nancynall.com » I’ll miss the guy.
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I’ll miss the guy.

Patrick Swayze has ter­mi­nal can­cer, you say? I will take a moment to remem­ber the man before he leaves. For a while, I was a stu­dent of his per­sonal cat­a­logue, and what a time it was.

My friend Ron French and I had a rit­ual in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: We’d choose the worst movie in town, pick an off-peak screen­ing and go to throw pop­corn and trade snark from the audi­ence. We tried to sit in a place where we wouldn’t dis­turb oth­ers, but we weren’t always suc­cess­ful; to the cou­ple at the Hol­i­day 6 whose enjoy­ment of “Point Break” we more or less ruined, I’m sorry. We had to see that one on open­ing night. The prospect of Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent and Swayze as a bank-robbin’ surfer was sim­ply irre­sistible. (Talk­ing in movies was a big pet peeve of mine at the time, too. I am a hypocrite.)

Swayze was to bad movies of the ‘80s what Jack Nichol­son was to good ones of the ‘70s. “Dirty Danc­ing,” “Road House,” “Red Dawn,” “Ghost,” “North and South” (bad TV) and my per­sonal favorite, “Next of Kin” — most of these were delight­ful to watch, so hap­pily did they wal­low in bad­ness. What made them good-bad instead of bad-bad was, the peo­ple in them had a sense of humor about them­selves. They knew it was bad, but they brought their A game, or at least their atten­tion and energy. (The excep­tion to the list was “Ghost,” which was bad-bad; Demi Moore’s per­son­al­ity is a black hole of dumb seri­ous­ness that sucks every­thing into its vor­tex.) “Red Dawn” was just plain hilar­i­ous, but was made fun­nier by its cul­tural impact; I remem­ber see­ing the pro­gram for an anti-communist func­tion of some sort held in Fort Wayne, and “Red Dawn” was the afternoon’s enter­tain­ment. The thought of all those peo­ple com­ing off a morn­ing of sem­i­nars and panel dis­cus­sions about gulags and Stal­in­ism, and into an after­noon of “Wolver­ines!” and Harry Dean Stan­ton bel­low­ing, “Avenge me!” from behind the wire at the drive-in/re-education camp just kills.

“Next of Kin,” about a back­woods Appalachian clan tak­ing revenge on the Chicago mob was a clas­sic of the good-bad genre, com­bin­ing ele­ments of stan­dard vengeance, gang­ster and fish-out-of-water plots. Ron pointed out the camera’s sus­pi­cious inter­est in an early family-picnic scene in which the elders of the clan prac­tice their hatchet-throwin’ skills, and sure enough — I hope I’m not spoil­ing this for any­one — some­one gets a hatchet in the brain­pan in the big fight cli­max. It was so awesome.

One of the joys of bad-movie fan­dom is, you get to see them on cable years later and squeal, “How the hell did I miss Liam Nee­son in this the first time around?!” Check out some of the play­ers in the IMDb list­ing, beside Nee­son: Helen Hunt, Bill Pax­ton, Ben Stiller, Michael J. Pol­lard, Ted Levine and that neces­sity for all bad ‘80s cin­ema — a Bald­win brother (Adam). The char­ac­ter names are nearly as good, with a Patsy-Ruth, Aunt Peg, Old Hill­billy and, of course, Grandpa. (He may be the hatchet-thrower; can’t remember.)

But back to Swayze. What made him a plea­sure to watch was his grace. He seemed to know he’d never be doing Mamet off Broad­way, but he could dance the shoes off any­one, and didn’t mind wear­ing tight pants while doing so. It’s hard to dis­like a man so mas­cu­line, and still so happy in a body built for hip-swivelin’ rather than foot­ball. Relax, I’m not going to com­pare him to Gene Kelly, but they shared a dis­tant ances­tor, maybe.

The TV com­mer­cial for “Next of Kin” fea­tured Swayze, in an eastern-Kentucky accent, warn­ing, “You ain’t seen bad yet…but it’s a-comin’,” a line I trea­sure to this day. If only we’d had some more of that kind of bad.

What’s your favorite good-bad movie? Dis­cuss in comments.

P.S. As good as Swayze’s bad was, it really couldn’t match the all-time worst movie we saw together: “On Deadly Ground,” in which Steven Sea­gal saves the Alaskan wilder­ness by blow­ing up an oil refin­ery in the mid­dle of it. (Sam­ple dia­logue, via IMDb: My guy in D.C. tells me that we are not deal­ing with a stu­dent here, we’re deal­ing with the Pro­fes­sor. Any time the mil­i­tary has an oper­a­tion that can’t fail, they call this guy in to train the troops, OK? He’s the kind of guy that would drink a gal­lon of gaso­line so he could piss in your camp­fire! You could drop this guy off at the Arc­tic Cir­cle wear­ing a pair of bikini under­wear, with­out his tooth­brush, and tomor­row after­noon he’s going to show up at your pool side with a mil­lion dol­lar smile and fist full of pesos. This guy’s a pro­fes­sional, you got me? If he reaches this rig, we’re all gonna be noth­ing but a big god­damned hole right in the mid­dle of Alaska. So let’s go find him and kill him and get rid of the son of a bitch!

