See this fellow on the right? The mustachioed gentlemen wearing his shirt tucked in with no belt? He’s played by a football player turned stuntman, stunt coordinator, actor, and second unit director named Allan Graf. With that series of job descriptions you might expect him to have played a role in other fight scenes besides the one where Dalton disarms, or dislegs I suppose, a guy with a knife embedded in his boot. And you’d be right.

Graf is also Captain Joe Turner, bodyguard and enforcer for George Hearst, in Deadwood, another Western largely shot in bars about people jockeying for control of a small town overrun by a rich asshole. As such he is one half of the best fight scene ever filmed: the street fight against Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown), the Captain’s opposite number in local pseudo-respectable crime boss Al Swearengen’s outfit. I’ll never forget the first time I watched this scene because after it was over I had a splitting headache. Was it sympathy pain, I wondered, until I realized I’d been holding my breath for probably a minute and a half before the tide, as it were, turned in the favor of my favored combatant. I was so on edge I literally stopped breathing.

As much as I think the fight scenes in Road House are fantastically choreographed, acted, and shot, nothing in the film rises to that level. But that’s fine, as few fight scenes ever have. And for what it’s worth, the eventual mano a mano between Dalton and Jimmy is legit one of the most exciting and technically fantastic fights I’ve ever seen in a movie. But without the pathos generated by David Milch’s town full of grasping ravenous brutes and people who get so angry at the resultant shit through which they’re forced to wade that they start to cry, it’s simply playing a different sport than the one for which Mr. Allan Graf got down in the mud as one half of the greatest game ever played.

When Ketchum and the boys from the Tuesday night Good Book, Good Burgers combination Bible study & barbecue men’s meeting show up to kick-stab Dalton in the skull for the crime of firing Brad Wesley’s nephew and then beating him and his buddies up after they attempt to stab Dalton in the face and torso over it, Dalton is ready. Arrayed Avengers-style, he and the other bouncers tell the new visitors that the Double Deuce is closed. You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Ketchum, however, who notes that the bar is full of people and demands to know what they’re doing. Dalton merely points out the obvious, which is that they’re “drinking and having a good time.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” says Ketchum, grinning, before whipping his leg straight up in the air to enziguri Dalton…with extreme prejudice. 

Alas for the goon! Dalton is quicker of reflex than his assailant, which he demonstrates by catching Ketchum’s leg in midair. But he is also quicker of wit, which he demonstrates with a first-ballot Hall of Fame Road House one-liner: “You’re too stupid to have a good time!”

Dalton proceeds to QED Ketchum’s ass by dragging him into the parking lot and whipping him and his buddies but good. All is well, one would think.

But one would be wrong. Just over two weeks into this project we discussed The Shirtless Man. Much like the Green Man, the woodwose, or Dionysian mystery cults, this figure of fertility and abandon is, along with his demonic/cthonic opposite number Morgan, our introduction to the world of the Double Deuce. I won’t insult your intelligence by belaboring a point you can grasp with your own two eyes immediately: The Shirtless Man is extremely stupid, and he’s having the time of his life. Indeed much of the clientele of the bar when Dalton arrives to work there—the very same people Dalton is intent upon clearing out—are both as dumb as pillowcase full of doorknobs and as happy as pigs in shit. There’s no other way to put it: Dalton is wrong.

But in this rare instance, Dalton’s maxim reflects the world not as it is, but as he is determined to make it be. His task here is not to fix something broken according to the ways of the Dalton Path, but to break something intact so that the Dalton Path may proceed. He is changing the pig himself this time, creating the conditions under which “You’re too stupid to have a good time” is true. The Three Simple Rules, “Pain don’t hurt,” and the like are matters of observation; “You’re too stupid to have a good time” is a matter of application.

In short, we have reached the start of the Dalton Path’s rockiest stretch, and we will see Dalton pushed to the breaking point as a result before he emerges stronger on the other side. We are privy to a great becoming.

Look at this sorry state of affairs. Look at what the goon industry in Jasper has become. This fearsome foursome have stepped right out of a Promise Keepers meeting and into the parking lot of the Double Deuce in an attempt to assassinate Dalton by kicking him in the head with a knife. The denim bandit taking point is Ketchum, obviously, as you’ll recall from previous posts about Road House‘s most anonymous and yet also for some reason ultimately most prominent goon. The other three guys…well, they’re stuntmen, that’s the easiest way to put it, stuntmen who have no lines and appear in no other scenes and are only there to have a dust-up with Dalton and his bouncers that will leave their acid-washed asses in the dirt.

Tinker and O’Connor have better luck than these clowns do in taking Dalton on, as a matter of fact. Yes, in the previous fight Pat McGurn gets his nose broke and his ass kicked through a plate-glass window before he so much as lands a blow, though for attempting to carve Dalton like a Christmas ham with a knife the size of his forearm he should at least get an E for Effort. But Tinker comes close to killing Dalton, and he and O’Connor work both Dalton and Tilghman over pretty good before Dalton regains the upper hand against the Bleeder and the other bouncers team up on the big man.

Ketchum and company? Dalton and Jack spot them coming from a mile away. They post up with Hank and Younger just inside the vestibule and block these dopes from getting in. Dalton catches Ketchum’s would-be deathblow, violently twists the guy’s ankle, then literally drags his ass out into the parking lot. There’s some back and forth out there I suppose but there’s no reversal to speak of, where the bad guys are winning but then Dalton stages a comeback. Nope, they just go at it until the bouncers defeat the goons one by one. Ketchum is reduced to shouting “You son of a bitch!” as he’s dragged away with just one boot on, since Dalton lobbed the other one up on the bar’s roof, like Walter White with the pizza that one time. Just a disgraceful performance from top to bottom.

Ketchum, as we’ll see, returns with a vengeance, but these other guys are never seen again. After their work tonight, it’s entirely possible Brad Wesley beat them all to death in his driveway while smiling wryly as his other minions looked on and chuckled. Or perhaps after that they drifted East to perform other tasks in Wesley’s service but were never heard from again by the main characters, kind of like the Blue Wizards from Tolkien before Christopher revealed he’d revised their origin and made them part of anti-Sauron activity in the Second Age instead of the Third. (Seriously, apparently Professor T wound up deciding they came over from Valinor with Glorfindel now rather than Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast. Blew my mind too.) My best guess, though, is that they simply went back to their day jobs at the Bass Pro Shop in the new mall. Take another look at those faces and tell me you wouldn’t be able to get a hell of a fly-fishing lure recommendation out of every man jack of them. They couldn’t possibly fuck it up worse than they fucked up being goons, I can tell you that much.

