330. “Find that prick!”

November 26th, 2019

Ketcham—you remember Ketcham, don’t you?—is the one who puts it all together. It is he who investigates the thoroughly shot up and burned out wreck of Dalton’s car and discovers Dalton isn’t in it. (Surprise!) It is he who finds the knife pulled out of Wade Garrett’s chest and driven through the gas pedal to force the empty car to ram Brad Wesley’s compound. It is he who issues the four goons in his charge their marching orders: “Find that prick!” It is he who puts the knife back in his empty hip sheathe, revealing to the audience that it was he who put the knife in Wade Garrett’s chest. These climactic beats of the Road House story are pounded out by one man and one man alone.

Of course, and as this series has detailed, no one knows who the fuck Ketcham is when they first watch this film. Or when they seventh watch this film. Christ, before I wrote 140,000 words about Road House in daily increments I’m not sure even I realized the pivotal role this asshole played in several major events—driving his monster truck, lurking in the background of the Bleeder speech, spying on Dalton and Elizabeth from his monster truck, kicking Dalton with the boot-knife, running over Strodenmire Ford with his monster truck, killing Wade Garrett, and now, at the last, serving as the focal-point character for Brad Wesley’s goons unsuccessful attempt to find and eliminate Dalton. He genuinely is an important goon in this movie.

You just have no reason to believe that unless you’ve picked apart all the minutiae, is the thing. Importance is one thing, but do you remember him the way you remember the other four guys in this scene—Morgan, Pat McGurn, Tinker, and O’Connor, aka Terry Funk, John Doe, the funny overweight one, and the Bleeder? Of course you don’t, and why would you? They’ve looked and acted memorably. Ketcham might as well be a mannequin performing his tasks. You don’t even get to see him drive the knife into Wade, which might cement him as Jimmy Junior, so to speak. He’s just a stuffed shirt with a boring look and no preexisting connections to the Double Deuce by which to remember him.

Yet he will be the central goon in the carnage to come. Find that prick? My friends, we’ve already found him.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 330. “Find that prick!”

329. Death of the dream

November 25th, 2019

Dalton’s Mercedes-Benz represents the freedom afforded him by his life as North America’s second-best bouncer. It is the only ostentatious display of his considerable wealth. It is the vehicle he uses to travel from one town to the next, never tied down. It is the secret self he hides from his employers and antagonists alike, safe in a garage or under a tarp as his latest hoopty serves as its whipping boy.

So it means something when Dalton jams a knife through the gas pedal, pinning it to the floor, and lets the car loose in the goons’ general direction. It means something when it hits some kind of natural earth ramp and leaps above a low brick fence into the air, sustaining fire all the way. It means something when it detonates and bursts into huge gouts of flame, an explosion that means as much to Dalton’s lifestyle as the explosion of Red’s Auto Parts meant to Red Webster or Emmett’s house meant to Emmett.

Dalton’s way of doing things is over, it’s finished. It died with his car, consumed by its flames. The only question now is what will rise from the ashes.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 329. Death of the dream

328. The Apotheosis of Pat

November 24th, 2019

Pat McGurn is weak. His uncle, his only mother’s brother, Brad Wesley, says so himself: “Pat’s got a weak constitution, you boys know that. That’s why he’s working as a bartender. He’s my only sister’s son, and if he doesn’t have me who’s he got? And if I’m not there, you’re there.” An entire ecosystem of goonsmanship, formed to protect Pat McGurn from the vicissitudes of the mad mad mad mad world outside Brad Wesley’s mansion. Pat may show some sand every once in a while, like when he pulled a knife the size of a newborn baby on Dalton and tried to murder him in front of several witnesses while calling him “chicken-dick,” but in general he’s just the loser who got fired for skimming the till. It’s enough to make you wonder what his former lover Frank Tilghman saw in the guy.