Also: Drunken Eskimo: You are about to go on a sacred jour­ney.

Do we have a lit­tle blog­gage? We might:

Via Jeff, in com­ments above, How Hillary won Ohio.

Dahlia Lith­wick explains Char­lotte Allen to you. Well, some­one had to.

For some rea­son, Detroit is fond of dress­ing up its large stat­u­ary in clothes. With open­ing day less than a month away, a Tiger in Carhartt.

Off to the gym. Guess what we have to look for­ward to this week­end? Yes, that.

Posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 9:46 am
in Current events, Detroit life, Movies.

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67 responses to
“I’ll miss the guy.”

  1. Jeff Hall said on March 6th, 2008 at 9:58 am

    “But I’m not dead yet!”

    signed, Patrick Swayze

  2. Jeff Hall said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:00 am

    Any men­tioned of the Swayze canon must include Road House. A bouncer with a phi­los­o­phy degree from NYU? Such strength, such depth, such com­plex­ity! And he rips out a guy’s voice box in a cli­mac­tic fight scene and gets stitches drug free. Brilliance.

  3. 4dbirds said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:02 am

    Is Adam Bald­win an actual Bald­win brother? I’m a big fan of Seren­ity and Fire­fly. Call me crazy but I loved Red Dawn. Yes its stu­pid and all that, I still like it. I wish Patrick well. Hav­ing gone through can­cer as the mother of a tod­dler with the dis­ease and as a sis­ter to a breast can­cer patient, it sucks. Two years later my sister’s death is still raw. Can­cer sucks the big one.

  4. john c said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    My favorite bad bad movie is so good it might not be bad. It’s “They Live” star­ring Rowdy Roddy Piper. He plays a con­struc­tion worker who stum­bles upon a magic pair of Ray Bans. They allow him to see the aliens liv­ing among us, as well as all the sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages all around us. Many fights and chases ensue.
    And for what it’s worth, the fun­nji­est bit of phys­i­cal com­edy ever on SNL was Patrick Swayze and Chris Far­ley try­ing out for the Chippendales.

  5. 4dbirds said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Char­lotte Allen is espe­cially infu­ri­at­ing in this WP online dis­cus­sion.

  6. JenFlex said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:13 am

    4dbirds: No, Adam is from another branch of the Bald­win fam­ily tree. Scary degree of resem­blance, though.

  7. Lisa Scott said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Best bad movie ever: “About Last Night … ” Rob Lowe stand­ing in the mid­dle of the pour­ing rain on Divi­sion Street scream­ing for Demi Moore, seri­ously, it just doesn’t get any bet­ter than that.

  8. jcburns said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    Sammy pointed me to this analy­sis of the Buck­eye vote in the Wash­ing­ton Post, which has a great photo of Obama…and the money quote: “Race and class still mat­ter in Ohio.” Me, I think I’d pro­duce a sim­ple 30-second spot where Obama says the pledge of alle­giance in a class­room filled with diverse school­child­ren. That’s it.

  9. Harl Delos said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:20 am

    You won’t have to miss him right away; tales of his immi­nent death appear to be spurious:

    “All of the reports stat­ing the time­frame of his prog­no­sis and his phys­i­cal side effects are absolutely untrue. We are con­sid­er­ably more opti­mistic,” accord­ing to Dr George Fisher, Swayze’s doc­tor. The actor has a very lim­ited amount of dis­ease and appears to be respond­ing well to treatment.

    The doctor’s prog­no­sis was included in a state­ment released today by Swayze’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Annett Wolf.

    At least, that’s the story accord­ing to http://​break​ingnews​.iol​.ie/​e​n​t​e​r​t​a​i​n​m​e​n​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​.​a​s​p​?​j​=​1​8​4​7​1​5​4​7​5​&​a​m​p​;​p​=​y​8​4​7y6xxx

    Swayze’s mom was the one that taught John Tra­volta to dance. I don’t par­tic­u­larly care for Tra­volta in gen­eral, but I have to admit that they make it appear he can dance. Maybe he actu­ally can. My wife loves his danc­ing in gen­eral, but is espe­cially fond of Michael, when he dances to Chain of Fools. (I like the part bet­ter where Andie Mac­Dow­ell sings about pie.)

  10. Connie said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    My favorite Patrick Swayze dance was not in the movies but rather on SNL. Swayze and Chris Far­ley — both shirt­less — are audi­tion­ing for the Chip­pen­dales. I am snort­ing just think­ing about it.

  11. Kafkaz said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:23 am

    Haven’t seen it in ages, but I will always pause to watch Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

    “When you work with words, words are your work,” alone is worth it, but the great lines are endless.

    As a kid, I was a big fan of The Incred­i­ble Mr. Limpet, too.

    Sigh. Such an enthu­si­as­tic lack of taste.