If this configuration of Dalton and his padawan-learner Jack looks familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. The exchange and fight scene that are about to occur are perhaps the purest distillation of the Dalton Path in the entire film, following the Three Simple Rules and their various chapters and verses to the letter. As a bonus they show the primacy and utility of Jack among the Double Deuce’s other bouncers. It is Jack, after all, to whom Dalton relays the Riddle of the Right Boot, counting on the younger man to solve it. When they move on the intruders who’ve come to the bar to murder a man by kicking him in the head with a boot-mounted knife on account of the fact that he fired a rich guy’s nephew, they move as one.

But how did they arrive at this point? By what strange magic were Dalton and Jack united at this moment? The magic…of rock.

Specifically Carrie Ann’s variant thereof. The big-grinned barmaid with the bangs has traditionally occupied a privileged position in Dalton’s orbit. It is she to whom he first entrusts the secret of his name. It is she who preaches his name to the other barfolk. It is she who is granted a glimpse of the ass.

Now that the Double Deuce has been cleaned up, it is she who takes the stage to demonstrate this fact to the viewer. Would any woman have been caught dead on the stage of the old Double Deuce, where the only thing separating you from the ravening hordes, whose attention is drawn to and focused on that stage in a way no other staffer or patron can claim, was a thin chickenwire line? To be honest, dead might be the only way a woman would get caught on that thing. Putting a blind guy up there strikes me as some kind of ADA violation as it is.

But now things are different. How different? Different enough that a server is up there singing her gorgeous, joyful heart out. (Kathleen Wilhoite is truly one of this movie’s MVPs; I have no doubt from the way she shakes and grooves and grins and at one point even puts her hand to her face like “holy shit I can’t believe this!” is a sign of completely sincere pleasure on the part of the actor herself.) A few weeks earlier she had to save all her vocal power for yelling “BASTARD!” at people she’d just brained with a beer bottle in a barfight. Now she’s singing Eddie Floyd with the Jeff Healey Band.

That’s why Jack drifts over to Dalton that night: Just to smile with delight and say “I didn’t know she could sing!” He’s so happy in that moment, so happy to see someone he thought he knew reveal a new and exciting side of herself, so happy to know that as a bouncer on the Dalton Path he helped make that happen. It’s his desire to share that happiness that puts him by Dalton’s side when Ketchum strides in, anonymous minions by his side, to try to kickstab Dalton in the skull. The right place at the right time, that time being “time to not be nice.”

Call it a coincidence if you want, or even synchronicity. I call it the ne plus ultra illustration of the Third Rule, and of how the obervance of that rule yields dividends none could predict. Be Nice, commands Dalton. So mote it be.

We’re near the midpoint of the movie now and things have turned around for the Double Deuce. The thugs, thieves, dope dealers, and dudes who fuck high-schoolers have been purged—and that’s just from the staff. The bad element in the crowd has had its proverbial face smashed through the metaphorical table. The first attempt by the Brad Wesley organization to re-exert control by forcing the rehiring of sister-son Pat McGurn ended in a defeat so humiliating that Wesley beat up one of the already beaten men himself upon hearing about it. Carrie Ann has gone from getting groped and forced into fistfights to getting on stage and banging out blue-eyed soul versions of “Knock on Wood” with the Jeff Healey Band. There’s a neon sign now. The floor and walls are clean of dirt and graffiti. The dance floor is jumping. The damned chickenwire is down. It’s a new day.

Denise must agree. Not that we know her name is Denise at this point. She’s just the vivacious blonde with a sense of style who rebuffed a dude who asked her to get “nipple to nipple” a while back, and who looks at Dalton like J. Wellington Wimpy looks at hamburgers. Today is the day she makes her move.

No bizarre “nipple to nipple” euphemisms that are actually filthier than the real thing for Denise, oh no. Gliding over to Dalton’s usual post-up spot near the bar, she gets, well, nipple to nipple with him, rubs his shoulder, asks him why he avoids eye contact with her (“I’m shy”), and says “Would you be shocked if I said ‘Let’s go to my place and fuck’? Ain’t gonna kill you. You know, you might even like it.” Show me the lie, you know?

Dalton, who has an inscrutable but distinct sense of decorum that I’m still puzzling out 124 days into writing about him, seems unimpressed (or blind) and unlikely to accept the offer. But the matter is taken out of his hands. Appearing from out of nowhere, Brad Wesley’s chief goon Jimmy violently grabs Denise by the arm. Whipping her behind him and thrusting himself into Dalton’s face, he growls “Say goodnight, Denise,” and they leave.

But he doesn’t say “Say goodnight, Denise” while looking at Denise. He says “Say goodnight, Denise” while looking at Dalton, and I mean looking at him, staring right into his eyes like he’s trying to psychically bore two holes through his skull. He says “Say goodnight, Denise” as if he’s telling Dalton “Say ‘Goodnight, Denise.'”

Given Dalton’s penchant for cheap sarcasm when the opportunity presents itself, and given Road House‘s penchant for dumb jokes whether the opportunity presents itself or not, it’s hard to believe, but no, Dalton does not stare right back into Jimmy’s face and say “Goodnight, Denise.” But their loss is your gain. You can be Dalton’s voice in this moment. You can say “Goodnight, Denise.” Your quick wit will delight all who have the pleasure of your company. Goodnight, Denise.

I have a mansion I visit sometimes
Brad Wesley lives there, he makes me do crimes
I live in Jasper, near the new mall
We made some old guys pay for it all

They say I’m crazy but I have a nice smile
They put most of my part in the cylindrical file
Life’s been good to me so far

Brad Wesley’s Mustang does one-eighty-five
I’ll stare at Dalton, Jimmy can drive
My necktie’s loose so I never choke
I dress like Albert Hammond the Stroke
I crashed Red Webster’s and trashed the whole place
I watched O’Connor get punched in the face
Though I’m listed as Karpis in credits as they crawl
I’m barely in this movie at all

Lucky I’m sane when my three scenes are through
(In the background at Brad’s pool)
(Brad’s pool)
Don’t say my name, but for Tinker they do
Life’s been good to me so far

I’m just a soldier in Brad Wesley’s war
After this scene you won’t see me no more
Red Webster cleans up my mess with a mop
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, I play a cop

I am in Road House but for not that much time
(Everybody say Karpis)
(Karpis)
Vanish completely after 0:45
Life’s been good to me so far

For the past week I’ve chronicled sixty seconds in the lives of Mr. Wade Garret and Dr. James Dalton. (For the purposes of this conversation I’m assuming his degree in philosophy from NYU was a Ph.D.) During this pivotal minute, Dalton calls his old friend and mentor Wade to ask if he’s heard anything about a guy by the name of Brad Wesley. At this point, friends, you and I have talked about Dalton’s initial encounters with the richest man in Jasper: watching him buzz Emmett’s horse corral with his helicopter, swerving out of the way as he sings doo-wop while driving into oncoming traffic, shaking hands and having a brief conversation at Red Webster’s auto parts store, beating the shit out of several of his minions after they try to stab him to death in an attempt to make the Double Deuce re-hire a bartender. I’d say he’s handled all this rather well. What, you might be wondering, occasioned his call for counsel?