But not here, not now, not with Dalton’s car barreling down on him. Here we see a whole new side of Pat McGurn, a gangly grinning gun-toting side. Look at that shit-eating smile! He pumps that shotgun with a boogie-woogie rhythm in his hips, like he’s mentally saying “yee-haw!” or playing “Rock This Town” by the Stray Cats. Maybe this is just the default setting for actor John Doe, who after all was the frontman for the Los Angeles punk act X. This is Pat McGurn taking the stage and rocking Dalton’s car’s face off. Sadly—sadly for Pat, at least—his performance is about to be cut short.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 328. The Apotheosis of Pat

327. Goons vs. Car

November 23rd, 2019

After three star turns in under five minutes, Dalton’s car finally has its first fight scene. First and last, sad to say. It barrels towards Brad Wesley’s mansion at breakneck speed, plowing right through a fence and over a hedge to its appointment with destiny. Arrayed against it are Wesley’s five core goons who are a) alive and b) not Karpis—Ketchum, O’Connor the Bleeder, Morgan, Tinker, and Pat McGurn. There’s no jaw-jacking involved here. It’s on sight. They open fire with an array of shotguns and handguns—all of which raise the question of why they bothered with the fistfighting and knife-fighting in the first place. They certainly don’t hesitate to shoot Dalton’s Benz, and (they assume) Dalton himself, full of lead. Was it Jimmy’s death that lifted the shibboleth against straight-up murder by gunfire? Did Dalton bring this fusillade upon himself? Or at the very least on his car?

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 327. Goons vs. Car

326. And now: Un-Parking

November 22nd, 2019

I know what you’re thinking. “We’ve already seen Dalton park his car in the same spot twice in three minutes. Do we really need to see him leave that parking space, too? Do we need three instances of him pulling into or pulling out of a parking spot in five minutes total?” Define need, I suppose is the best response here. For one reason or another Road House decided it is of paramount importance that we see Dalton getting into and out of this car over and over and over again. There’s at least one storytelling reason for this that makes some kind of sense, as you’ll soon see. I’m not sure if there’s really sense to be made, but I’m open to the possibility. I’m even open to the idea that it’s the film’s way of showing how even in the face of danger and tragedy, the drudgery of everyday life continues. If you’re off to avenge the death of your mentor at the hands of the minions of a berserk Chamber of Commerce luminary, guess what? You’ve still gotta drive there.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 326. And now: Un-Parking

325. Rose

November 21st, 2019

The idea comes to him fast, and he acts on it just as suddenly. There’s a knife sticking out of the chest of his mentor and best friend. The knife has to come out at some point. Perhaps it’s best, perhaps it’s right, that he remove the knife himself, that he wield that knife against the perpetrators of this horrible crime. So he steels himself. He breathes deep and exhales through his closed lips. He puts his hand on the hilt. He shifts his gaze from the knife to the face of his slain friend and back again. All the while he grips and pulls, pulls, pulls. The camera cuts away as if to spare us the intimate sight of Dalton pulling the penetrator out of the body of Wade Garrett, the most famous bouncer in all of Christendom, the man who made him the man he is today. All we see is the thin trickle of blood that flows over Wade Garrett’s rose tattoo. In interviews it is canon-established that Rose was the name of the woman who gave him his favorite scar, on his hip, inches from his pubis. A permanent tribute to the glory of sex, stained in this final hour by the plain fact of violence. This is the end of the road for Wade Garrett, but the knife that pierced him will plunge into another body before the day is done. To Dalton, that much is clear.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 325. Rose

324. Interlude

November 20th, 2019

It’s been getting kind of heavy around here, what with all the death and the crying and what have you. Fortunately Road House remains Road House at all times and in all ways. Everything that’s happening in Road House is happening simultaneously—the throat rip and the parking scenes and the Sharing Husband and the breakfast scene and the sex scene and the Giving of the Rules and, of course, the monster truck running over a Ford dealership. They’re all as close to you as your copy of the movie, and with the flick of a button you can be anywhere and everywhere within Road House at once. It exists in all states. So here, have a shot I stumbled upon completely at random today of the wheels of a monster truck absolutely demolishing a station wagon. Let it smoosh the sadness and the fear and the anxiety right out of you, let it send them flying out of your body in thousands of jagged shards. Be the truck. Be the wagon. Be Wagon Days now.

Tags: ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 324. Interlude

“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “The Spies”

November 19th, 2019

The show is called His Dark Materials. But who are we kidding? It’s all about her.

HBO’s latest fantasy epic struck gold when it cast Ruth Wilson as its villain, Mrs. Coulter. In lesser hands, the sinister head of the General Oblation Board and leader of its “gobblers” would be a one-dimensional child-stealing monster, with the occasional glimmer of doubt or remorse. But thanks to The Affair actor, she emerges as a full-fledged human, overwhelmed by her own emotions even as she overpowers everyone in her path.

