shelton (Deborah Rush), is a big city snob that just so happened to go into labor while passing through Jupiter Hollow with her husband, but the other woman, Iona Ratliff (Patricia Gaul), is a local. The Sheltons and the Ratliffs coincidentally both name their twin daughters Rose and Sadie, and a kooky old nurse mixes up the sets of identical twins. About 40 years later, Sadie and Rose Shelton (Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin) are rich business women living in NYC while Sadie and Rose Ratliff (Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin) are country bumpkins living in Jupiter Hollow. Eventually, the two sets of twins end up in NYC at the same time, and all sorts of wacky things happen.

The performances by Midler and Tomlin are insanely impressive in this film. Midler plays a bitchy NYC snob (Sadie Shelton) and a kind small-town girl looking for adventure (Sadie Ratliff), and Tomlin plays a sweet, softspoken city girl (Rose Shelton) and a rough n’ tough country gal (Rose Ratliff). Portraying such different characters must’ve been such a difficult task for these comedy queens, but they both deliver.

Brandon, were you impressed by the versatile performances from Midler and Tomlin? Or were they just mediocre?

Brandon: I mean, Midler & Tomlin are both phenomenal personalities in general, so it’d be a total lie to say that anything they do or say is mediocre. However, it’s pretty clear that they both had a part they had more fun playing. It’s difficult to say which performance stands out most here between the two actresses, not because there isn’t a clear winner, but because the movie splits their performances into four quadrants: Rich Sadie & Poor Sadie (Midler) and Rich Rose & Poor Rose (Tomlin). There’s a definite, old fashioned nature>nurture mentality at work in Big Business, though, so the individual sisters who lucked into being raised in their “rightful” class environments are the more fun characters to watch, because their confidence is infectious. Poor Rose is certainly amusing in her bossy-but-small-minded local yokel skepticism. It’s Rich Sadie, however, who steals the show for me. As the Reaganomics-personified antagonist of the film, she’s allowed to be the most devious and, because Bette Midler is such a fabulous comedic performer, she strikes just the right tone of evil bitch that this film needed. Midler’s performance as Rich Sadie is just short of being a world-class drag routine. The way she saunters & pouts, insulting people’s outfits by saying “You look like a blood clot” while rocking the world’s largest shoulder pads is just begging for a drag-themed floor show revival. Poor Sadie has a couple of funny moments, mostly in a scene where she milks a cow to the beat of a country song & in her unholy fusion of Carribean-themed yodeling, but it feels like not nearly as much effort went into her character as the over-the-top vamping of her wealthy counterpart. The same could be said of Rich Rose. Tomlin & Midler are both fantastic in this film, but as far as versatility goes, it’s easy to see which characters got more attention.

Besides the easy likability of Midler & Tomlin in this film, something that really stood out to me is how old-fashioned everything feels. The swapped-twins plot of Big Business feels like it’s straight out of an Old Hollywood comedy, the kind that Fred & Ginger might’ve starred in if it had been released 50 years earlier. The nature-over-nurture value system of the movie is very much an antiquated line of thinking and (although there’s some confusion about who winds up with whom at the end) the film’s intense concern with finding each sister a potential mate is very much in line with the structure of a traditional comedy. Instead of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Big Business is more like A Million Beaus for Four Sisters. As the two sets of mismatched twins find themselves nearly-but-never-quite bumping into each other while all staying at the same hotel, I felt like I was watching a Marx Brothers movie. Hammering the point home, Midler even recreates the infamous Marx Brothers mirror gag from Duck Soup in the scene where her two characters finally meet for the first time. Fred Ward’s oblivious-to-homosexuality line reading of “You guys are alright” reads a lot like the classic “Nobody’s perfect!” zinger in Some Like It Hot. There’s even a gag where a homeless drunk rubs his eyes in disbelief when he sees both sets of twins walk by, immediately tossing away the bottle he’s clutching. I’m not sure that cinematic gags get much older than that.

What do you think of this film’s classic Hollywood callbacks, Boomer? Were they an intentional homage to the Old Hollywood era or just a strange coincidence for a comedy that happened to be old-fashioned by nature?

