Tag Archives: Moon Unit Zappa

Insomnia File #74: Listen To Me (dir by Douglas Day Stewart)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were struggling to get to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi and watched the 1989 film, Listen to Me.

Listen to Me tells the story of two poor but ambitious teenagers who receive debate scholarships to fictional Kenmont University.  Monica Tomanski (Jami Gertz) is a liberal from Chicago.  Tucker Muldowney (Kirk Cameron) is a “shit-kickin’ conservative” who is from Oklahoma.  Despite their different political beliefs, Monica and Tucker find themselves assigned to be debate partners by the college’s legendary debate coach, Charlie Nichols (Roy Scheider).

At Kenmont, debate is as popular and as important as football is at some other colleges.  The entire student body shows up to listen to the debates and to cheer for their side.  It’s like Oxford, if Oxford was solely populated by 80s teen actors.  (Seriously, there’s a lot of familiar faces wandering around that campus.)  Charlie is convinced that this could be the year that he wins the national tournament.  Gar McKellar (Tom Quill), the troubled son of Sen. McKellar (Anthony Zerbe), is one of the best debaters in the country.  However, Gar fears that winning a national debate tournament will somehow lead to him going into politics.  He wants to be a writer and he’s got a self-destructive streak.  As you probably already guessed, this all leads to Tucker and Monica debating the arrogant Harvard team in front of the Supreme Court.  The topic?  Whether or not Roe v Wade should be overturned….

A few thoughts on Listen to Me:

Kirk Cameron’s “Oklahoma” accent is, without a doubt, the worst that I have ever heard in any film ever made.  When I was growing up, I did occasionally live in Oklahoma.  I still visit Oklahoma frequently.  Yes, people in Oklahoma do have an accent.  However, that accent sounds nothing like whatever Cameron was trying to do in this film.  Whenever Kirk Cameron speaks, he sounds less like an Oklahoma farm boy and more like the tubercular son of a once proud New Orleans family.  Beyond the accent, Cameron just isn’t believable as a quick-on-his-feet debate champ.  He overplays when he should underplay and underplays …. well, I can’t think of a single scene that he underplays.  It’s just not a good performance.

Jami Gertz is a bit more convincing as Monica.  (It perhaps helps that Gertz, like her character, is actually from Chicago.)  But, for the majority of the film, Monica is seriously underwritten.  She’s a straw feminist, who largely exists so that Tucker can tell her to loosen up.

As for the other debaters, we don’t learn much about them.  That’s a shame because some of them — like Amanda Peterson’s crippled debater — seem like they would be much more interesting to follow than either Gar, Tucker, or Monica.  It’s a crime to cast Peter DeLuise as an Ivy League debater without giving us a chance to actually see him debate.

Roy Scheider gives the best performance in the film, which isn’t really a surprise.  That said, Charlie Nichols was a terrible debate coach, one whose entire philosophy seemed to be based on teaching his debaters to make loud and emotional arguments and hope that the judge doesn’t understand how competitive debating is supposed to work.

Would the Supreme Court really judge a national debate tournament?

As for the debates themselves, it’s hard not to notice that all of the arguments are emotional.  There’s little talk of evidence or research or anything else.  Instead, the characters talk about how abortion has personally effected them.  (The Harvard team is portrayed as being snooty villains when they dare to bring up an actual clinical study about abortion.)  Admittedly, I did not do college debate but I was involve with Speech and Debate in High School and, when it came to debate, I always tried to get by with the same cutesy techniques that everyone uses in this film.  If the judge was a man, I definitely showed a little leg.  If someone asked me about a study that disproved my argument, I’d respond by citing a fictional study that disproved their study.  I was the Queen of Dramatic Personal Anecdote!  And I rarely made it out of the preliminary rounds because most judges — the good ones, at least — were able to tell that I hadn’t bothered to do my homework and that I was just trying to skate by on charm and wit.  My coach often told me that if I would actually do the work, I’d probably make it to the semis and beyond but …. eh, doing the work was just too much …. well, work.  So, you can imagine my surprise when Tucker and Monica used the same techniques that I used and were declared to be the best debaters in the country!

Seriously, I was robbed!

Listen to Me is a very 80s film, right down to the debate montages and the explanations about why Roe v Wade would never actually be overturned.  It tries to do for college debate what numerous other college-set films did for football an binge-drinking.  Unfortunately, the film’s intentions are defeated by a didactic script and a miscast lead.  It feels considerably longer than 100 minutes, which might help you with your insomnia.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary
  65. Girl Lost
  66. Ghosts Can’t Do It
  67. Heist
  68. Mind, Body & Soul
  69. Candy
  70. Shortcut to Happiness
  71. Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
  72. Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders II
  73. Don’t Kill It

 

Musical Film Review: Heartbeat (dir by John Nicolella)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1987’s Heartbeat opens with Don Johnson in an unidentified Central American country.

Rebels are moving through the jungles.  Helicopters are flying over villages and firing off missiles.  In the middle of it all is Don Johnson, playing a character identified as being “The Documentary Filmmaker.”  Johnson carries a large movie camera with him, recording all of the violence and the carnage.  Is Johnson trying to expose the evils of the government?  Is he trying to expose the rebels?  Is he just an adrenaline junkie who can’t help but go to the most dangerous places in the world?  I have no idea and I’m not sure that the film does either.