  12. alex said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    “Down and Out in Bev­erly Hills” is one of those ‘80s bad/good movies that still seduces me when chan­nel surf­ing. It’s Nick Nolte look­ing filthy and hagard just like his most recent DUI mug shots. And the Divine Miss M sin­gle­hand­edly redeems just about any steam­ing pile of crap she’s in.

  13. john c said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    I for­got about “Chris­tine.” (And I think I made it!)
    It is based on Steven King story about a pos­sessed car — a Ply­mouth, I believe, for you fel­low D-towners. Great­est bad last line, deliv­ered by the hotsy totsy high school sweet­heart hero­ine after the car has finally been put in the crusher but the radio still comes to life play­ing the same song it always plays from the 50s: “God,” she says, “I hate rock and roll.”

  14. Dorothy said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    Didn’t any­one else love “The Blob” with Steve McQueen???

  15. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    I have to admit, lib­eral and sur­ren­derist (and if Amer­ica buys this sack of shite from John McCain, HL will throw up but oth­er­wise lie peace­fully in his grave, know­ing he was right about get­ting it good and hard) and friend to ter­riss that I am, I cheered for killing those com­mies in Red Dawn. I think it’s about inter­nal logic, and it all made some per­verted form of sense.

    Patrick Swayze? It’s like what John Hiatt said about Billy Ray Cyrus: “But, oh how that man could dance.” The best movie he made was Steel Dawn. With the absolutely incom­pa­ra­ble Brion “Time to Die” James, with the inim­itable Anthony Zerbe as the com­pletely despi­ca­ble vil­lain when Alan Rick­man was still just a glint in crit­ics’ eyes.

    Next of Kin is pri­mor­dial. You f**k with my brother, I f**k you over big time. If it’s got Liam Nee­son, I’m in. He’s just excel­lent. Hell, I liked Dark­man and Nell.

    I’ve been watch­ing movies a long time, and I wouldn’t ven­ture a guess at what’s a ‘bad’ movie. Leave that to the Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater guys and robots. I believe Chi­na­town is surely the best movie any­body ever made, fol­lowed closely by McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Get right down to it, movies are just great, period. There are movies like Shoot Loud and Cry Uncle and Bucket of Blood nobody ever heard of that reward the two-hour invest­ment of noth­ing but time. Evil Roy Slade, the bril­liant John Astin’s most bril­liant moment. And some­times we watch those Sea­gall pot­boil­ers, and we like them.

    We’d like to turn the Mus­cles from Brus­sels loose on any real­ity show of your choice. Imag­i­na­tion, even hack­neyed, vio­lent imag­i­na­tion, trumps total aholes act­ing like aholes while camera-preening on “real­ity” that are so scripted they make my molars ache.

    Michael J. Pol­lard is just too strange to be human, but, you know, Lit­tle Fauss and Big Halsey. They had to get a shrimp to make Robert Red­ford big.

    My female BF and I took a dif­fer­ent route. We went to see Blade Run­ner about 50 times, on the last of the big screens at Coolidge Cor­ner in Brook­line. New stuff all the time.

  16. whitebeard said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    I liked “Ghost” a lot for the super­nat­ural theme and that was about the only Swayze movie I remem­ber watch­ing. But I have to agree that on the bad-bad films the award goes to (enve­lope, please) any­thing with Steven Sea­gal; I can­not help myself and keep on root­ing for the bad guys in all his films.

  17. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    Dorothy,

    <iThe Blob, with its inher­ent mes­sage that, you old farts, the kids may have a point, was a ter­rific movie. i won­der when some­body will take movies seri­ously enough to immor­tal­ize Thomas Pyn­chon. And TC Boyle. and William Gib­son. Para­noia as a nor­mal state of mind is under­rated. The Blob was anti-McCarthyism, but you know, It was just a movie, Ingrid.

  18. brian stouder said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:09 am

    bad/good movie: Tremors (the orig­i­nal) with Reba McIn­tyre and the guy who played Gus Gris­som in The Right Stuff

  19. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:09 am

    Steven Sea­gall made a movie called The Glim­mer Man, with, I think, Mar­lon Wayans, maybe Damon, that was pretty good. This all comes down to William Faulkner and will­ing sus­pen­sion. You just buy the absurd premise and the result is sat­is­fy­ing. Some­body makes an effort to make some­thing up, I’m on board. Cre­ative alter­na­tives are cru­cial to human exis­tence. How we know we’re actu­ally alive. Oth­er­wise, you’ve got Don­ald Trump and his improb­a­ble hair mas­querad­ing as the real world.

  20. nancy said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:18 am

    Steven Seagal’s IMDb entry is fas­ci­nat­ing. Appar­ently, he’s the busiest man in show­biz, but every­thing he makes goes straight to video, if that’s what (V) means after a title. And what titles!

    Mer­ce­nary for Jus­tice
    Today You Die
    Attack Force
    Urban Jus­tice
    Pis­tol Whipped

    …and so on.

    And hello, what’s this? Plays “Cock Puncher” in “Unti­tled Onion Movie.” Now that’s worth liv­ing another year for. Hang on, Patrick Swayze!