Boomer: I’m not much of a fan of comedies of error in which the humor relies too heavily on farcical near-misses, and there was a point in this movie where I lost heart as I realized that the film was saving the inevitable serendipitous union of the City and Country Mice for the end of the film. Once I had this epiphany and stopped waiting for the film to get to that point, I found myself enjoying the movie more straightforwardly, and was pleased that the mistaken-identity elements weren’t played for cringe-comedy as much as I had expected. As has been noted, this is a classic Hollywood farce, which really serves to demonstrate to what extent Old Hollywood was still working from a centuries-old storytelling paradigm; this isn’t really an Old Hollywood Farce so much as it is a Old Globe Farce, based on William Shakespeare’s genre-defining Comedy of Errors. In essence, Big Business is a throwback to a time when films were based almost entirely on dramas that were ancient even then, making the film old-fashioned by default, not that this is necessarily a bad thing. My major problem with the film comes from the way that its antiquated nature shows through in the film’s moral.

When viewing the four main characters, only Poor Rose and Rich Sadie seem truly suited for their positions in life, with Rich Rose and Poor Sadie being reasonably well-adjusted but largely unfulfilled. Ignoring the two women who are in their “rightful” lives, Poor Sadie’s desire for a more exciting life than pig wrasslin’ and yodeling can provide evokes more empathy for her than the audience can really muster for Rich Rose, who certainly has the financial means to forsake her supposedly incomplete life for the purported pleasures of rural domesticity. As such, Rich Rose is the character who gets the least characterization, really only developing once Roone shows up in the third act. This would be a fine exploration of the nature/nurture dichotomy, were it not for the fact that, ultimately, Poor Sadie comes to the decision that not only is the way of life in Jupiter Hollow worth preserving, it’s worth praising as well; she forsakes her biological sister’s urban and urbane world to return to performing percussive cow milking alongside toothless men whose musical expertise is limited to playing moonshine jugs, and we, as an audience, are supposed to feel gratified by this conclusion. Rural living is the right fit for everyone, except the shrewish antagonist.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I got plenty of laughs out of Tomlin and Midler’s performances here, and even the potentially painful farce worked for me. I was just hoping for one more twist (for instance, that the Sadies were actually the children of the Ratliffs and that the Roses were the Sheltons’ daughters) that would make the film less overt in its praise for downhome simplicity over metropolitan cynicism. To a man, all of the New York-based characters that are not Rich Rose are foppish, conceited, untrustworthy, manipulative, and greedy, with the implication being that Rose feels unfulfilled because she is genetically predisposed toward “goodness,” being the child of salt-of-the-earth outlanders. But the “goodness” of rural living is enough to almost completely deprogram Poor Sadie, who is tempted by the carnal delights that ensnare and comprise Rich Sadie’s identity and existence but is able to reject them. It just doesn’t sit well with me.

Erin, am I reading too much into this, or allowing my perception of the film to color my enjoyment of it too much? Is there something that mitigates this seeming moral that I may have overlooked? And what do you think about the Old Hollywood elements–do they work?

Erin: Boomer, I feel a little differently about the portrayal of country vs. city life, and I think that I came to slightly different conclusions about Big Business‘s moral assessment of both. I’d have to say that in true farcical fashion, both city life and country life are portrayed with an eye to their preposterous sides – yodeling and “making love in the back of a recreational vehicle” versus designer women in designer sneakers and the pompousness of grapefruits under silver lids.

Where I feel differently is that the on-screen portrayal of urban life seems to be much more positive than the portrayal of rural life. The Welcome to New York Montage, while funny, adheres pretty closely to the cinematic trope of New York as a vibrant, wonderful city (thought this might be more related to the visual presentation of Poor Sadie’s desires). Big Business‘s New York seems to be entirely made of the Plaza hotel and satin, even if its denizens are amoral and greedy. Rural life has gingham, and large, poor families.

If the moral of the story really is that rural life is better, I think it balances strangely against the onscreen portrayals of the rural and urban worlds. In a way, I think that starts to answer the second part of your question about the Old Hollywood elements (or the Old Globe elements, Big Business is truly a Shakespearean farce). I agree that that the movie reads as an old-fashioned screwball comedy and is pretty simple in terms of plot. On the other hand, I think that Big Business reads extremely well as an 80s movie. It’s got Bette Midler as a Power Lead (in TWO roles!), Big Business as the Big Bad, and steel drums lining the streets of New York.