These happy assholes.

Dalton catches two of Brad Wesley’s premier goons, Jimmy and Karpis, just as they pull out of Red’s parking lot. Karpis, whom we see exiting the store, has just busted the place up, spilling various motor oils and antifreezes and whatnot all over the place as punishment for Red’s recalcitrance in paying his full “contribution” to the Jasper Improvement Society, the legal name of Wesley’s protection racket.

“Work ain’t work when you’re havin’ fun,” Jimmy says from behind the wheel of the getaway car as Karpis hops in after doing the deed.

“Life is good,” Karpis confirms.

And like that—poof—he’s gone.

One last, lingering, smoldering staredown at Dalton later, Karpis is driven away from the store and right out of the movie, forever. It’s the last we see of him, much to my chagrin, handsome devil that he is.

But oh, his legacy! What Karpis does this day puts Dalton and Wade on a collision course with Jimmy and Wesley, their opposite numbers. The explosion that results, which includes multiple literal explosions, will leave three of those four men dead, and change the face of Jasper forever. And Karpis’s mesmerizing face that sets it all in motion. In that Cheshire Cat grin, I see the future: Life is good, but all men must die.

Nine quarters, says the sign that appears in the middle of Dalton’s pivotal conversation with Wade Garrett, right after he blows off the threat presented by Brad Wesley. Right away we can see that reality has warped a little, that a glitch in the matrix has appeared. As well it might: Dalton has just underestimated his opponent and failed to expect the unexpected, a violation of his own First Rule. And for that, a price must be paid.

But what if there’s more to it than that?

It was not I who set myself on this path, but reader @RoddySwears. It was he who noted the numerological significance of the established price. Nine quarters. Two dollars and twenty-five cents. $2.25. 2 + 2 = 9.

What could such a specific prophecy mean?

Then I realized.

The Nine are abroad.

One hundred essays into a year-long Road House writing project, I feel about the film’s attempts to coin catchphrases and aphorisms exactly the way I felt when I’d written no essays at all: yikes. I mean, Does a hobbyhorse have a wooden dick, folks. Balls big enough to come in a dump truck. The writers have a relationship with the English language only slightly less estranged than their relationship to male sex organs.

But they can’t all be losers.

Just after the dump truck incident, a grumpy Morgan (there is no other kind of course) stomps over to Cody, whom he knows has a preexisting relationship with their mysterious new colleague. “This Dalton character,” he grumbles, “what’s his story?”

“His story is, you fuck with him and he’ll seal your fate,” Cody replies.

Now that’s how it’s done.

It’s a marvelous exchange insofar as it’s a rare moment when two characters have a conversation during which Dalton is neither a participant nor present. These are few and far between in this film, to the point where they stand out like sore thumbs each and every time. Off the top of my head, there’s this conversation, there’s Brad Wesley beating up the bleeder, Wesley and Jimmy talking to Red briefly after Dalton departs his store, and Jimmy and Ketchum spying on Dalton and Elizabeth from afar. Unless you count Wade Garrett breaking up shenanigans at a strip joint prior to receiving a call from Dalton, or Wade Garrett asking for Dalton’s whereabouts when he arrives at the Double Deuce, or Wesley’s goons making small talk prior to Dalton’s final assault on the Wesley compound, or Steve and Agnes doing their regular Saturday night thing before Dalton pops in and fires him—all of them scenes that exist so that Dalton can join them in progress—that is it. This is Dalton’s world, and what a treat to see other people live in it.

And who are the people in question this time around? Blind white blues musician Jeff Healey and hardcore wrestling legend Terry Funk. For Road House fanatics this is like the De Niro/Pacino diner scene in Heat.

But don’t think it’s just some goofy novelty act. (I didn’t say “Don’t think it’s some goofy novelty act,” mind you, I said “Don’t think it’s just some goofy novelty act.) Throughout this project I’ve been impressed by what the…let’s say non-traditional actors bring to the table. The naturalism Terry Funk brings to his role as an enormous man who gets paid to get angry and beat the shit out of people with tables is obvious. But spare a thought for Jeff Healey, too, who sounds like exactly what he is supposed to be: a guitar player chatting with dudes in bars. It works when he’s serving as a welcoming presence for Dalton, the one character he neither needs to intimidate nor impress, and it works when he drops the “hey man lemme put this here guitar down and buy you a beer” schtick and describes his friend like he’s the fucking Shogun Assassin.

Because that’s the message of “you fuck with him and he’ll seal your fate,” isn’t it. He won’t just kick your ass, or kill you, or make you wish you were never born or blah blah blah. Like a Norn with a mullet, he’s got the thread of your life in his hands, and if you step to him you’re going to find out exactly where that thread ends.

There’s another implication here that must be considered: Fate is predestined. Cody’s description of Dalton, then, is of one who will mete out the appropriate and appointed sanction to those who cross him, no more and no less. Perhaps it will be your fate to disappear from the movie a third of the way through and never return, like Karpis. Perhaps it will be your fate to pass out from terror when a stuffed polar bear is dropped on you and then emerge reborn, your sins forgiven, like Tinker. Perhaps it will be your fate to be murdered offscreen while wearing moonboots, like Morgan. Whatever the case, Dalton is not making the news, he’s simply delivering it to your doorstep.

It’s precisely the right description for the Dalton Path. Remember Rule Three, Verse Four: “It’s a job. It’s nothing personal.” What can be more impersonal than fate? And who better to do the job of sealing it?

This much, at least, is not in dispute: When Dalton’s first night at the Double Deuce is winding to a close, Morgan, who is skeptical about the man’s physical prowess, tells him the following.

“You know, I heard you had balls big enough to come in a dump truck, but uh…you don’t look like much to me.”

“Opinions vary,” Dalton replies, and Morgan is temporarily bested.

But while that may settle the issue for the involved parties, we are left with unanswered questions. To wit: When Morgan says he’s heard Dalton’s balls are big enough to come in a dump truck, does he mean A) a dump truck is required to carry them on account of their large physical size, or B) a dump truck is required to receive Dalton’s ejaculate load due to the copious amounts of semen his big balls produce? “Come” as in “arrive,” or “come” as in “cum” as in “ahh skeet skeet motherfucker”? As Dalton himself might say, opinions vary.