  21. Sue said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    I’ve really never paid much atten­tion to Mr. Swayze, but he was in a movie I liked: “To Wong Foo…” I thought he was great as the high-fashion, husband-beating mem­ber of the trio. I hope he is one of the 23% sur­vival rate (past one year) peo­ple. That’s a par­tic­u­larly nasty can­cer.
    Re Char­lotte Allen. WTF? And how can I square my dis­gust at her idiocy with my laugh­ter at Joel Stein’s recent “A Lit­tle Some­thing For the Ladies” in the LATimes? (I love Joel Stein when he’s not appear­ing on MTV). Oh, yeah, prob­a­bly because I think Joel was kinda teas­ing us (“Ladies are com­pli­cated”).
    Ah, Urban Stat­u­ary. I’m embar­rassed to say that Mil­wau­kee soon will be unveil­ing a statue of the Fonz (the Bronze Fonz). On the River­walk. Yup. Oh, well, peo­ple were embar­rassed by the Picasso in Chicago at first, too.

  22. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    Brian, Tremors is excep­tion­ally enter­tain­ing. Class by itself, actu­ally. Set out to make a ludi­crous hor­ror movie and suc­ceeded on all counts. Ken Rus­sell did the same thing, with The Lair of the White Worm but he couldn’t cond­tain his artis­tic impulses. He did make The Dev­ils. Good bad, and evil, at the same time.

    Are there actors and actresses that just guar­an­tee peo­ple will trash a movie because they’re in it? From my point of view, you’ve got the totally insuf­fer­able Will Far­rell and Adam San­dler. The lat­ter is nat­u­rally funny, the for­mer more obnox­ious than Chris Far­ley and David Spade mashed up.

    How is it that nobody gives any credit to Kevin Bacon? He plays every­thing well, includ­ing truly slimy vil­lains. The River Wild. Now that’s a movie I could see in this dis­cus­sion. I think Meryl Streep is at her best in this movie, David Strathairn too. And, damn, Kevin Bacon is superbly villainous.

    I sup­pose this is another bad movie. But I really like it. And I’m right.

  23. brian stouder said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    Say — on the sub­ject of celebrity tid­bits — guess what sexy woman turned 50 the other day (aside from our pro­pri­etress)? Patri­cia Heaton — aka Deb Barone on Every­body Loves Raymond.

    I still say, HRC evokes a bit of what I find attrac­tive about the Deb Barone char­ac­ter, and given how well Hillary did on SNL — who knows?

    Maybe she can be America’s first pres­i­dent with PILF appeal for the male-over-30 demographic…

  24. nancy said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    Care­ful, Brian, her brother is watch­ing you from the right rail.

  25. john c said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:54 am

    Para­noia as a nor­mal state of mind” — Michaelj

    This reminded me of a great line about para­noia I heard for the first time in a long time when XM chan­nel surf­ing landed me on a com­edy chan­nel and Steven Wright: He dead­panned: “I woke up the other day and some­one had stolen every­thing I owned and replaced it with an exact replica.”

    Oh, and as I was sit­ting here sup­posed to be writ­ing but think­ing about bad movies, this funny mem­ory popped into my head. My in-laws are big movie fans. And as they are retired, they see a lot of them. I was chat­ting with my father in law and the sub­ject of Jim Car­rey came up. “Oh,” he said, “we went to see that ‘Irene’ movie and we walked out. It was ter­ri­ble. It was only the sec­ond movie we’d ever walked out on.” You should know that my in-laws, though very smart and open-minded, are clas­sic kind, gen­tle, non-cussing small-town Hoosiers. “So,” I asked. “What was the other movie you walked out on.“
    the answer .… “Booty Call.”

  26. Catherine said on March 6th, 2008 at 11:55 am

    Two words: Top Gun.

  27. Dorothy said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Adam San­dler movies leave me cold, ‘cept for “Punch Drunk Love”. That was a weird but fas­ci­nat­ing movie.

  28. djmoore said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    Mmm, Road House. One of my favorite guilty pleasures.

    I par­tic­u­larly like two sup­port­ing actors: Sam Elliot and Jeff Healey.

    Healey played Cody, the bar band gui­tarist who was “pretty good for a blind white guy”.

    “Was” for real, now, not only because he was pretty good for a blind white guy, but because he died a few days ago.

    If I had a gui­tar, it would be gen­tly weep­ing.

  29. Adrianne said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    I have to echo Cather­ine here: Top Gun is the best of the bad! I believe that you, me and Ron spoiled that movie for a whole audi­ence at the Glen­wood movie the­ater back in the day.

    And a guilty plea­sure for jour­nal­ism fans: “Dead­line USA” star­ring Humphrey Bog­art as the hard-bitten edi­tor of a fail­ing New York daily owned by a clue­less patri­cian fam­ily. Cli­mac­tic scene fea­tures a shootout with mob­sters in the press room. Bog­art gets a call from the chief hood as the presses clack furi­ously with an expose of their mob empire. He puts the phone next to the presses. As the hood howls, “What’s that noise?” Bogie replies. “It’s the press, baby…the press…and there’s noth­ing you can do about it!”