What do you think, Britnee? To continue Boomer’s line of question, does Big Business manage to read well as an 80s movie? Does the old fashioned plot work well amongst the shoulder pads and polka dots of the 1980s?

Britnee: I’ve always viewed Big Business as a prime example of an 80s comedy. It’s packed with cheesy humor, wacky facial expressions, pumps and power suits, and of course, Bette Midler in her prime. It’s an 80s explosion! It wasn’t until this discussion that I realized that there are quite a few Old Hollywood elements present in this film. Now that I’m looking at the film through a much different lens, the movie is more interesting and much smarter than I initially thought. Creating a film that contains classical comic film features for an 80s audience mustn’t have been an easy task, but it’s a match made in heaven.

I know that this is completely off track, but I think that the film’s music deserves a bit of discussion. There are only two major lyrical songs in the film: Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” and George Benson’s “On Broadway.” Both songs work well in the film (they’re so New York!), but as for the film’s instrumental tracks, they’re all kinds of ridiculous. It’s the type of music that belongs in a department store’s training video. Part of me feels as though the music was a bit too much, but another part of me thinks that the obnoxious tunes contributed to the film’s campiness.

Brandon, did you find the instrumental music in the film to be annoying or am I overthinking this?

Brandon: I don’t know if “annoying” is the word I would use. Maybe “cheesy”? Maybe “eccentric”? It’s undeniable that the background music of Big Business is always present, always noticeable, and perhaps even always awful, but I found it somehow added to the film’s charm. The soundtrack is another one of the areas where the film feels trapped between two times. Its big band music (which is mostly contained in the 1940s prologue) & countryside yodeling are decidedly old-fashioned, but the department store pop songs Britnee mentioned & the endless droning sax are so 80s it ain’t even funny (well, it’s a little funny). I don’t know if it was the exact DVD copy Britnee & I were watching or if the film was intentionally mixed this way, but the soft sax rock aspects were particularly noticeable (in that they were deafening) & particularly amusing. What really got me laughing, though, was the obnoxiously dramatic drum fills that crash the scene at the film’s climax. It’s as if Neil Peart had dropped in at the sound booth to add some last minute touches for the soundtrack.

Going back to that 1940s prologue for a second, the film starts in the old-timey countryside town of Jupiter Hollow, which prompted me to write “Stars Hollow” (the fictional town from Gilmore Girls, of course) in my notes. It was a surprise, then, that Gilmore Girls vet Edward Hermann (who, sadly, passed away a little over a year ago) appears in this film, delivering one of many great performances. It was also cool to see Seth Green run around as a raucous baby (almost literally) as well as the weird coincidence that both of the Roses’ beaus are future Tremors compatriots (Michael Gross & Fred Ward). All of this and Deborah Rush, aka Jerri Blank’s mom. The cast of supporting characters is surprisingly stacked, as long as you care about the niche pop culture properties they’re best known for.

Boomer, were there any supporting roles in particular that stood out to you as a favorite? Midler & Tomlin easily get the most to do, but I feel there was plenty enough opportunities for the other actors to shine.

Boomer: It’s funny, I was delighted to see Deborah Rush in this film, as she’s always an absolute delight, especially when she’s playing a terrible mother figure (Jerri Blank was a hot mess before she ever showed up, but Piper Chapman’s insufferable insulated white privilege nonsense is all on Rush’s padded shoulders). I was pretty disappointed that she disappears after her part in initiating the plot, but she does make the best of her limited screen time. I also really enjoyed watching tiny Seth Green run around as a screaming terror, and got a kick out of seeing Michael Gross, who will always be doomsday prepper Burt Gummer of the Tremors franchise to me (although I didn’t make the Fred Ward connection that Brandon did). My favorite minor role came from Mary Gross, Michael’s sister, who played the soft-voiced secretary working for the Sheltons; as an actress, she’ll always have a place in my heart because of her involvement in Troop Beverly Hills. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I looked up the name of the actor who played the put-upon desk clerk, Joe Grifasi, but I couldn’t place him in any memorable roles based on a quick scan of his IMDb page; he must simply be one of those classic “that guy” actors.

