As a visual text, Road House is a chest of wonders. Look at this shot from early on in the film, on the night when Dalton first visits the Double Deuce. There he is at his familiar post, in his familiar shapeless beige jacket. There’s Pat McGurn and The Bartender Who Must Not Be Named behind him, conferring about whatever a sister-son and a working stiff who both happen to have the same job at the same place might confer about. (“So what’s it like working with Exene after the divorce? And this Mortensen kid she’s with, is he cool? Because he seems cool.”)
To the left is a power drinker, passed out on the bar; from this we can infer that Pat, ever conscious of the needs of his uncles liquor distributorship, refuses to cut off even the most obviously inebriated patrons, and most likely pressures the Nameless One into doing the same. Given the behavior of the comparatively sober customers, what does he have to lose, really.
To the right is a detail I’m just now noticing: the dry spongy exposed foam of the bar’s padding, chipped and peeled and torn away by the half-hearted vandalism of the drunk and the fixated. Back in the “everything is padded” days of restaurateurship, such artifacts of idle destructiveness were visible everywhere. I haven’t sat on an upholstered seat at an upholstered table in many a long year, but I can feel the satisfaction of ripping away a chip of covering and pulling at the porous brown stuffing underneath like my hands are doing it right now instead of typing this sentence. For all that Road House is rightfully dinged about its lack of realism, even as regards bar furniture specifically (the price of replacement tables alone from the fight about to ensue would put a normal establishment out of business), that’s some real shit.
And to the right of that? Why, that familiar fellow is none other than Brad Welsey’s own Tinker. Has he come to chat with fellow Wesleyans Pat and Morgan about the art of the goon over a few drinks when they have a moment to spare during their busy evenings of stealing from the cash register and erupting into violence over the slightest provocation? Is he additional muscle to make sure Mr. Wesley’s liquor flows without impediment? Is he simply a fan of the Jeff Healey Band? At another time during this sequence he’s seen chatting up some lovely lady; is the Double Deuce his fern bar, his Regal Beagle? Is this Tinker Tinder?
I’m reminded here of the extensive making-of documentaries included in the Lord of the Rings extended edition sets. I don’t remember the exact wording offered by the heads of the various costume and design and set departments regarding their lunatic attention to detail. I do remember the gist of it, though: They would produce intricate designs for the insides of garments and scabbards or for swords that would only be seen from a distance or for rooms no one would even enter or what have you not because the audience would see them, which they knew they wouldn’t. They did so because they were creating a world for the entire production to inhabit, not just the viewer. A cast or crew member who spent a few seconds admiring the embroidery of their breeches would be that much closer to convincingly conveying the reality of a world of orcs and elves and hobbits and magic rings. Look at the shot above, really look at it, and tell me if he war between the world’s most famous bouncers and the maniac mall devleoper who keeps their bar in Jim Beam seems as much of a stretch as it did before.
Tags: bartenders, dalton, goons, pat mcgurn, road house, staff, the double deuce, the nameless ones, tinker