Below you’ll find the best cases I can make for and against the two competing interpretations.

Morgan means “come” as in “travel”

PRO:

• Saying someone has “big balls” is a way of saying they’re unusually gutsy or tough, traditional characteristics, one would think, of a famous bouncer
• Dump trucks are known for carrying things placed in them and can accommodate substantial size and weight, making for a strong metaphor

CON:

• Placing his gargantuan sack in a dump truck would leave the rest of Dalton’s body at something of a loss were the truck to go anywhere, the Double Deuce’s parking lot for example
• Dump trucks typically transport dirt, rubble, or refuse, none of which describe Dalton’s testicles

Morgan means “cum” as in “bust a nut”

PRO:

• The measure of a man’s balls could in theory be taken by the size of the receptacle required to contain a full emission of his seminal fluid; from this we can infer that were the bed of a dump truck required to catch all of Dalton’s ropes in their entirety, his yarbles must needs be very big indeed
• Simply weighing or determining the circumference of Dalton’s ballbag implies passivity on his part, while the thought of Dalton milking, or causing a third party to milk, his dick into the back of a construction vehicle demonstrates the activity and agency becoming of a bouncer

CON:

• Dump trucks are not recommended vehicles of liquid waste; absent a watertight truck bed Dalton’s jism could seep through the seams and on to the road surface below, causing a potential traffic hazard and thus negating the central idea of the metaphor as a means to convey his professional clout and skill
• The size of Dalton’s cock, which due to the nature of the orgasmic process would play an indispensable part in the process of cumming into a dump but not in the process of simply transporting Dalton’s huevos in one, goes conspicuously unremarked upon

CONCLUSION:

Occam’s razor suggests Morgan means he’s heard that Dalton’s balls are so big he would not be surprised to see them being carried by a dump truck, not squeezed like lemons into one. However, the imagistic approach of the latter interpretation has much to recommend it as a hypothetical alternative.

This, as you know, is Tinker. Broadly speaking he is the comic relief in Brad Wesley’s brute squad, which if you’re familiar with people like Pat McGurn and O’Connor is really saying something. He lurks in the margins of Dalton’s first visit to the Double Deuce, making time with some lady while sitting next to where Morgan’s posted up at the bar. We get our first good look at him approximately five seconds before the Bleeder reads him to filth, to the point where it would probably be better for him if he hadn’t show up at all. His goonsmanship after this scene is largely undistinguished; like most Wesleyans he exists primarily to get his ass kicked, but unlike, say, Jimmy or Ketchum or Morgan you never see him wreck shop in any way. He is the sole survivor among the goons, that’s how little Dalton considers him to be a threat. He gets knocked out of the final fight when Dalton dumps a stuffed polar bear on top of him, during which maneuver Tinker carries on like he thinks the bear has come to life and is about to maul him, like Tuunbaq has come to Jasper to exact further revenge against the colonizers. He is even granted a sort of clemency by the cabal of old men who show up to save Dalton’s ass by Sonny Corleone-ing Brad Wesley: Instead of killing him too, they ask him to participate in the cover-up, which in his own moronic way he does.

But look at this shit up above. Look at it! We’re in Tilghman’s office, where Tinker and O’Connor are muscling him into rehiring Pat. At this particular moment, Dalton is tussling with O’Connor after having broken Pat’s nose and roundhouse-kicked him through a plate-glass window. What did Pat do to occasion this treatment? Whip out a gigantic knife with no provocation and attempt to murder Dalton with it. Having observed all this firsthand, what does Tinker do? You guessed it!

Things wind up going for Tinker much the same as they did for Pat. Dalton kicks him with both feet, forcefully enough to push himself and O’Connor through the shattered window as well. Tinker gets knocked onto the couch, where the other bouncers find him and proceed to immobilize and pummel him. Like one of them holds his arms and the other punches him in the gut. It’s heel tag-team shit, but frankly he deserves it.

Why? Because as we’ve mentioned before, here’s the thing about Tinker: He comes closer to actually killing Dalton than anyone does until the climax of the movie. That knife he whips out and holds aloft like Anduril, Flame of the West? He slashes Dalton in the side with it while Dalton’s in the middle of fending off O’Connor, and if Dalton’s turn toward his new oncoming attacker had been timed just slightly differently his intestines would be hanging out. Dr. Elizabeth Clay would be calling his time of death, not asking what particular philosophical discipline he studied at NYU.

Maybe there’s a lesson in this for us, if we care to look for it. We are all occasionally much better at being ourselves than is our standard. Tinker is, for this brief moment, very good at his job of being a goon—too good, almost, insofar as he came within a hair’s breadth of murdering a man in front of about a hundred witnesses, but good regardless. Most other moments I wouldn’t hire Tinker to whack a piñata, much less the (second) best damn cooler in the business. There’s a Tinker in all of us—a killing machine and a stammering goofus bested by taxidermy. Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar, well, he eats you.

[Chorus: Pat McGurn and Morgan]
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
He’s firing somebody real, fired by fuckin’ Dalton
Send your goons to the bar, maybe he’ll assault them

[Verse 1: Tilghman]
Hold up, Jasper simmer down
Hiring the best, bitch, now he’s here in town
Flew to New York, saw him shirtless, lookin’ fine
Ooh, baby check him out, you’ll go Jeffrey Healey blind
(Uhh)
Hey Pat, black coffee
Serve this motherfucker cuz he drinks for free
Tell these motherfuckers who they think they see
Put his feet through your teeth then he’ll break your knee
Cuz he’s the cooler, the cooler cooler, like he’s your ruler
Teaching rules too, he’s gonna school you, don’t suffer fools too
He should carpool, like many fools do he searched for faith down at NYU
Hospitalize you, that’s what he will do
Here’s my money, gonna give you six figures, man
I thought you would be bigger, man
Wesley’s fuckin’ parties make too much fuckin’ noise
Break into Brad’s house, kill his fuckin’ boys
Beast

[Chorus: Pat McGurn and Morgan]
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
He’s firing somebody real, fired by fuckin’ Dalton
Send your goons to the bar, maybe he’ll assault them

[Verse 2: Morgan]
Ooh, I know you love it when I bounce a guy
Make you think about all of the incidents I trounced a guy
Go into the bathroom and ask Judy for an ounce to buy
Think I’ll tell him “You’re a dead man,” mispronounce a guy
Oh word? Ain’t heard of Wesley? He’ll denounce this guy
Beating up O’Connor, make him bleed some fluid ounces guy
Carrie Ann announced this guy, see his mullet flounces guy
Then ju—okay, I got it
Then just watch Jimmy as he pounds this guy
It will get awkward when we watch as Jimmy mounts this guy
I heard that his testes were sufficient for a dump truck
Then he said “Opinions vary” and I felt like such a dumbfuck
Gonna call Wade Garrett “Dad,” comparatively I’m a young buck
Then I’m gonna die offscreen while wearing moonboots, just my dumb luck
Yes, Lord, but for now I’m fit and able
Gonna pick some guy up, throw him through a table
I’m beast