I reviewed this week’s episode of His Dark Materials for Rolling Stone.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on “His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “The Spies”

323. Sublime/Faces of Death Redux

November 19th, 2019

I sometimes think of Road House as a sublime movie, and that’s not an adjective I throw around for movies that often. For me it’s reserved for films that transport me into a place of tangible, physical awe—the equivalent of musical frisson, that chill you get up and down your spine and through your skull from art that stuns you. If you know me at all it won’t surprise you to learn that I get this feeling most often from horror films. I think Jaws is sublime. I think The Exorcist is sublime. I think The Shining is sublime. I think Aliens is sublime. I think Hereditary is sublime. I think Barton Fink is sublime. You get the idea. So you get that Road House does not transport me the way any of those movies do.

Why is Road House sublime? Because sandwiched in between two identical parking scenes and a scene in which two lovers confront one another over matters of life and death in front of a bunch of x-rays of people’s colons, Patrick Swayze looks at Sam Elliot like he does above and below. First: total love, respect, humility—he is admitting he was wrong after all—and above all gratitude that he gets to know this man. Then: total loss, grief, anger, denial, anything but acceptance that this man who meant so much to him is gone.

The word I use to describe Patrick Swayze as an actor is generous. He gave himself over to this absurd role in this absurd film, used every ounce of his training as an actor and a professional-grade stuntman and a professional-grade ballet dancer. Every interview I’ve ever seen with Kelly Lynch or Marshall Teague or Sam Elliott in which they’re asked about this film is full of superlatives of how dedicated he was, and how kind he was, and how the experience of working with him was…well, they don’t say it, but I will: sublime.

Parking, acting, colons, parking, more acting, acting like his life has fallen apart, like the person he loves most in the world has been stolen from him. His eyes squint with tears and she shakes his head wildly back and forth, moving his whole upper body at one point, his whole self one gigantic No. Some of the dumbest filmmaking I’ve ever seen, and then this. Sublime.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 323. Sublime/Faces of Death Redux

322. “Yo! Wake the fuck up!”

November 18th, 2019

“Sit the fuck down, have a beer, I’ll be back,” Dalton said to Wade just before departing to find Elizabeth. “Wesley wins, man. We’re outta here.” It’s then that Wade shoots him the “Attaboy, mijo” he will no doubt return to in his mind for years, even decades, to come. They’re just two men being men, swearing when it isn’t necessary, patting each other on the back. It’s who they are, even when one of them has been beaten half to death.

Dalton attempts to return to this pattern of dialogue when he comes back to the Double Deuce after his failure with the Doc. “Yo! Wake the fuck up! We’re outta here!” he says from across the room, smiling. This has alway struck me as the one genuinely superfluous f-bomb in the whole profane film. “Wake the fuck up” right away, without even a normal “wake up” first? It feels forced.

And it probably is. After all, in the guise of going along with his mentor’s wishes, Dalton is admitting to two massive failures: first, his failure to free the town of Jasper from Brad Wesley’s clutches, and second, his failure to convince Elizabeth to retreat alongside him. A nice blustery “fuck” where no “fuck” need be will paper over all of that just fine—indeed, it’s probably necessary to offset the repetition of “we’re outta here” from their previous conversation. Getting “outta here” is an admission of defeat, and that needs amelioration. The little friendly punch to the back Dalton gives Wade afterwards is of a piece with the cussword. Just guys bein’ dudes.

It falls apart quickly, though. “I said ‘one beer,’ señor,” Dalton says, still grinning, as he puts his hand on Wade’s arm to shake him awake. But there will be no awakening Wade Garrett, not now, not ever again.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 322. “Yo! Wake the fuck up!”

“Watchmen” thoughts, Season One, Episode Five: “Little Fear of Lightning”

November 18th, 2019

What really matters here is how Looking Glass takes it, and that’s written all over his face. I’m sorry, I know that sounds like a bad joke given his faceless mask, but it’s really not Looking Glass who receives this revelation—it’s his secret identity, Wade Tillman. Without saying a word, actor Tim Blake Nelson makes the man’s relief so obvious and so strong it borders on awe. You almost expect him to start weeping tears of joy. In dramas, human responses beat shocking twists every time.

WATCHMEN 305 RELIEF

And why shouldn’t he be happy? He was a victim of one of the worst events in human history (the horror of which is very effectively conveyed by that flyover shot of the squid’s path of destruction, accompanied by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s horror-movie score). He’s spent the rest of his life terrified, wearing tinfoil hats to protect him from ever experiencing that sort of thing again. His entire life, in fact, revolves around a worst-case scenario that this videotape, in one fell swoop, erases from the realm of possibility. What would you do on behalf of someone who allayed your greatest fear?

