Quinn Cummings | Through the Shattered Lens

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:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary
Girl Lost
Ghosts Can’t Do It
Heist
Mind, Body & Soul
Candy
Shortcut to Happiness
Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders II
Don’t Kill It

After I watched San Francisco, I decided to watch yet another film that I had DVRed during TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar. I had several films to choose from and I ultimately decided to watch the 1977 best picture nominee The Goodbye Girl because, in general, I like movies from the 70s. Add to that, the film was described as being a comedy and who am I to turn down the chance to laugh?

The Goodbye Girl asks the question, “What would happen if two of the most annoying people on Earth were forced to live together and then ended up falling in love with each other as a result?” Paula (Marsha Mason) is recently divorced and is trying to raise her 10 year-old daughter, Lucy (Quinn Cumming), while also trying to relaunch the dance career that she put on hold when she got married. As played by Marsha Mason, Paula is probably one of the most humorless characters to ever be at the center of a romantic comedy. It’s not just that Paula is written to be a very angry character. (For the most part, Paula has every right to be angry). Instead, it’s that Mason gives such a totally sour performance that you get the feeling that Paula has probably never smiled once over the course of her entire life. When, later on in the film, she does smile, it feels forced and unnatural. You worry that her face is going to split in half.

In the course of one very bad week, she is abandoned by her actor boyfriend (he’s going to Italy to shoot a film) and she discovers that, before he left, her ex also sublet their apartment to another actor. That actor is Elliott Garfield (Richard Dreyfuss), who is hyperactive, immature, self-centered, and very, very talkative. He does things like play guitar in the nude and meditate in the morning.

Once Elliott shows up and barges his way into the apartment, a familiar pattern is established. Elliott does something eccentric. Paula yells at him. Elliott yells back. Paula yells in reply. Elliott yells some more. Even if you never quite buy the idea that the two of them would ever fall in love, you’re glad when they do because at least it gives them something to do other than yell.

(Of course, The Goodbye Girl was written by Neil Simon, which means that not only are Elliott and Paula yellers but they’re also very quippy yellers. And while I guess we should be happy that Elliott tells the occasional joke, the constant barrage one liners is ultimately rather alienating. Every time you think that the film is about to make an interesting point about human relationships, Elliott says something quippy and ruins the mood.)

Which is not to say that The Goodbye Girl is a terrible movie. The scenes where Elliott rehearses and then appears in a terrible production of Richard III are brilliantly done and wonderfully satirize theatrical pretension. As well, during its second hour, the film settles down a little bit. Or, I should say, Richard Dreyfuss settles down and actually starts to give a performance that’s more than just a collection of nervous tics. It helps that once Elliott and Paula are in love, they don’t yell at each other quite as much. There’s even a rooftop dinner scene where the two actors finally show a hint of chemistry.

Ultimately, The Goodbye Girl is an uneven film that feels a lot like a sitcom. It’s one of those films that you watch and, even though it’s not terrible, you still find yourself thinking, “This was nominated for best picture?”