[Chorus: Pat McGurn and Morgan]
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
He’s firing somebody real, fired by fuckin’ Dalton
Send your goons to the bar, maybe he’ll assault them

[Verse 3: Pat McGurn]
Uhh
I’m Pat, this the finale
A big truck at the Wagon Days rally
I’m behind the bar, taking money from the tally now
Told me take the train and told me not to dilly-dally
Mmm
Uncle Brad on the line, mad on the line
He’s opening two Dillard’s at the same damn time
Frank’s eyeing me like he still wants to have sex
Girl, I am John Doe from X
Girl, I’m Patrick McGurn
AKA Brad looks at me with concern
He gives me money that I do not earn
Lists me as a dependent on his tax return
Mmm
Kill ’em all, dead bodies in the hallway
Dalton’s involved, and my chest got in his knife’s way
Mustache thin, Morgan thicker
Sister-son, chickendicker
Beast

[Chorus: Pat McGurn and Morgan]
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
I heard Frank Tilghman hired fuckin’ Dalton
And yeah we’re fuckin’ fucked, that guy is fuckin’ Dalton
He’s firing somebody real, fired by fuckin’ Dalton
Send your goons to the bar, maybe he’ll assault them

By this point in the evening the word has begun to spread. Dalton has told Carrie Ann, and she’s made a huge fuss, at least partially within Pat McGurn’s earshot. She’s since gone on to report it to Hank, like a little girl telling her brother on Christmas morning that Santa came. Hank is about to tell Steve the story of the throat-ripping incident, and Steve will pronounce it “bull shit.” For now, Pat must report the news to his partner in Brad Wesley Enterprises, Morgan. He does it in low tones, as befits a bearer of ill news:

“That guy at the end of the bar is fuckin’ Dalton, man.”

Pat’s whisper is as the footsteps of doom: He’s just introduced Morgan to the man who will murder them both, so that Red’s Auto Parts and Stroudenmire Ford might live anew.

But it’s not foreknowledge of their fate that has knit lines of worry across Pat’s brow, or rendered Morgan’s strangely adorable face a soft Winnie-the-Pooh mask of concern. Dalton’s reputation precedes him. Like nearly all of the Double Deuce’s barfolk, they’ve heard the legends; even the slackasses and shitkickers on Frank Tilghman’s payroll would have a hard time looking themselves in the mirror (okay, maybe not Steve) if they had not kept abreast enough with the trade to be aware of the second most famous bouncer in these United States. If your role at an establishment that has hired Dalton is to practice throwing human beings through furniture (as is Morgan’s) or draw a bartender’s paycheck at your uncle’s insistence while stealing, in 2019 dollars, over $300 a night (as is Pat’s), this is bad news indeed.

Pat, at least, has the good sense to brown up a bit, calling Dalton “buddy” and asking his name, though he already knows it, and though Dalton only says “coffee, black” in response because he’s a bit of a prick, at least before he’s officially being paid not to be. Morgan, you’ll recall, barely manages to titter his way through an icebreaker involving the size of Dalton’s balls, which is saying the quiet part loud if you ask me.

These guys are desperate to be noticed, and desperate to not be noticed. They want to make themselves seem too pliant or too tough to actually be crooked, and hope Dalton doesn’t look any closer. Which is to say they may know who Dalton is, but they have no idea who Dalton is. This is the (second) best damn cooler in the business, you fools. You’re already dead.

DALTON: Morgan, you’re outta here.

MORGAN: …what the fuck you talking about?

DALTON: You don’t have the right temperament for the trade.

Hard to argue with that, huh? As a bouncer, Morgan does not seem to have specialized or differentiated his skill set from that which he applies to his parallel career as a Brad Wesley goon. The nominal purpose shifts from “protect the business interests of Brad Wesley” to “protect the peaceful atmosphere of the Double Deuce,” but insfoar as he simply ports the methods of the former to the latter, he’s doing far more harm than good. The table we see him shatter with another human beings body by throwing that body through that table from a height isn’t even the first table we’ve seen him fuck up in this basic way that evening, having ejected the Nipple to Nipple guy by wallopping him into a bunch of paying customers seated around one a few minutes earlier. (One of those customers was Foxworthy, so it’s hard to feel too bad about it, but still.) Not only is Morgan likely the most dangerous person in the bar to patrons of the bar, he’s also one of the most destructive to its property—and to their drink orders, at least one of which the guy above plummets through on his way to the ground. If Morgan’s job truly is to keep the peace in the Double Deuce, he really should start by bouncing himself.

That said, there is a pot/kettle element to Dalton’s callout of Morgan’s mien and methods. You’ll recall, of course, that Dalton’s first order of business upon officially assuming the position of cooler is firing Morgan during an all-hands meeting, as quoted above. But what is his first order of business upon officially assuming the position of cooler once the bar opens for business later that day? Breaking a table with a human face. Hypocrisy much?!?!?!

I doubt it. That’s not really Dalton’s style. As our examination of the Rules has made clear, apparent paradox and contradiction is virtually always a method of education via self-enlightenment. From this we can conclude that Dalton’s objection is not to breaking tables with human beings per se, but the mindset, method, and result of same. The Rules are instructive here, as they always are. “Never underestimate your opponent—expect the unexpected”? Look at Morgan’s face and tell me he’s not feeling the outrage of man who cannot believe what others have dared to do to him. “Take it outside—never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary”? Morgan is deeply inside his feelings; he has the object permanence of a furious toddler and fails to understand that no problem truly starts inside the bar, and thus can not properly assess the necessity of responding inside the bar in turn. “Be nice—until it’s time to not be nice”? I feel it’s safe to say that if you materially contributed to escalating a couple of punches thrown at Gawker by Sharing Husband into a rumble involving two dozen combatants capable of leveling the entire seating area, the time to not be nice had not yet arrived. Only the mind of a cooler knows the day and the hour. Morgan, you’re outta here.