A bomb explodes.  Johnson is thrown back.  Soon, Don Johnson is being carried into a dark room on a stretcher.  It appears that he might be dying but, even as his heartbeat is slowing down, his spirit is still hanging around and having flashbacks to the attack on the village, which we just saw less than a minute ago.  Eventually, Johnson’s spirit has other flashbacks.  He remembers talking to Paul Shaffer.  He remembers his strained marriage to an unnamed woman played by Lori Singer.  He remembers his youth as the son of a Las Vegas showgirl who is played by Sandahl Bergman.  (Bergman also played a showgirl in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and her scenes in this film often feel as if they’ve been directly lifted from Fosse’s classic film.)  David Carradine shows up as someone who might be Johnson’s father or who might just be some random guy rolling dice in the backroom of a strip club.  Johnson remembers his friendship with a graffiti artist (Giancarlo Esposito), who has a sister (Angela Alvarado) who was a prostitute.  The main message seems to be that the Documentary Filmmaker recorded the dangers of the world while also trying to remain emotionally detached, much like Robert Forster in Medium Cool.  Now that he’s dying, he’s left to wonder whether he made the right choice in refusing to get personally involved.

Oh, and did I mention that this film is basically a 65-minute music video?  Don Johnson sings through the entire movie, in a style that does its best to imitate the tough growl and soulful yearning of Southern rock and roll but which ultimately only serves to show that Johnson made the right decision in focusing on acting instead of singing?

After I came across this film on Lettrboxd and then watched it on YouTube, I did a bit of research (which is a fancy way of saying that I spent a minute reading a Wikipedia entry) and I discovered that, at the height of his Miami Vice success, Johnson released his debut country rock album, Heartbeat.  Heartbeat the film was something that Johnson made in order to promote Heartbeat the album.  Directed by frequent Miami Vice director John Nicollela, Heartbeat the film is so self-indulgent and determined to prove that Don Johnson is a soulful artist that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch.  Johnson’s Documentary Filmmaker is a bit of a cad but the film seems to argue that 1) it’s not really his fault because women find him to be irresistible, 2) it’s really his mom’s fault for getting a job, and 3) it ultimately doesn’t matter because the Filmmaker is a great artist whose work will live on even after he dies.  It’s a vanity film for a vanity album and it’s all so vain that it becomes hard to look away from.

In the end, both the music from the album and the promotional film leave one feeling that, in 1987, Don Johnson might have had an unreasonably high opinion of his musical abilities.  That said, as anyone who has seen Cold In July can tell you, Don Johnson eventually did become a very good actor.

Back to School Part II #17: The Boys Next Door (dir by Penelope Spheeris)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Boys-next-door

Three years after starring in Grease 2, Maxwell Caulfield starred in another (albeit far different) film about teenage delinquents, 1985’s The Boys Next Door.  Directed by Penelope Spheeris (who also did Suburbia, another film about wayward youth), The Boys Next Door is a frequently harrowing film about a road trip gone very wrong.

The film opens with a series of black-and-white photographs of real-life serial killers, so you know what you’re about to get yourself into before the main action even begins.  Caulfield plays Roy, a not-very-smart teenager who lives in an industrial town in the southwest.  With his generally bad attitude and violent temper, Roy is one of the least popular kids at the local high school.  In fact, his only friend appears to be Bo (Charlie Sheen).  Bo is just as stupid as Roy but he’s not as violent.  Bo’s problem is that he’s a follower, the type who is incapable of making his own decisions.  If Roy says, “Let’s beat the Hell out of someone,” Bo is going to agree because … well, why not?

When Roy and Bo graduate from high school, they don’t have much more to look forward to than a life of working in a factory.  After an angry Roy violently lashes out at a graduation party, he decides that he and Bo should get out of town.  Fortunately, Bo has received $200 as a graduation gift.  Roy and Bo decide to use that money to take a trip to Los Angeles.

On the way to L.A., it quickly becomes obvious that Roy is more than just an angry kid.  When he and Bo rob a gas station, Roy savagely beats the attendant.  When they get to Los Angeles, all Roy can talk about is how much he hates the city and everyone who lives in it.  Roy is especially vocal about how much he hates anyone who he perceives as being gay…

Of course, even as Roy is loudly expressing every homophobic thought that pops into his tiny mind, it’s hard not to notice that he seems to be rather obsessed with Bo.  In fact, he is so obsessed with Bo that he basically kills anyone who shows the least bit of interest in Bo.  Paranoid that Bo is going to abandon him, Roy is willing to do anything to keep that from happening.

The Boys Next Door is one of those films that really took me by surprise.  It may start and look like your typical low-budget thriller but The Boys Next Door ultimately reveals itself to be a disturbingly plausible portrait of a sociopath.  The film suggests that, as individuals, both Roy and Bo are somewhat laughable but, as a team, they’re deadly.  It’s no wonder that Roy is so insistent that Bo always stay with him because, without Bo around, Roy wouldn’t have any motivation to do anything.  Everything that Roy does — from theft to murder — is largely to impress Bo.  Unfortunately, Bo is too stupid to understand what’s going on in his friend’s head.

Especially when compared to some of the other performances that they are known for, both Sheen and Caulfield do surprisingly good work as the two murderers.  Penelope Spheeris wisely directs the film as if it were a documentary and the end result is a harrowing film that deserves to be far better known.