  30. beb said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    My two favorite ‘bad’ movies are “Over­board” with Goldie Hahn and Kurt Rus­sell, and “The Fifth Ele­ment” with Bruce Willis. Hahn works the cute in Over­board as a clue­less women try­ing to man­age four hel­lion boys she thinks are her sons. The Fifth Ele­ment is almost inco­her­ent as SF films go but is such a glo­ri­ous spec­ta­cle of destruction.

  31. Jeff said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    The Shadow, with Alec Baldwin

    Flash Gor­don, with Max von Sydow as Ming the Merciless

    that Tom Cruise meets Nicole Kid­man movie start­ing in Ire­land and end­ing, i’m vaguely rec­ol­lect­ing, in Okla­homa. My dearly beloved and i were com­pelled by either great iner­tia or forces beyond our ken to keep watch­ing, watch­ing, mes­mer­ized by the bad­ness, watch­ing, until finally … we couldn’t fig­ure out what hap­pened at the end, because appar­ently Tom died, but then he rose again, and … any­how, cred­its rolled.

    “Why did we watch all of that?” she asked. “Hon, i have no idea.” Bless­edly, i can’t remem­ber … some­thing about “The West.”

    Bad/not-good, but eerily compelling.

  32. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    But Jim Car­rey made The Tru­man Show, which is quite affect­ing (although Ed Har­ris steals the show). And there’s the phony Capra The Majes­tic in which Car­rey played Mr. Smith blud­geon­ing Con­gress a lot bet­ter, more con­vinc­ingly, and more under­stat­edly than Jimmy Stew­art was ever capa­ble of.

    Bad movies? The iconic, beyond crit­i­cism. It’s a Won­der­ful Life. An atroc­ity. Rag­ing Bull, how many times can you say f**k and punch a woman in one minute on screen? Moronic, Nean­derthal. Planet of the Apes. Yeah, right, right wing nutjob and val­ues of free human expres­sion. You know he wanted to say “filthy N****r” when he said “filthy ape”. That was kind of the point of that movie, wasn’t it?

    Adam Sandler’s prob­a­bly an acquired taste, but if he didn’t look so odd, he’s actu­ally capa­ble of being a decent actor. I mean, he always looks like a Beastie Boy.

    Will Far­rell, on the other hand, plays straight up same, all the time, and he’s inex­cus­able. It wasn’t funny on SNL, it’s not funny now. I’ve been forced to sit through Will Far­rell movies, and this guy is a jerk.

  33. Mindy said on March 6th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    “Not­ting Hill.” Ter­ri­ble movie. Saw it only once, on a day when I was home alone and needed some­thing on the tube for com­pany while I knit­ted. The whole movie was so awful it was laugh out loud funny. Julia Roberts was so achingly bad I was embar­rassed for her. When she won her Oscar for “Erin Brock­ovich” I didn’t believe it. The first thing I thought was, “But she was in ‘Not­ting Hill’.”

  34. Julie Robinson said on March 6th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    I can put up with a lot of bad plot if there’s good singing and danc­ing. Just call me a sucker for musi­cals. Loved Hair­spray, and though I’m loathe to admit it here, the first High School Musical.

    The announce­ment on Patrick Swayze was in this morning’s paper along with an obit on a local politi­cian who died of pan­cre­atic can­cer. Diag­no­sis: mid-January. Not even two months.

  35. Kirk said on March 6th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    I started watch­ing the remake of “The Out-of-Towners” with Steve Mar­tin and Goldie Hawn the other day, but I couldn’t stom­ach it. I actu­ally like Goldie, but “The Banger Sis­ters” is another pretty bad one that comes to mind.

  36. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    I liked The Pel­i­can Brief best of any Julia Roberts role. If Hugh Grant’s in a movie, I’m not watch­ing. God, what an insuf­fer­able twit. I mean, it’s bad enough to be caught in a car, in drag, with for­mer As pitcher Dave Stew­art, you know… I did watch Brid­get Jones, because I liked th book, sort of, and because my com­pan­ion made me, and, really, because I hoped Colin Firth would beat the snot out of that metro twat.

    Ms. Roberts best role was prob­a­bly the amoral, duplic­i­tous fundrais­ing ho that tried and failed to seduce Rey Cur­tis, and then hung him out to dry in court any­way on Law and Order.

    Really Bad Movie: Sleep­less in Seat­tle. Spare me the labored, win­some dramaturgy.

  37. Sue said on March 6th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    I don’t usu­ally have angry reac­tions to movies, but one movie I absolutely, pos­i­tively could not stand was Patch Adams. I had to politely sit through the whole thing because my MIL thought it was hilar­i­ous and she had the pick on movie night. Oh, God, what an awful movie: meant to be uplift­ing, but there’s Dr. Patch, deter­mined not to let any­one past him until they sur­ren­der and admit that he is the fun­ni­est thing ever and his schtick (sp?) is exactly what they needed to get bet­ter or die or what­ever. After the movie I wanted to put some­one into the hos­pi­tal, not free them from one.