O’Connor is the cornucopia of plenty of goons. Like Barry White, He’s Got So Much To Give, and like Barry White he gives it in basso profundo to boot. In addition to delivering the purest expression of contempt I’ve ever heard in cinema, in addition to getting beaten unconscious when his boss finds his excessive bleeding to be an indicator of cowardice, in addition to dressing business-cazh to every ass-kicking he attempts to give and/or winds up receiving, this poor dumb bastard somehow drills right down into the subtext of Road House and strikes black gold without even trying. My partner, the cartoonist Julia Gfrörer, told me earlier on in this process that Road House is a movie about fatherless sons and sonless fathers. And what do you know—O’Connor addresses Dalton accordingly. When he appears in the Double Deuce with Tinker and Pat McGurn to force Tilghman to re-hire the mustachioed failnephew as a bartender or face the cessation of liquor shipments, Dalton is naturally initially curious as to their intentions. After shutting up the shithead, O’Connor grins broadly and tells Dalton “Mr. Tilghman has changed his mind,” then lowers his head and looks the cooler dead in the eye and gets all serious and adds “And that’s all you need to know, son.”

Son! For context, please note that Michael Rider, the actor who plays O’Connor, is just over four months older than Patrick Swayze. Not even years, which would be goofy enough—April 1952 vs. August 1952 is what we’re talking about here. “Son” is an attempt to bigfoot Dalton by a man who believes himself to be an authority figure. It’s likely meant to belittle him, and I mean literally: Dalton is just knee-high to this towering would-be father. It’s meant to son him, in the Nicki Minaj “all these bitches is my sons” sense.

Naturally, it works out about as well for O’Connor as anything else he tries in this movie. But it does earn him this distinction: He is the only man murdered by Dalton who casts his own eventual demise in Oedipal terms. No doubt Laius was a bleeder too.

It occurs to me, sitting here as I begin to write today’s Road House essay, that one of Brad Wesley’s goons is almost certainly a serial killer.

Look at this. This is two carloads of goons pulling into Brad Wesley’s drive way so he can chew them out for their failure to reinstate his sister-son Pat McGurn to his job as bartender at the Double Deuce. In the Oldsmobile you’ll find the people responsible for the debacle: Tinker, O’Connor, and Pat himself. Jimmy is in the mansion with his father (source for this claim?). Riding shotgun in the monster truck is Karpis, the dashing thug who vanishes from the film without fanfare, and Ketchum, the anonymous thug who has a boot-mounted knife and will go on to murder a main character with a knife he keeps in a sheath on his belt.

Ketchum, you may recall, or you may not recall more to the point, is the most anonymous goon in the whole movie. Jimmy, Tinker, O’Connor, Morgan, Pat—they’re all mentioned by name, repeatedly. Karpis is not mentioned by name and is absent for the back two thirds of the film, but he looks like Karpis and thus is tough to forget. Ketchum looks like a teamster who got a speaking part when the real actor canceled due to a family emergency and they found out he had his SAG card. He looks like the guy buying a phone ahead of you at the Verizon store. He looks like your friend’s mom’s evangelical cousin on a Christmas card with a family portrait on it that they forgot to take down until you went over to your friend’s place for the Super Bowl. He looks like the guy drying his hands next to you in the rest stop men’s room on the New Jersey Turnpike. He looks like everyone and no one. He’s every white man, it’s all in him. Anything you want done, baby, he’ll do after the gym.

Yet he carries around a knife you could stop a White Walker with. He has retrofitted at least one normal item of clothing that we know into a deadly weapon. When he’s summoned to his boss’s place for a talking-to, he drives over in a monster truck the way you or I would hop in a Mitsubishi.

So he’s a white man in his 30s. He’s blandly, anonymously handsome. He has a barely concealed fixation on instruments of torture and death. He’s a knife guy, and a gun guy too most likely given later events. He’s outwardly conservative in appearance but he indulges in the occasional ostentatious “how did we miss this?” affectation: Instead of dressing up like a clown for children’s parties, or hanging out in cop bars, or keeping a human head in the closet of his boyhood home, he drives around town in a monster truck. It’s like he’s daring you to notice, knowing you won’t be able to bear looking too closely if you do.

Road House is a 1989 film in which a shady business mogul played by Ben Gazzara flouts decency standards in a waterfront community that he controls through a combination of extravagant wealth and muscular morons. The Big Lebowski is a 1998 film in which Gazzara reprises this role.

The two orgiastic parties thrown by the Gazzara characters in these movies, Malibu pornographer Jackie Treehorn in the latter and Jasper JC Penney enthusiast Brad Wesley in the latter, have so many surface-level similarities it remains difficult for me to believe that Joel and Ethan Coen were not familiar with Rowdy Herrington’s masterpiece when they made their own. Smiling men tossing topless women through the air, the bright blue of a pool juxtaposed against the dark of the night, a general “the night time is the right time” atmosphere, the dramatic entrance of the Gazzara characters themselves, goons—it’s all there.

Yet the differences reveal much, as they typically do, even as they point to how similarly the two films often function. I vividly remember going to see Lebowski at the movie theater when it debuted and finding it a sensational film, in the sense that on a scene-by-scene basis I felt buffeted by new and unprecedented forms of ridiculousness. The Treehorn beach party is way way up there on the list, beginning as it does with a topless woman plummeting through a void with the otherworldly voice of Yma Sumac blasting at full volume. This is the impression Treehorn wished to make on the Dude as well, whom he used his goons to summon to his estate, impressed with the excess and splendor of his lifestyle, lulled into a false sense of security, drugged, and dumped in the street. It was a party for himself and his, I dunno, friends I guess?, but it was also a performance for one Jeffrey Lebowski. Treehorn’s direct-address introduction of himself right into the camera speaks to that.

Brad Wesley’s idiotically raunchy shindig has no such purpose. He and his men and women have no idea Dalton is watching from across the river; indeed it’s unclear if at this point in the film Wesley has any idea where he lives at all, and furthermore Dalton makes an effort to hide his observation of the party by switching off the light by which he was reading a Jim Harrison novel when the noise of the soiree first distracted him. Additionally there is nothing particularly disorienting or otherworldly about this parade of gawping meatheads and Mötley Crüe video extras—they simply run out of Wesley’s house in a surprisingly orderly line, start stripping off their clothes (“hot babe” bikinis for the women, the usual thug-casual style for the goons), and boogie down to Bob Seger’s “Monday Morning” of all things. Wesley arrives last but he incorporates himself into the festivities rather than set himself apart, joining his girlfriend Denise and pinching the cheek of Mountain, his tallest and goofiest goon. Where the Dude is duly impressed by Treehorn’s milieu (“Completely unspoiled!”), Dalton is merely amused by Wesley’s, a fair and perhaps even generous reaction to a party at which a central component is Terry Funk with his pants around his ankles.

