“I think it’s time for you gentlemen to leave” is the first thing we hear Dalton, the second greatest cooler in North America, say in Road House, the film about him. I’m ashamed, however, to say that it’s taken me over half a year to write about it. To paraphrase George Harrison on Ringo Starr, the phrase looms large in his legend.
There’s a reason I avoided specifying the sentence’s terminal punctuation, and it’s because Patrick Swayze’s line reading defies our understanding of the very concept of the sentence. “I think it’s time foryougentlemen to leave“: Dalton walks up to the scene of a Knife Nerd disturbance and these words come spilling out of his mouth in a controlled burst. “I think it’s time“: Face stoic, he leans hard on the last word, letting them know the time has come for…something; “foryougentlemen”: It comes out like a child sayin “LMNO” in the middle of the alphabet, as if “gentlemen” is but a courtesy he’d just as soon skip past; “to leave“: the initial “t” is hard, the tip of the tongue taking a trip of two goons down the palate to tap, at “to,” on the teeth, and then right into “leave,” emphasis his, the message clear, get the fuck out before he stops calling you gentlemen, you don’t have much time left.
The delivery is magnetic, engaging, evocative of the entire Dalton persona that awaits us, commanding yet polite yet petulant, tremulous with suppressed violence and the strain of high ideals, ready to be peeled back, layer by layer, like an onion, like a daydream, or a fever.
Tags: bandstand, dalton, knife nerds, road house