Drunk on Foolish Pleasures: TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE

by JB

“Oh, man! Oh, God! Oh, man! Oh, God! Oh, man! Oh, God!
The perfect film for Junesploitation’s “Thriller Day.”

NOTE: This column originally appeared in slightly different form in 2013.

Now that it has been pointed out to me that the original 1972 Poseidon Adventure is actually pretty great, my favorite “bad” movie will forever be novelist/he-man Norman Mailer's 1987 crime dramedy/psycho-circus Tough Guys Don't Dance. This movie is incredibly entertaining to watch, and is as appropriate a movie as there will ever be for a column titled “Drunk on Foolish Pleasures” since most, if not all, of this film’s characters are sloppy drunk for the entire length of the movie. The screenwriter, director, and most of the actors may have also been drunk on set during filming, too. It certainly seems that way.

Just ask Norman Mailer. In his considered worldview, it is drinking makes you a man… so does fighting… and so does not being gay. Tough Guys Don’t Dance is the work of a man who has had one too many testosterone injections directly into his groin. This movie’s screenwriter seems to be every boy who ever bullied me in middle school, its producer is your least favorite uncle who brags about sexual conquests from thirty years ago, and its director seems to be a grouchy sociopath. All three men are Norman Mailer.

Tough Guys Don’t Dance was Norman Mailer’s first swing at directing a big-budget Hollywood film. Mailer managed to sweet talk beloved Cannon Films in the go-go 1980s into green-lighting this adaptation of his then-current bestseller. His maiden directing effort was the low-budget, self-financed Maidstone, which resulted in a shooting (not the shooting of film, mind you—someone was ACTUALLY SHOT on set during the film’s production. I am not making this up.)

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Amateur yachtsman/professional alcoholic Tim Madden (Ryan O’Neal) awakens from a particularly nasty blackout and finds himself plunged into a tale of adultery and intrigue: bags full of weed, bags full of human heads, and himself, constantly half in the bag. Add more than a dash of scenery chewing from all sides and you get this sly parody of Harold Robbins/ Douglas Sirk-style melodramas. Right? I mean this has to be a sly parody, right? Please tell me this is a parody, served up with a sly nod and wink. You cannot tell me that the filmmakers took this piece of shit seriously.

Wait. What?

The character names dreamed up by Norman Mailer are all part of this revelry, a fever dream of cornpone and bourbon and racial stereotypes: Police Captain Alvin Luther Regency, Patty Laraine, Doogie Madden, Wardley Meeks III, Big Stoop, Spider, Bolo, Finney, and Stoodie. Those last four sound like some kind of low-rent, redneck Southern law firm (“Hello, this is Spider, Bolo, Finney & Stoodie. How may I direct your call? No, I’m sorry—Mr. Stoodie is at lunch with Mr. Spider and Mr. Bolo! Try calling back after two o’clock?”) You keep expecting to meet a character named "Grits" or "A. Southern Man." This is a film about the South written by someone who has never been south of Boston.

And speaking of Boston (Era.), Tough Guys Don’t Dance is just as bat shit crazy and melodramatic as star Ryan O’Neal’s earlier film Love Story, though one gets the feeling that, at least in the case of Tough Guys Don’t Dance, SOME of the filmmakers MAY have been in on the joke.

May have.

We have spoken at length on this site about films reaching a stage of crazy delirium. As film lovers we all eagerly await that exact moment where any movie goes completely off the tracks. We film fans have all seen so many “ordinary” movies that we crave the unique, the bizarre, the unexplainable. This film hits the crazy mark five minutes in—and never stops getting crazier! Give me more films like this during Junesploitation, full of insane bullshittery—at least this film never skimps on the passion, even though it is the passion of the religious zealot, the lapsed alcoholic, and the hopelessly insane. At least when Tough Guys Don’t Dance is over, you know that you have seen SOMETHING.

This film features the exploitation cast to end all exploitation casts: we get semi-professional somnambulist Ryan O’Neal (Oliver’s Story, The Main Event, Partners), Lawrence Tierney (Dillinger, Reservoir Dogs, Seinfeld), Wings Hauser (Vice Squad, Deadly Force, Sordid Career) Penn Jillette (My Chaffeur, Off Beat, Dancing With The Stars) and Debra Sandlund (Murder By Numbers, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, Gladiator – no, not THAT Gladiator, the Cuba Gooding boxing movie Gladiator). This is a deep bench of deliciously bad character actors.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Tough Guys Don’t Dance does feature Isabella Rossellini, radiantly beautiful as ever—and just as bad and over-the-top as everyone else.

