Tough Guys Don't Dance

There are a lot of people who really hate this movie. Then strangely they go on and on detailing the things that bother them about it but that they also find fascinating and relentlessly hypnotic.

It's unfortunate that people are so rigid in their definition of what makes a 'good' movie.

Norman Mailer is by no means a terrible director. He actually does a very credible and commendable job of adapting his own novel to the screen. The dialogue is at times overblown and purplish, but it is never boring and frequently it's downright brilliant.

Every performer acquits themselves well, even Debra Sandlund as Patty Laureine, Wings Hauser as the sociopathic macho police chief and John Bedford Lloyd as the eccentric, messed-up millionaire, all of whom can be accused of overacting. But ultimately their performances are completely in tune with their insane characters and draw us into a nasty labyrinth of twisted emotions and nightmarish memories. Ryan O'Neal actually gives one of his finest performances as an alcoholic loser who has messed up his life and who is so prone to blackouts, he's not even sure if he's killed someone. Lawrence Tierney is excellent as his tough guy dad who helps him make sense of the chaos in their small-shut-up-for-the-winter-and-consequently-spooky-as-hell Provincetown coastal neighborhood. Isabella Rossellini is also great in what appears to be an, at first impression, thankless role, but who in fact turns out to be the character who gets the last word and the best revenge.

The great thing about this film is it manages to have its cake and eat it, too. It's not only an at times very creepy modern film noir, it's also a frequently hilarious black comedy. Also, contrary to some people's perceptions, the film has a complex narrative structure that pulls the viewer in, much like the best mysteries. If you go in not expecting a conventional mystery thriller but more of a cross between David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Jules Feiffer, Hal Ashby and maybe Arthur Penn(when he directed NIGHT MOVES), I guarantee you you will not be disappointed.

This is one of my favorite movies. A strange mixture of seemingly unintentional humor , macabre plot twists, and the charm of off-season Provincetown. I wouldn't call it a drama. HILARIOUS. Patty L. is a real overdone nostril flaring trailer park siren. Ryan O'Neil seems to play the straight man to everyone else. I don't know how he maintained such a bland facade - I guess that's his style. He mostly stood around looking haggard, and so managed to provide something like a foil for all the circus freaks. At one point in the beginning of the film during a scene with his hard drinking crustacean of a father (L. T. is great), I thought I saw something like a suppressed smile cross the faces of both actors - a great moment that I'm sure was totally unintentional. Who wouldn't crack under the weight of all the corny dialoge? Contains the funniest dad and son out "fishing" in the rowboat at night scene ever filmed. I can still hear the foghorns. Despite all the corniness, its all somehow...so...mesmerizing....

The story revolves around Tim Madden, a writer and ex-con.He has to deal with two heads of women he knew.The problem is he can't remember if he is the killer or not.Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987) is a Norman Mailer direction, and he also wrote the book.The movie was a flop, even getting some Rasberry awards.The actors do a decent job.It has Ryan O'Neal as Tim Madden.Lawrence Tierney is his father Dougy.Isabella Rossellini plays Madeleine Regency.Wings Hauser is her husband Capt. Alvin Luther Regency.Debra Sandlund plays Patty Lareine.Penn Jillette portrays Big Stoop.Frances Fisher plays the part of Jessica Pond.I read Mailer's original novel, written in 1984, before seeing the movie.I must say the novel is better, but the movie isn't a huge failure.It does fail to be a great movie, though, but it could be a lot worse.I guess the biggest weakness of the movie is the lack of likable characters.There are all these killers and junkies, and it's very hard to like those people.The main character may have some good qualities, though.But anyway, if you've got nothing better to do, you can watch this movie.Maybe you even like it a bit.

Writers, be they Philip Roth or Jacqueline Susann, invariably complain about how Hollywood makes a mess of their work when bringing it to the screen. Norman Mailer was different. Rather than let Hollywood ruin the movie version of his novel "Tough Guys Don't Dance," he chose to ruin it himself. That his movie has the ingredients to be a camp classic yet still falls short is all you need to know about Mailer's skills as a director.

And yet Mailer comes so close to making this disaster enjoyable. Just the dialog alone — an awkward mix 1940s gangster patois, writerly pretensions and gutter vulgarity, usually combined in a single sentence — should make this a must-see. The dialog doesn't sound like it would ever be uttered by actual people yet it's highly quotable (though not here). The only movies I've seen that refer to male genitalia as much as this one were gay porn videos, which is kind of surprising given the gay panic coursing through "Tough Guys" (second only to the misogyny). Or maybe it's not so surprising.