The point I’m trying to make is that while the Ben Gazzara party scene in The Big Lebowski serves a concrete purpose for the Ben Gazzara character, the Ben Gazzara party scene in Road House exists simply to entertain an audience the film presumes to be pretty stupid, or at least open to enjoying pretty stupid things. Dalton, a man of diverse interests, enjoys it just fine. Thus Wesley’s power to impress and intimidate Dalton with his Dionysian powers is dissipated. When he finally does attempt to bowl the cooler over with demonstrative partying and sexuality deep into the film, when he has Denise strip at the Double Deuce as a show of masculine force, Dalton is completely impervious. This party is a vaccine.

This is Frank Tilghman, looking at Pat McGurn just before he confirms that he’s firing him, per Dalton’s recommendation. We’ve talked about this scene before, or rather for some reason I wrote a parody of “The Ballad of John and Yoko” by the Beatles about this scene before. We’ve talked about Frank Tilghman’s fist and Frank Tilghman’s grin and Frank Tilghman’s POV and Frank Tilghman’s Buick. But I wanted to take a closer look at Frank Tilghman’s face in this moment. Actor Kevin Tighe spends the bulk of Road House playing Tilghman as though he exists in an entirely different movie; here he looks as if he has an entirely different movie within this one facial expression.

Maybe he’s just registering the gravity of the situation. Dalton has no idea who Pat McGurn is, or who is real boss is more to the point, but Tilghman knows, and Tilghman knows what firing him really means. He’s coming at the king and he’s afraid of missing. Two seconds after Pat’s departure however he’s cracking a dumb joke about how it was a good night at the bar because “nobody died,” which, talk about tempting fate. But all things considered I prefer a different explanation.

The kid had started out as a barback. By the time he applied for the big job Frank didn’t even care he was obviously lying about bartending school. Pat was a wonder to watch back there, thrumming with the energy of youth and seemingly oblivious to its sweat-stained beauty. The first time Frank made a move closing up one night he thought “Why, the kid’s trembling!” but it wasn’t the kid at all.

It was sex at first, sex and that’s all. But it blossomed into something rich and beautiful, despite the their backgrounds. Pat’s mother, Brad Wesley’s only sister, never escaped the streets of Chicago where Wesley himself came up. Tilghman never saw much of the city. State school, baseball scholarship. Bounced from job to job, mostly managerial, never embarrassing himself but never really distinguishing himself either. His folks were old when they had him and by the time they passed there wasn’t much to pass on. He stumbled bass-ackwards into the Double Deuce in the terms of his second divorce, taking it on from his ex’s family. She never really cared for it anyway, but he thought the place had charm, so why not? If nothing else the responsibility would keep him from spiraling the way he did after marriage number one went to shit. And if he could drink to keep the part of himself he could never admit even to himself at bay, well.

Funny thing happened along the way though. Frank fell in love with the place. Then he fell in love with Pat. Music at the Double Deuce, Cardinals games a few times a season. Together. Even stopped drinking, not in time to save the two marriages but maybe in time to do right by the kid and the place of business they shared.

Then things went south, and don’t they always. Frank should have known where the Double Deuce was headed the night he swept up his first eyeballs after closing. He should have known he was so besotted with Pat that he was looking the other way at the younger man’s involvement in the bad element. Money got tight. That bouncer Morgan he brought on, well, he only made things worse. Morgan got close to Pat and Frank wasn’t worried, if you knew Morgan for longer than five seconds you’d know it wasn’t that way for him, but the big man brought out the worst in the kid, and not just the mustache, though yes, the mustache. Funny how all his life Frank worried he’d get a reputation (“You will get a reputation” his mother had said when they found him with Jim Conniff that summer day long ago, and no more was said about the subject because no more needed to be said), when the reputation he should have been worrying about was the bar’s. Different bad reputations for sure, but bad either way. Worse this way, that was the bitch of it. He couldn’t help what he was and there were days, and nights, he thought what he was was beautiful. Not even he could make that mistake about the Double Deuce.

Money got tighter. Security was a joke. The budget for replacement furniture alone was skyrocketing. For a while he thought of simply asking for a cut of the coke sales in the restrooms but didn’t want to bring down the kind of heat that action tends to draw. And Pat…well, Pat was Pat. Kisses sweet with Jack and Parliaments but something he used to see behind those eyes just wasn’t there anymore, if it ever was. Now there was something cold there, something hard, something sly and shifty and shitty. Had it always been there? Had Frank always been too big a fool to see it?

Before long he was coasting on fumes. All the accounts were dry, and the taps were soon to follow. Then one night—and Morgan was standing there in the door the whole time, goddammit how could he have been so stupid—Pat approached him. Not like that, that was over, neither of them had said so because neither had needed to. (Mama would have understood that, he’d thought to himself with a chuckle that tasted like battery acid.) Maybe that would have come to a head eventually, maybe he’d have quit or Frank would have asked him to. Maybe.

But Pat, see, he had this uncle, fella name of Brad Wesley. Yes, the Fotomat. Yes, the ribbon-cutting at Pete Stroudenmire’s Wagon Days. C’mon Frank, you been in Jasper long enough to know Brad Wesley. Throws some good parties, yeah, inn’t that so Morgan? Anyways Uncle Brad, he’s a businessman, all kinds. An investor, you might say. Helping out people all over town, like that Red Webster cross the parking lot. He’s got some cash, for one thing. Liquor too, biggest distributor in the county. Three counties, that’s right Morgan, thanks man. Three counties, Frank! And he’s author-rized me to invite you to his place for breakfast Sunday. Oh you don’t need to know why yet, Frank. Let’s just say it’ll be worth hearing.

C’mon, Frank. For old time’s sake.

Then years and tears and eyeballs later, the second ex’s mother died and wouldn’t you know it, she was fonder of Frank than she’d ever let on. With that kind of money he could have just blown town, set up shop in the Keys, or hell, just retired there. But no, goddammit, no. Let Brad Wesley win? Let him finish doing to the Double Deuce what he’d done to Jasper? To Pat—this Pat-thing behind the bar, wearing Pat’s smell and laughing his laugh and as hollow as the foundation wood that time Frank’s old man showed him the termites? Seemed to Frank the termites had gotten their share, and more than. Seemed to Frank the time had come to, for once in his life, fight. 

And he knew the name to help him do it. Everyone did. And was the man the named belonged to beautiful? Yes he was.

But Frank Tilghman had learned his lessons from the barback. This was not about love, or if it was it wasn’t that kind of love. This was a land-love, a legacy-love, a kind of love Frank Tilghman never felt more strongly than when he looked into the twinkling void Brad Wesley’s eyes and felt it slipping away. It was a love worth the fight.

