Part Two of “The Agreement,” a special Valentine’s Week series
These two fellows are out for a night on the town, and their evening has brought them to the Double Deuce. There they can enjoy the musical stylings of the Jeff Healey Band, watch a shirtless man dance, interact with such luminaries as the Laughing Man and Mr. Clean, watch two brothers fight each other until they’re rolling on the ground near the pool table, potentially get beaten up by a bouncer with anger management issues, buy drugs from a waitress, throw beer bottles at a chickenwire fence, watch a bouncer pick up underage girls, buy a Buick—the world is truly their oyster. They’re sharing a drink they call Miller Genuine Draft, but it’s better than drinking alone.
And what a pair a’ attitudes they are! Our friend on the left, known to posterity as Gawker (actor Michael Wise), has the glee-squinted eyes and three-mile smile of a guy whose inebriation has enhanced his personal sense of good fortune tremendously. As well it might! He’s being inveigled to observe the excellent breasts of the Well-Endowed Wife by her Sharing Husband, an invitation he has gratefully accepted. “Fine, ain’t they?” Sharing Husband asks rhetorically; look at Gawker’s face and see if you can guess the answer.
His unnamed and uncredited pal is a delight as well. With bright eyes and bushy brows that both a) make him look like the wacky horny best friend in any number of ’80s sex comedies and ’90s Skinemax flicks, and b) appear as if they got spooked by Gawker’s smile and migrated to the next face over to avoid the space crunch, he plays a similar role in relation to his gawking friend that SH plays to WEW. He is there to beam approval, to offer encouragement, to generally egg things on. He too is clearly tickled pink by Well-Endowed Wife’s namesakes, but his gaze is reserved as much for Gawker as it is for her. He wants to see his friend seeing the thing they’re both seeing.
This is more common in Road House than you might think. In this film, it is often not enough to experience events on one’s own. An audience is required to confirm that the thing that has happened really has happened. It makes sense given the subject matter. When you’re a famous cooler hired to clean up an absolute cesspool of a nightclub, it won’t do to bust a few heads anonymously. The word needs to get out, to both the nice people and the ne’er-do-wells, that things have changed. By the same token the bad guys need their fellow goons’ laughter and howls of approval to make them feel their actions are justified, and they need not just their direct victims but everyone else to see what happens when they are defied. By the back end of the film Brad Welsey’s terroristic attacks on businesses who resist his protection racket take place for virtually no other purpose.
Gawker and friend aren’t keeping each other in a fashion anywhere near that brutal. But as we asked yesterday regarding Well-Endowed Wife and Sharing Husband, would the events that are about to unfold have taken place if Gawker had gone to the Double Deuce solo that night? Or is the presence of a friend, to exchange knowing glances and exclamations of pleasure, to verify and reify the spectacle, required to fully enjoy that spectacle? And is that not unlike the act of watching Road House itself?
Tags: barflies, gawker, michael wise, road house, the agreement, the double deuce