The cast of "Tough Guys Don't Dance" does its part to turn Mailer's movie into campy fun. Ryan O'Neal pounds the last nail into the coffin of his career as Tim Madden, the alcoholic would-be writer who can't quite remember if he's responsible for all the blood in his Jeep or the head buried with his marijuana stash. Though I kept thinking Nicolas Cage would've been so much more fun, O'Neal is actually effective in the role. Too bad his performance can't overcome that awful "oh god oh man" moment on the beach. A miscast Isabella Rossellini delivers her lines as if embarrassed to say them, but in her defense she does have to say things like: "He must have the biggest c—k in all Christendom." If Elizabeth Berkley of "Showgirls" fame were to play Maggie in a dinner theater production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" it might look something like Debra Sundland's portrayal of Madden's money-hungry ex-wife Patty Lareine. And yet Sundland is never quite that awesome. John Bedford Lloyd plays the part of Patty Lareine's bisexual ex-husband Wardley like a Southern belle suffering from a case of the vapors, so maybe it's perfectly natural that he would use a word like "imbroglio". But it's Wings Hauser who steals the show as the lunatic Capt. Alvin Luther Regency, the police chief—and seemingly the town's sole law enforcement officer—breathing down Tim's neck. Hauser doesn't chew the scenery; he unhinges his jaw and swallows it whole. Only Lawrence Tierney, as Madden's father Dougy, emerges from this movie with his dignity intact.

With a director blinded by ego, over-written dialog and over-the-top acting, "Tough Guys" should be in the same league as "The Oscar," "The Concorde-Airport '79" and the remake of "The Wicker Man." But with the exception of Hauser's performance, it never quite takes off to such giddy lows. It's a movie that's more fun to talk about than actually watch. I remember reading an article about the making of this movie in the late '80s, the lurid plot description – sex! drugs! violence! – enough to make me seek it out when released on video. I was profoundly disappointed. I expected trash, but I didn't expect it to be boring. I re-watched it recently and while I found it more entertaining, I was still disappointed. But Mailer didn't make this movie to please me, or anyone else. As made clear by trailer to his movie, in which the smirking author/auteur reads the scathing comment cards from test screenings, Mailer doesn't care what you think. The only opinion that matters is his, and in his own opinion "Tough Guys Don't Dance" is a good movie. You're just too dumb to appreciate genius.

Oh, Norman Mailer - acclaimed author, won more prizes than you can count in one minute, and occasional maker of films (a number of them basically like shoots in a weekend with friends in his living room, or so I've been told, I haven't seen the Eclipse box-set yet of his other works). In 1987 he was given carte blanche, via Cannon films and producer Francis Ford Coppola, to take his windy, warped novel that poked fun at pot-boilers and crime fiction (film noir especially) and made it into a movie. And the results are completely befuddling.

I think a lot of it comes down to plot logic. In that, this doesn't have that much. Sure, we follow along Ryan O'Neal as he is trying to figure out a mystery involving a lost woman, an old affair, and, uh, other things. It even has one of those plot-framing devices that opens the movie, where O'Neal is telling his story to father(?) Lawrence Tierney and then this just... disappears for a LONG stretch of the film, to the point where I forgot it was even a thing. There's also Isabella Rossellini (in seemingly the one performance playing it straight, or trying to), and another actor - damn if I forget his name - who is a cop that often appears wigged out (probably on coke, who knows it was the 80's).

I wish I could explain what happens in this movie and why it's so f***ed up, but it just boggles my mind! So much of it comes down to Mailer not really being able to transition his dialog, which probably worked OK on the page (and even there one wonders if it was still questionable), to the format of the screen. People just... don't talk like this! The verbiage is off the charts in this one - but there are moments where, I THINK anyway, Mailer knew he had something really warped and just went for it. The scene that I know I'll never forget and many others haven't is when Ryan O'Neal's character discovers a letter from a woman from his past, it gives him some crucial, heartbreaking information, and then he just bursts with "OH MAN, OH GOD, OH MAN" for about 15 minutes as the camera pans around him in a dizzying effect. If this was meant for comedy then it's genius on par with the Zucker brothers or Mel Brooks. If it's supposed to be in any kind of Earth reality, it's a disaster-zone.

But oh, what a watchable movie made of WTF. Part of what helps is that it is competently shot and edited, and the performers, alongside those I mentioned Penn Jillette and Frances Fisher pop up, are trying to give it their all and be true to the material. But by being true to it means showing how completely nuts it is. Maybe the most golden part of the experience is the theatrical trailer for the film itself, where Normal Mailer on camera reads the mix of reviews - the good, the bad and the 'Uh say what' - and that makes me happy alone the movie was made. I have a feeling doing a double feature of this and another 1987 Cannon films art-house release, Godard's King Lear, could be just the thing to make you go run for the hills... or break your brain laughing. It may be awful, but it's awful in a spectacular way.