But oh it was hard, firing Pat. Easy for the cooler maybe, but not for Frank Tilghman, no. No, it was hard and sad and a battery-acid bitch of a thing, and did he have any idea he still felt half this much, half this strong, about the man Pat used to be, the Cardinals game man, the Jack and Parliaments man, the man he’d trembled for? He did not. He felt that feeling inside of him, fighting to get out, pounding against this ears, his heart, his forehead, his hands, the back of his own eyeballs. Who’ll sweep them up, he thought, and fought back what seemed close to madness.

And the feeling caught the words in his throat and held them there. Couldn’t have seemed long to the others, maybe they didn’t even notice at all, but in that Miller Genuine Eternity of a moment Frank Tilghman did not know if they’d ever come out at all. Get out, then, Get out he heard himself say, and it was over.

Almost. He heard Pat’s laugh as he left like a distant thunder and it made him nervous. He cracked a joke, barely realizing what he was saying but realizing even as he said it that this was his last shared thing with that man, like he was giving him a reason to laugh that would travel back in time for him to hear, just to stop that laugh from being the cruel thing it was. The cooler spoke again then. It’ll get worse before it gets better, he said. In that moment Frank Tilghman thought he’d never heard a truer thing in his life.

This is not the first glimpse of Brad Wesley that Dalton has gotten. Since arriving in Jasper, Dalton has seen Brad Wesley twice from afar, first when Wesley’s helicopter buzzes Emmett’s horses, later when he watches Wesley’s poolside bacchanalia from across the river. Dalton has also seen Brad Wesley twice while recklessly operating vehicles, first the helicopter incident and then when Wesley nearly runs him off the side of the road as he swerves back and forth singing “Sh-Boom.” Here’s a Venn diagram to help you keep track.

But their encounter inside Red Webster’s auto parts store the day Dalton visits to buy what he needs to repair his vandalized car is the first time Dalton and Brad Wesley meet face to face. No sparks fly. No cutting words are exchanged. They don’t even shoot each other dirty looks, though Red sure is unhappy to see Wesley and Wesley’s bastard son (source for this claim?) Jimmy stares at Dalton like he’s a starving man and Dalton is a steak he’s really mad at for some reason.

No, it’s all smiles and handshakes when these future nemeses first meet. Wesley exchanges his hand and introduces himself, Dalton takes it and returns the favor. Red even goes so far as to explain to Wesley that “He’s working at the Double Deuce,” though whether to subtly impress upon the nefarious businessman that the bar will no longer be easy pickings for him or to simply make smalltalk with a man with whom he’s forced to be cordial is anyone’s guess. “Oh, terrific, hope you’re gonna clean that place up!” Wesley enthusiastically croaks. “Bad element over there. Well, anything that I can do for you….” Later that day Wesley will send Tinker, O’Connor, and Pat McGurn to the Double Deuce, and two of those men will attempt to murder Dalton at knifepoint. For now Dalton simply returns Wesley’s friendly grin, thanks Red for the aerial, and meets Jimmy’s steely gaze as he exits the place.

If you’ve read seventy essays about Road House in seventy days you know enough about Dalton to know he hasn’t been snowed by this dude. For one thing there are his previous three first impressions of the man, none of them good. For another it’d be hard to miss the way Red tenses up when Wesley walks in, or the fact that Wesley travels to the auto parts store with a dead-eyed denim-clad psycho who looks like he came home from ‘Nam with one of them funny necklaces. Indeed it seems fair to assume that the reason Dalton performs tai chi by the riverside while glistening with sweat later that afternoon is to shake the spiritual residue left behind by Wesley (who watches him from afar this time, chuckling to himself with amusement). No, Dalton’s cooler-sense is tingling, you can bet on it.

But Red Webster’s auto supply store is a place of dreams, a nexus, if you will, of realities that are and were and yet may be. Is it so hard to imagine a world in which this handshake, these smiles, are the sum total of the interactions between these two men? A world at peace, in which the war between Dalton and Brad Wesley never takes place, where countless limbs go unbroken, where multiple homes and businesses are never destroyed by explosives or monster trucks, where no one dies so that the new Double Deuce might live?

Morgan: “You know, I heard you had balls big enough to come in a dump truck, but uhh…you don’t look like much to me.”

Dalton: “Opinions vary.”

Morgan: […]

Morgan does not have the right temperament for the trade, but he does know a threat when he sees one. To a fault, perhaps. His biggest fault as a bouncer, aside from working for the local crimelord, is that he exists in a permanent state of bouncing. To Morgan, every customer is a peckerhead who’s been slugged in the gut and physically thrown through the front doors into the parking lot—they just don’t know it yet. Morgan’s great task in life is to be the one to inform them, with his fists. Witness the first thing he says to Dalton: “And if you’re not drinkin’, you’re outta here.” This is just after he ejected Mister Nipple to Nipple, and in the process upended a table and sent several perfectly pliant patrons of the establishment ass over elbows to the ground. You’d think he’d have bigger fish to fry, but no: The silent stranger with the magnificent head of hair is another threat waiting to be neutralized. Morgan is a preemptive strike in a sleeveless green t-shirt. Existing in this state of constant certitude—that everyone’s an asshole but you, and that it’s your job to pound that knowledge into them—makes Morgan ill-prepared to brook even the slightest dissent.

Witness the above exchange after Dalton’s first night visiting the Double Deuce. Morgan has just participated in a bar-wide fight that leveled nearly everyone and everything in its path; Dalton sat the whole thing out, observing from a distance and then meeting in Tilghman’s office for an off-screen tête-à-tête. So perhaps Morgan’s skepticism about Dalton’s martial prowess is warranted, though expressed it a needlessly condescending way.

To his credit, Dalton doesn’t even disagree with him, not explicitly. He neither confirms nor denies whether his balls are big enough to come in a dump truck, or whether he looks like much, or whether he is much. All he says is “Opinions vary,” and that’s enough to transform Morgan’s whole affect to a comical degree. (Terry Funk is a perform accustomed to playing to the cheap seats, after all.) He goes from a smirking prick to a puppy who just heard “Bad dog!” within about one second, all because Dalton suggested that points of view exist besides Morgan’s own. That’s it, that’s all it takes. If Dalton had walked right up and cold-cocked him it would have had less of an impact.

Aside from Dalton and Wade Garrett themselves, Morgan is by all appearances the most experienced bouncer in the film. Not for him, the Dalton Path. Not for Morgan, the Way of Wade Garrett. The Morgan Idea holds that Morgan is the master of everything and decides everything. Dalton’s simple statement that this is not so strikes at the man’s very soul; by resisting he has signed his own death warrant. That dump truck is barreling down the road toward him at 100 miles an hour, loaded for bear with Dalton’s balls, and he is constitutionally incapable of getting out of the way until he kisses the grill.