It was a very minor role that has really stuck with me since watching the film. The narrative saw fit to include a vagrant character who oversees the comings and goings of the Plaza. This is a well-worn comedy cliche: a drunken vagrant sees some unbelievable sight, looks at the bottle in his hand, back at the unbelievable sight, and then tosses the bottle behind him. Normally, this character is never seen again, but this film brings back our friend a few times; we watch him catch sight of the Roses and Sadies coming and going multiple times. All in all, it seems like he gets more screen time than some of the lesser love interests. From the outside, this mostly low-stakes (give or take the fate of Jupiter Hollow, which is easy to forget in all the identity confusion shenanigans) rom com farce occurs entirely outside of the context of this character; as a result, his story plays out as a window into an existential horror that he can only passively observe. The Plaza: if you stand outside long enough, you’ll see yourself come out of there. And then he does! That’s some In The Mouth of Madness… um, madness.

While prowling through the sparse information that the internet has to offer about this film and its development, I read that the sets for the film were so expensive that ABC created an entire television series to use the sets in an attempt to recoup their losses. The series flopped and never made it out of its first season. It does make one wonder, though; would Big Business have worked as an ongoing series? It seems like it would, what with the potential to have stock twin hijinx intersect with stock cultural differences plots.

What do you think, Erin? Would this idea have legs? And in what stock sitcom situations would you most like to see the Shelton-Ratliff sisters (recast for a TV budget, of course)?

Erin: Boomer, I can definitely see at least a two-season Big Business show combining stock twin hijinks and stock cultural differences.  It would take a deft hand to extend the premise outside of the obvious shenanigans.  I’m envisioning a Green Acres meets Beverly Hillbillies situation.  Shoulder pads on the farm!  Country Rose get mixed up with big city Mafia!  Mistaken identities galore!  Pie and jam competitions at the fair!  Rich Sadie turns out to be a heck of a pig-caller!  Moonshine!  Country twins accidentally attend the Met Ball!

There’s at least half a season right there.  The challenge would be extending the premise into something stable and complex enough to keep a show on the air, but the promise of the ensemble cast might make it work.  I wonder if it’s cheaper to find multiple sets of twins or to constantly produce a double effect through camera and editing tricks.

I think that that my best description of Big Business would include words like madcap and zany.  It was definitely a lot of fun to watch, and it looked like the cast was also having a great time during filming.  That always makes a movie better for me.  All in all, I think that it was a solid entry in the filmography of the 1980s.  It’s charming and fluffy, with few dull moments and lots of shoulder pads.

Lagniappe

Erin: The fashions worn by the two sets of sisters are almost characters in themselves.  Big Business is almost worth watching just for the clothes!

Britnee: I really like Poor Sadie’s initial yodeling number that she performed at the Jupiter Hallow fair. “Well, hello, Jupiter Hallow. I know you’re doing fine. Every day you work the factory, every night a jug of wine,” is what immediately enters my head when I think about Big Business. I’m not a big fan of yodeling, but Midler has one of those voices that can make anything catchy and enjoyable.

Boomer: I was a bit disappointed that Sadie Ratliff ended up with (as I interpreted it) Sadie Shelton’s ex husband. They barely shared a scene or two, and she had much more chemistry with the desk clerk.

Brandon: Going back to what Boomer was saying about the vilification of city life vs the deification of the countryside, that push & pull didn’t bother me too, too much, but I will say that the evil “big business” end of the equation felt a lot more convincing & well-developed. I especially appreciated the Reaganomics-speak of the NYC twins’ inherited company, Moramax: “More for America”. As far as satire goes, that specific phrase easily ranks up there with Robocop & Gremlins II: The New Batch in poking fun at the state of class structure in the 1980s, even if most of the film’s message boils down to a simple rich = stressed out & snooty, poor = sweet & serene.

Upcoming Movies of the Month
March: Erin presents Mrs. Winterbourne (1996)
April: Boomer presents My Demon Lover (1987)
May: Brandon presents Girl Walk // All Day (2011)

-The Swampflix Crew