I reviewed this week’s episode of Watchmen for Decider.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on “Watchmen” thoughts, Season One, Episode Five: “Little Fear of Lightning”

“Mr. Robot” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Seven: “407 Proxy Authentication Required”

November 18th, 2019

Two rooms, six actors, one hour: This week, “Mr. Robot” served us a bottle episode. There was no way of knowing we would find something so truly dark at the bottom of it.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Mr. Robot for the New York Times.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on “Mr. Robot” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Seven: “407 Proxy Authentication Required”

321. X-rays

November 17th, 2019

When Dalton bursts into the hospital room where the Doc is working in order to whisk her out of town with him, she’s looking at x-rays of people’s colons and whatnot. Why? She stitches up knife wounds for patients who come to the ER. Does she do that and gastrointestinal stuff? Maybe she’s just curious? Maybe—spitballing here—the props department just said “get me a bunch of x-ray stuff” and this is what they came up with. Broken legs, bullet wounds, anything would have worked better than what they wound up with. It makes for a uniquely mood-killing backdrop for Dalton and Elizabeth’s conversation, which is really more of a confrontation: He demands that she leave with him, bodily yanks her out of her seat in fact, and she tells him no because as best she can tell he’s just as crazy as Brad Wesley, so he gives up and leaves. If these colons could talk, man, if these colons could talk.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 321. X-rays

320. Wounded Wade

November 16th, 2019

No sooner does Brad Wesley hang up on Dalton than Wade Garrett stumbles into the Double Deuce, wounded and winded. He’s not dead, not yet anyway, and it’s unclear whether the beating he says he sustained at the hands of three unnamed goons—none of which are members of the core team, who we will soon get a good look at and none of whom are injured in the slightest—is part of the coin-toss murder scheme Wesley just unveiled. Dalton certainly thinks it is, though: Since Wade isn’t dead, it stands to reason that Elizabeth is in grave danger, and indeed Wade says his assailants told him he was lucky. Dalton bounces out of there as quickly as he can, but not before telling Wade that Wesley wins, that they’re all going to skip town. “Attaboy, mijo,” Wade says, grinning. It’s the last thing Wade will ever say to him.

My own mentor, Tom Spurgeon, died this week. He was too young to go. The last thing he said to me was “Your writing is important to me!” So I can say, based on personal experience, that that “Attaboy, mijo” will lodge itself in Dalton’s heart. It’s there to stay.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 320. Wounded Wade

319. Coin toss

November 15th, 2019

What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss? This is not an idle question pretty much any time it gets asked. It’s certainly not for Dalton. Upon arriving at the Double Deuce to tender his resignation, he is greeted by a phone call from Brad Wesley. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!” the deranged JC Penney franchisee says, before telling Dalton “what’s on for today”: “Wade, or Elizabeth…one of them dies.” Dalton has no response but to tell Wesley “you’re a sick man,” his voice echoing Morgan telling him “you’re a dead man” lo those many moons ago. So, in the absence of Dalton expressing a preference, Brad Wesley flips a coin. He looks at the result, gets back on the phone, and says “Dalton, I’d sure like to tell you how it turned out.”

This is how it turned out:

It’s hard to see what with the corpse of Wade Garrett obscuring it, but there’s a point I’m making here: At no time during or after their conversation does Brad Wesley say anything like “Heads for Elizabeth, tails for Wade.” He doesn’t even list them in that order! The information in the note above is a point of interest, I suppose, but since Dalton was given no frame of reference for the coin toss it might as well say “It was heads” or “It was Option C” or the text of the Gettysburg Address. The point of a supervillain coin toss is to tell you what the options are and then let the coin fall where it may, not to do all of this in secrecy and only reveal the results when they mean nothing to the person to whom you’re revealing them.

Unless you’re the supervillain in Road House, in which case all bets are off. Brad Wesley didn’t bring the Fotomat here by playing by your rules.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 319. Coin toss

318: And again: Parking

November 14th, 2019

Later in the morning after he murders a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands, Dalton parks his car a second time. This, too, is the way of things. Our days are made of repetition; and even in Jasper, some deeds, once done, are done again. Dalton has been doing things on this bright sunny day, with the famous hills of Missouri visible in the distance, and having done some of them about three minutes of screentime earlier does not change that. So Dalton goes about his business, and to do his business he must needs park his car at his place of business, again. It’s as simple as that.