A popular urban legend that makes the rounds of my old school district concerns the district administrator whose daughter is prominently featured in this film. Papa was so proud of his daughter that he invited all of his coworkers to an advanced screening to celebrate her first big-budget, big screen outing. Seems Dad did NOT know in advance 1) what the hell kind of film this was, 2) what the hell kind of character his daughter would be playing, 3) what the hell kind of dialogue would issue from her mouth, or 4) the hella amounts of nudity involved in the part. Needless to say, Daddy was embarrassed, and a planned post-screening party was scuttled because all the guests were completely mortified by the film. 

I think that Dad should have been LESS embarrassed by his daughter's copious nudity, (which is, shall we say, impressive?) and MORE embarrassed by her performance, which reaches some sort of apex of bad acting. At times the poor girl seems to be playing a sentient ape... playing a female impersonator... playing Bettie Davis... playing an uppity Southern Belle. This is a performance for the ages, a PERFORMANCE in all capital letters. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Academy... for your consideration… Debra Sandlund.

Further proof of just how confused and confusing her performance is? In 1987, Debra Sandlund was nominated for both Best Supporting Actress at the Independent Spirit Awards and for Worst Supporting Actress at the Razzie Awards. She lost both. Further further proof? She doesn’t work under the name Debra Sandlund anymore – all her subsequent acting credits are as “Debra Stipe.”

Tough Guys Don’t Dance also features dialogue that sounds like it was penned by a precocious fourteen-year-old boy high from huffing model glue – though it actually comes from the twisted mind of Norman Mailer. This nutty dialogue reaches its nadir in a scene where, after his character receives some very bad news, star Ryan O’Neal is called upon to repeat the words “Oh man! Oh God!” over and over again. This would be a test for the best of actors, and as we all know, Ryan O’Neal is far from the best. Apparently, this video clip and sound bite have become something of an Internet meme. Check it out:



Some other delightful dialogue that I delight in rolling over on my tongue:

LAURENCE TIERNEY: “Six months ago, they told me to stop [drinking] or I was dead. I stopped. Now the spirits circle around my bed and they tell me to dance. I tell them, ‘Tough guys don't dance.’ They answer me, ‘Keep dancing.’”

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: “My husband gives me six orgasms a night. That’s why I call him MISTER SIX!”

ODDLY ENOUGH: there were several versions of this scene filmed. In the trailer, Rossellini says “five.” Overseas, Hauser says “sixteen!” I once heard this bit of dialogue replaced on a network television broadcast with “Mister Three!” (Apparently, it wasn't the orgasms themselves the network objected to, but the sheer volume of them.) Later in the film, Rossellini corrects herself:

WINGS HAUSER: (slurring after a stroke) “But I gave you 16 orgashms a night!”
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: “None of them were any good.”

LAURENCE TIERNEY: “Never call an Italian ‘small potatoes.’”

 
Actually, I can personally vouch for this one. You never want to call an Italian “small potatoes.” OH, DO NOT ASK WHY. JUST TRUST ME ON THIS ONE.

JOHN BEDFORD LLOYD (holding a gun on O’Neal’s character): “Madden, take it [he’s referring to his penis] in your mouth... or you'll die. Will you take my pride and joy [again, his penis] into your mouth?” To be fair here, Lloyd seems to be the only actor in this godforsaken mess who actually knows what sort of film he is in... and seems to be enjoying himself immensely.

The last line of dialogue illuminates the soul of Normal Mailer. Much like the films of Ed Wood (which Tough Guys Don’t Dance resembles in its dialogue and characters) the film is worth seeing for what it tells us about its creator. Norman Mailer is obsessed with being a man. He has an old school, “guts and glory” definition of masculinity that comes off as comic and excessive when splashed across the big screen. According to Mailer, men want only to drink, curse, and screw. They chop people’s heads off. They cuckhold other men. They black out and forget exactly whose heads they have chopped off and who they have cuckholded. They overact until they give themselves strokes and seizures. Their worst nightmare is to have someone put something in their mouths that they do not want to have there. That’s the only reason Wardley Meeks III is the villain—he is not a real man.

At times Tough Guys Don’t Dance resembles a fantasy “man’s man” film that I have often imagined. That film would star John Wayne, Mel Gibson, Steven Seagal, and a bottle of Viagara. That film would feature a script by Norman Mailer (with last-minute rewrites by John Milius and Joe Eszterhas) and be co-directed by John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, and Michael Bay. It would be titled Whiskey and Balls.

Oh man! Oh God!