  38. Adrianne said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    The movie title Jeff is search­ing for is “Far and Away,” spo­ken in a truly hor­ri­ble Irish accent. It was directed by Ron Howard.

    And there was some joke in a recent movie about a DVD release of “Patch Adams: The Director’s Cut.”

  39. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Patch Adams was berry berry bad. That’s a func­tion of Robin Williams. When he’s good he’s great. When he’s overindulged by the script and the direc­tor, he’s unbear­able. Doesn’t any­body else get this feel­ing of ichoate rage watch­ing Dr. House kill the patient 10 times in an hour and then get lucky, while eat­ing vicodin like pop­corn and pro­fes­sion­al­iz­ing being an ass?

    Crit­ics have long knives out for Robin Williams and some­times he richly deserves it (one of my broth­ers went to pri­vate school with him, at Detroit Coun­try Day). Death to Smoochy? On the other hand, he’s capa­ble of excel­lence and nuance. Insom­nia, Garp, Good Morn­ing Viet­nam. He (under)played the dia­met­ric oppo­site of the obnox­ious Patch Adams char­ac­ter in Awak­en­ings, and he was superb. Hardly any­body ever saw it, but Robin Williams made a movie called Moscow On the Hud­son, that could have starred Tom Hanks but thank God didn’t. Truly fine movie.

    There’s a dis­con­nect in this argu­ment. I think Nancy’s talk­ing about so bad they’re good movies to some extent. Mys­tery Sci­ence. In my esti­ma­tion, Don “Sonny Crock­ett” John­son put this cat­e­gory away with A Boy and His Dog, although Lori Petty and Ice Cube and Mal­colm McDow­ell might have out­done him in Tank Girl.

  40. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Far and Away. As bad an overblown epic as Gone With the Wind. Only some 5 – 7 Sci­en­tol­o­gist dum­b­ass could make Nicole Kid­man look bad.

    As for GWTW, I guess the movie wasn’t all that ter­ri­ble com­pared with the unread­able pot­boiler it was made from. Danielle Steele, her pre­vi­ous life cut short by an Atlanta taxi cab.

  41. nancy said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    Actu­ally, Michael, I’ll take the argu­ment. I’ve always found GWTW: Orig­i­nal Recipe to be one of the great fem­i­nist nov­els of the 20th cen­tury. Bet­ter than “The Women’s Room,” cer­tainly (and sorry, Ms. Lipp­man, I know you’re a fan).

  42. sue said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    I always liked GWTW’s “asides”, com­ments through­out the book which seemed to indi­cate Mitchell’s feel­ings on the cul­ture, even as she pre­sented her story faith­fully to the times. But, it will never be on my favorites list because Scar­lett never changed, never fig­ured out the big things, and was really no dif­fer­ent at the end of the book than the begin­ning. I can see her as an old woman, still believ­ing her­self the belle, still try­ing to get what she wanted by using her no longer exis­tent “wiles”. What both­ers me is not that she didn’t change, but that she could change and didn’t — she was smarter than that.

  43. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Jenny Garp is the great fem­i­nist char­ac­ter of the 20th Cen­tury. 19th, Anna Karen­ina or Hedda. Nah, Hes­ter Prynne. Eliz­a­bethan? Kathe­rina, although Helena (Oh, spite, oh hell.) gives her a run, but that might be my Diana Rigg infatuation.

    Did you actu­ally read The Women’s Room? Don’t think I’ve ever met any­body that made it through. Bad angry writ­ing with no appre­cia­ble point of view, lack­ing Erica Jong’s res­olute Yid­dish­ness and dubi­ous sense of humor. Mar­i­lyn French was a poorly regarded Eng­lish prof at Holy Cross when my brother went there.

  44. Emma said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    Some of you may have sen­ti­men­tal feel­ings about this one, but it’s still bad, nonethe­less. “Ice Cas­tles,” the story of a young fig­ure skater named Lexi who crashes into a load of patio fur­ni­ture and goes blind! I love it.

  45. 4dbirds said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Oh Sue, I’d for­got­ten about Patch Adams. I saw it shortly after my daughter’s can­cer treat­ment was com­pleted and was still very shell-shocked. I left the movie livid. So if only we’d laughed some more and had a bet­ter atti­tude then that damn can­cer wouldn’t have been so bad.

  46. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    How about turn­ing Bobby Gen­try into dri­vel, with Robby Ben­son, for exe­crable movies?

  47. Laura said on March 6th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Oh, there’s so many good bad movies out there; I’ts tough to nar­row it down. But I’ll try. I find Titanic incred­i­bly easy to mock. When I was a teen, I enjoyed mock­ing My Side of the Moun­tain (“I’m Jill Kin­mont and I ski!”).

    And, no mat­ter your opin­ion on the race, I hope some of you agree that HRC has had to put up w/a lot of he-man woman-hating.

  48. Joe K said on March 6th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    ANY ROBBIE BENSON MOVIE ROCKS.
    Ice castle’s what a hoot. They for­got the fans would throw flow­ers and she trips over them. Another R.B. mas­ter­piece, the one when he was the Bas­ket­ball player in col­lege. So bad I can’t remem­ber the name. Lynn Holly John­son, the worst bond girl ever. Hell 007 turned her down!!!
    Top gun, As soon as I saw Goose run out to meet the wife and Kids turned to my wife and said “He’s dead“
    Joe K.

  49. Kristina said on March 6th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    Flip­pin’ through the chan­nels this morn­ing, every sta­tion seemed to be “remem­ber­ing” the man.

    It must creep him out — hearin’ and watchin’ and readin’ all of these eulo­gies about himself.

    So — are media types just try­ing to beat each other to the punch?

    Or — do you (generic you) think you’ll just be too busy to write some­thing up when he does keel over?

  50. Leo Morris said on March 6th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    “The TV com­mer­cial for ‘Next of Kin’ fea­tured Swayze, in an eastern-Kentucky accent …“
    Tweren’t no such a thing. As an Appalachian-American in good stand­ing, I feel qual­i­fied to nom­i­nate the accents in that movie as among the worst of all time, right up there with Den­nis Quaid’s in “The Big Easy.”

  51. ashley said on March 6th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    Detroit needs their own Man­neken Pis.

  52. Sue said on March 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    Ash­ley, please see last com­ment on “Take the keys”. The world awaits your reply.

  53. brian stouder said on March 6th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    And, no mat­ter your opin­ion on the race, I hope some of you agree that HRC has had to put up w/a lot of he-man woman-hating.

    I con­fess that I started out blind to the extent of the exis­ten­tial hos­til­ity to Hillary Clin­ton; one sort of auto­mat­i­cally dis­counts the invec­tive from ‘talk radio’ and right­ward swaths of the blogocracy.

    But my lovely wife has pointed out sev­eral instances of a hyper-critical, always-ready-to-pounce atti­tude in the reg­u­lar media (think Chris Matthews).…and at the last debate Hillary made a great joke about the ‘soft’ treat­ment that Obama gets (lit­er­ally offer­ing him a pil­low!), which got us laugh­ing out loud! — and after the debate the pun­dits and ana­lysts remarked about Hillary being ANGRY, and about her ‘complaining’.…

    it seemed clear to us that if any man had made the same joke, they’d have ‘got­ten’ it (and laughed) — yet she drew the ‘fur­rowed brow’ treat­ment (think Olbermann)

  54. del said on March 6th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    John Tra­volta as The Boy in the Plas­tic Bubble?

  55. del said on March 6th, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    Rob­bie Ben­son in Death Be Not Proud?

  56. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 6:00 pm

    The anti-Hillary has been stag­ger­ing. Or at least it might be if you hadn’t lived through the Deanie-Babies. When di d Bubba say any­thing that could remotely be con­sid­ered racist?

    When was the last time you heard a poten­tial nom­i­nee say “I know her sup­port­ers will vote for me. I don’t know if mine will vote for her.”? Who they vot­ing for Barack? McCain? What an ass­hole. Very poor cgoice of words, and tgoughts.

    We went for a bile ride and thought about Nancy’s com­ment on Scar­let and fem­i­nism. A book we both read, Alias Grace, seems to fit. This book is so good, I’d actu­ally rec­om­mend it. And Oryx and Crake.

    I’m not really thrilled with most women record­ing artists. Joni, Maria McKee, Ala­nis (going on in a nude body­suit in the gter­math of Janet jacksin was so damn funny, Aimee Mann, Joan Arma­trad­ing, Judy Collins (who was blessed with a per­fect voice, and knows how to bend it, if you’re look­ing to get silly. Nobody on the face of the earth sings like this). But maybe Steve Stills or Jack Bruce.

    I take end­less domes­tic grief over this, but Mar­garet Atwood is the only con­sitsently excel­lent woman writer in this cen­tury. The Brontes, well yeah. Jane Austen? Wake me when it’s over.Well. there’s Gaye Wel­don, but she’s so mean-spirited,

  57. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    Hwre’s the deal:

    Now con­sider how the Com­man­der in Chief just lied to Con­gress. How would you have voted?href=“http://italy.usembassy.gov/pdf/other/H.J.Res.114_RDS.pdf”>This is the so-called autho­riza­tion. Does this say the ass­hole can insti­tute shock and awe? Nppe. They did it because they could. Nobody in Con­gress ever voted for the Invasion.

  58. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    Nobody autho­rized the inva­sion and nobod­ddddddddy sure as shit autho­rized the occu­pa­tion, W is out on a limb with Cheney and Perle and those aholes that signed the PNAC letters

    One thing’s for sure, nobody in Con­gess ever signed on for either the inva­sion or theo ccu­pa­tion. Read the law.

  59. michaelj said on March 6th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    Scar­let, a fem­i­nist ? You have to do bet­ter than that. Mar­garet Atwood is so good she can write rings around any­body you bring up.
    .nk pu [

    k’

    pp
    Wow, Fem­i­nism in movies, hard
    ’

  60. nancy said on March 6th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Scar­lett O’Hara is most def­i­nitely a fem­i­nist, although she doesn’t really know what that is, yet. She’s a woman per­fectly capa­ble of com­pet­ing with a man at nearly every level, but she lives in a world where women’s lives are more cir­cum­scribed than they are in, oh, what? Latter-day Saudi Arabia?

    She runs a house­hold, defies soci­etal expec­ta­tions (reject­ing mourn­ing, ser­ial mar­riage), runs a busi­ness, works in the cot­ton fields along­side the slaves, has three chil­dren by three dif­fer­ent baby dad­dies and still looks aces in a red vel­vet dress. She bosses all the men in her life around. She shoots a Yan­kee in the face and buries the body under the scup­per­nong vines. What else? Don’t get me started — I can bore you all night.

  61. brian stouder said on March 6th, 2008 at 8:45 pm

    defies soci­etal expec­ta­tions (reject­ing mourn­ing, ser­ial marriage)

    THAT’S the key point. Women have always been indis­pen­si­ble to society(!) — but the idea of openly stand­ing athwart soci­etal expec­ta­tions, and shout­ing ‘Stop’ (to para­phrase WFB!) — that’s the ‘feminism’.

    Tell you what — apply the ‘fem­i­nism’ par­a­digm to Mary Lincoln’s later life, and you get a real-life exam­ple of a sort of yan­kee Scar­lett. Jean Baker wrote a fab­u­lous book about her, and one can­not help but admire her.

    Remem­ber how she was legally declared insane? This was because she enjoyed shop­ping — it was an out­let for her, and she bought things with her own money that she didn’t actu­ally need! (As Baker says, that sounds like a mod­ern Amer­i­can con­sumer, not a crazy person!)

    It flatly amazed me to read that in the space of one day, she returned home (a res­i­dence in Chicago) from shop­ping, there to find the police wait­ing for her, with an arrest war­rant and a sum­mons to court. They took her down­town, where a jury (all men) was already empan­eled, and where “her” lawyer (selected by her son Robert) was wait­ing. She saw Robert sit­ting there, adn real­ized it was his doing.…and the trial went for­ward, and was sub­mit­ted to the jury, which reached its find­ing that she was insane, and they took her away to an asy­lum all before the sun went down!!!

    There she remained for 3 months, but she got the help of a woman who was act­ing as her legal coun­sel, despite that women were not admit­ted to the bar in Illi­nois, and she gained her free­dom again.

    Read­ing the story, one becomes quite angry at Robert Lin­coln, and Leonard Swett, and David Davis.…although in the end, Robert did seem to be moti­vated by a gen­uinely pro­tec­tive impulse toward his mother (he feared she’d lose the annual stipend that con­gress some­what grudg­ingly approved for her year to year, and he never spent a penny of her money).

    Mary always gets a very bad press — because she will­fully did what she thought best, or sim­ply what she wanted to do; despite the best efforts of pow­er­ful, con­nected men to con­trol (or lit­er­ally imprison) her

  62. sue said on March 6th, 2008 at 10:27 pm

    I’m not a big Mary Lin­coln fan, although I think she was a vic­tim of her times. I am old-school in my opin­ion of her: if she wasn’t exactly men­tally unsta­ble, she also wasn’t aware of her sur­round­ings enough to think her way out of the appalling sit­u­a­tions she found her­self in. I think Mar­garet Mitchell knew exactly what she was doing when she devel­oped Scar­lett O’Hara; I just don’t like her. I would have loved to see a Scar­lett with less Mary Lin­coln in her and more Mary Ches­nut. That would have been interesting.

  63. LAMary said on March 7th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Jeff, that hor­ri­ble Tom Cruise/Nicole Kid­man movie was “Far and Away.” I used to have neigh­bors who cre­ated movie titles for a liv­ing (Field of Dreams was their claim to fame) and they titled that hor­ri­ble movie. I heard a bad review on the radio say­ing, “Far and Away is what you should stay from this movie.”

  64. Wally Wilson said on March 7th, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    Nancy, Nancy, Nancy… Red Dawn is a _classic_! Grow­ing up in Mon­tana, we _all_ knew that that was exactly what we would do! :-)

  65. corporal waldo said on March 7th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    Michael Caine siad he sacked his agents after the Segal movie.

  66. Warner said on March 8th, 2008 at 5:58 am

    I always think of Swayze in an episode of M.A.S.H. where he had leukemia. In the show he gave up his chance for treat­ment to be with his buddy. It was a pretty good episode if for noth­ing else than the per­for­mance of William Christo­pher. When­ever I catch it on teevee I still get a lit­tle teary-eyed.

  67. Mary O said on March 8th, 2008 at 7:21 am

    My vote for worst line in that Steven Segal “On Deadly Ground” movie is below. It may not be word-for-word, but you get the picture:

    He expresses sur­prise that Joan Chen’s char­ac­ter can ride a horse. Her response: “Of course I can, I’m a Native American!”

    Aaaaau­u­u­u­u­u­uggggggh­h­h­hhh!!!!!!!

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