Less simple, more baffling, is the message communicated by this choice of shot. It’s true that Dalton has to park his car in the Double Deuce parking lot twice on this fateful morning, for reasons that will soon be made clear. It’s substantially—remarkably, even—less true that director Rowdy Herrington needs to show Dalton parking his car in the Double Deuce parking lot twice on this fateful morning. It’s not even clear he needs to show it once, the importance of his choice of car that morning notwithstanding. We know where and what the Double Deuce is, and we know Dalton goes there. Do we need to see him drive across that big dirt parking lot, park his car, get out, walk up to the front doors, walk through the front doors, and walk over to the bar two times in under five minutes?

No, we don’t. But there’s a lot about Road House we don’t need. Perhaps need is not the right rubric for anything about this movie. Perhaps that’s what the two parking scenes, standing like the Argonath, are meant to convey.

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 318: And again: Parking

Tom Spurgeon

November 14th, 2019

Tom Spurgeon has died. He was my mentor, my model, and my friend. This is a staggering loss for comics; for me, I just know I hate waking up in a world without Tom in it. He made me a better writer, his friendship made me a better person, and his work made comics a better art form—a better industry—a better community. I will miss his boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for the medium, I will miss his savagely funny offline self, and I will miss the chance to tell him how much he meant to me for the 18 years I was privileged enough to know him. I love you, Tom.

Tags: ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Tom Spurgeon

317. And now: Parking

November 13th, 2019

The morning after he murders a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands, Dalton parks his car. This is the way of things. Extraordinary events are rendered extraordinary by their singular, instantial nature; and even in Jasper, tomorrow is another day. Dalton has things to do on this bright sunny day, with the famous hills of Missouri visible in the distance, and having murdered a man by tearing out his throat with his bare hands the night before does not change that. So Dalton goes about his business, and to do his business he must needs park his car at his place of business. It’s as simple as that.

Less simple, more purposeful, is the message communicated by his choice of car. Note that Dalton is no longer driving the shit-brown beater he picked up from Big “T” (one of the Four Car Salesmen) earlier in the film—the kind of car he uses while working a gig because it’s cheap and more or less disposable. Rather, he’s back in the Mercedes-Benz with New York plates he used to drive from New York to Missouri in the first place—his real car, the car he keeps hidden in a parking garage or under a tarp, the car he spends his mid six-figure yearly salary on. His off-duty car.

You realize what this means, don’t you?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 317. And now: Parking

316. “Wesley! Wesley! Wesley! Fuck you!”

November 12th, 2019

Dr. Elizabeth Clay runs away after she sees what Dalton has wrought. As well she might: Her concern even prior to his duel to the death with Jimmy was that Dalton is as much a danger to Jasper as the people he’s ostensibly protecting Jasper from. Now Dalton has exposed himself for what he is, or at least what he can be, and she wants no part of it.

This enrages Dalton, though not against the Doc. No, Dalton lays the blame squarely where it belongs: at the feet of Brad Wesley, who ordered his man Jimmy to visit Emmett’s ranch and destroy it that fateful night. It’s his fault Dalton had to rip a man’s throat out, again. It’s his fault the Doc has run away in horror. And he needs to be made aware of it.

“Wesley!” Dalton screams. “Wesley!” Dalton screams again. “Wesley!” Dalton screams a third time. A callout in triplicate.

And then the final blow:

“FUCK YOU!!!”

It’s a hilariously anticlimactic thing to say at this point. It’s of a piece with his earlier mid-fight banter, which consisted solely of non sequitur expletives. It’s funny to think of the Doc, running away, hearing her boyfriend flip the verbal bird to her ex-husband in the middle of their murder contest.

But it gets the job done. Wesley comes back to his balcony in time to see Dalton toss the corpse of his number one guy into the river, allowing it to float downstream, offscreen, and out of the film forever. There’s no twinkle of amusement in his eyes, no sardonic smile across his lips. There’s something cold there instead, something making calculations as to who will need to get hurt to make this right. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s something very much like grief. When Jimmy floats away, there’s no doubt he takes many of Brad Wesley’s fondest wishes with him.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Pain Don't Hurt | Comments Off on 316. “Wesley! Wesley! Wesley! Fuck you!”

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »