You’ve heard me complain about Ketcham, Brad Wesley’s most anonymous goon. How he’s handsome in a generic, Ken-doll way. How he’s a shirt-tucked-into-jeans kind of guy. How he doesn’t get a memorable introduction, just kind of sidling along in the background during the Bleeder scene. How no one ever bothers saying his credited name “Ketcham” out loud. How he pales in comparsion to Morgan, O’Connor, Jimmy, Pat McGurn, even Tinker, but how he’s the final guardian of Brad Wesley and the killer of Wade Garrett. How despite wielding the boot-knife and driving the monster truck you could walk right past him without even realizing who he was. How he’s aggressively, almost confrontationally non-descript.
Imagine how I feel now that I realize his name is “Gary.”
“Well, what are you waitin’ for, Gary? Drive through there!” That’s what Brad Wesley yells just before this tool in his giant red baseball cap runs over Strodenmire Ford with his monster truck. He says it with his back turned and with no eyeline-match cut, which is why I’ve watched this movie several dozen times and never noticed it before, but yeah, that’s Ketcham’s first name, Gary. Gary Ketcham. Gary, that most vanilla of names. If beige were a name rather than a color, it would be Gary. Gary is the “pic of myself wearing Oakleys in the driver’s seat of my car as a twitter avatar” of names. Gary. Wade Garrett gets killed by a guy named Gary. You remember Gary, don’t you? Wait, who are we talking about again?
Tags: gary, gary ketcham, goons, ketcham, road house, wagon days