“You got enough unhappiness in you for nine people.”

Rafferty And The Gold Dust Twins

Directed By: Dick Richards

Written By: John Kaye

Notable for: Proto-indie quirkiness, Young McKenzie Philips

Explosions: Zero

Dogme-esque confession: In my last post, over one year ago, I wrote that Bruckheimer worked with Director Dick Richards on just one other film besides Cullpepper. That was inaccurate. Richards only wrote two films. Richards and Bruck were paired for Bruck’s first four films, after which, they never worked together again. It’s a little exciting to imagine what could have driven the two apart. Were they film-school buddies who had a falling out? Were there not enough car chases for Bruckheimer? Maybe by the end of film four, March Or Die, an auteur’s narrative of their working relationship will emerge.

Second confession: Despite starting this in September of 2008, this his has taken me over a year to write. More on that below.

I had an easy time finding Cullpepper. Two clicks on Netflix and it was at my doorstep. Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins is another story, one that I will have to repeat again on occasion. Rafferty, it turns out, is not available on DVD in any country*. And this pains me, because at a time when I am trying to not have so many things, I had to buy a used rental videotape off of Half.com. A (shudder) videotape. I didn't even know if my VCR was still functional when I purchased it at the bargain rate of $5.49, including shipping.

Popping it in, I briefly forgot how much I hate videotapes. There’s a sense memory of inserting a videocassette into VCR, the machine tugging it out of your hands to play a movie I never would have had a chance to see when I was growing up in small-town Wisconsin. But then, the hatred returned. Instead of the brief crisp black screen that precedes the film on a DVD, it’s a minute of dark brownish-gray. The picture is grainy, the sound is washed out, and random lines jump across the screen. Thank god we’ve moved on, and, with the emergence of Blu-Ray, moved on again.

The film started with a cold opening of a celebration at a VFW hall. The film pans across a bunch of happy older men, all of whom are honoring a WWI veteran. There’s a nice cinema verité look to it that wiped away my hatred of the video format.

Then the camera pans over to Alan Arkin doing an obvious drunk act, falling off his seat in the midst of “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee.” Oh boy.

This cuts immediately to Arkin in bed, his alarm radio goes off, blaring Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein,” a clear indication that this ain’t your grandpa’s senseless road movie!

This film would be a character study if there were any characters. Arkin is Gunny Rafferty, a milquetoast former marine man who starts out his day running his beat-up car into a dumpster, knocking over a motorcycle in the process, and goes to his job…at the Department of Motor Vehicles! Wha?!

Yes, that’s the sort of scenario that passes as a joke in this film. After administering some driving exams to a series of stereotypes, he knocks off to the park to drink whiskey, were he meets Mackenzie Phillips, who is introduced as the 15-year-old Frisbee (because she is playing Frisbee and, while she chooses her own name, seems to lack imagination) by Sally Kellerman, who plays Mackinley Beachwood.

They con him into giving them a ride, and then pull a gun on him, hijacking his heap to New Orleans. Of course, their first stop is at a Dairy Queen, because when you have a hostage, you need ice cream. In the next scene, Gunny gets a chance to make a break for it, and leaves the two girls at a gas station. After Frisbee fails to get any cash from the gas station attendant, they hitch a ride from a traveling preacher, the Reverend Cullpepper. Like the last Bruckheimer film. Cullpepper. Cullpepper Cattle Company. Get it?

Gunny finally pulls over to look for any remaining booze in the car (really, what sort of alcoholic leaves bottles that haven’t been drained?) and, in the process of throwing their stuff out of his car, discovers box of blanks. So it turns out the two aren’t really violent sociopaths. They're sociopaths who wouldn't hurt a fly. He reconsiders is own safety and wellbeing, then doubles back to pick them up again, which is good, because Frisbee has had it up to here will all that Jesus talk.

What would a road movie be without Las Vegas? One quick Louis Prima cameo and two escapades later, and they’re off. They steal booze. Gunny and Mackinley have sex while Frisbee is in the back seat. They steal gas. The breaks to the car give out, and the reaction of the car ahead of them that they keep ramming is played off for cheap laughs, as are the Mexican couple whose lives they jeopardize by stealing the brake part from the used car lot.

They reach Mackinley’s hometown in Arizona, and stop into a hat store, and Gunny falls in love with a hat he can’t afford. He goes to check into a motel. Mackinley goes to meet up with her estranged father, and is told he never wants to see her again. In one of the film’s longer set pieces, Frisbee goes off to a bus station, where she meets a young soldier, leads him to a hotel room, then robs him of all but $10 and an engagement ring he was going to give to his gal back home.

Gunny and Mackinley go out to a honky-tonk so she can sing, and they meet one-legged Viet Nam vet Harry Dean Stanton. Mackinley goes up on stage to sing and Frisbee enters with the hat Gunny coveted. See, she’s actually a good kid after all! Then she goes to play 8-ball with Harry Dean Stanton, a dollar a game. Mackinley sings Kitty Wells “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” then breaks Rafferty’s heart by clearly being interested in the lead singer and guitarist of the band.

While a new musician takes the stage to lead a sing-along of “You Are My Sunshine,” the soldier Frisbee robbed is closing in on the bar…with the police!

But, before they get there, Gunny goes out to the car to pass out alone. Harry Dean Stanton turns into a one-legged would-be rapist. Gunny prevents the crime, Mackinley piles out of the car where she’s apparently been having sex with the band member, the cops show up, and Frisbee (actually a runaway orphan named Rita) is arrested. Mackinley leaves with the band.

One week later, Frisbee is at the orphanage, Gunny is posing as her father, and he takes her away, driving across the lawn of the orphanage, presumably to have more adventures.

End.

So, I got this film in August of last year. I watched it 2 ½ times in order to write what is essentially a scene-by-scene recap of the film with little commentary. Why? I don’t know what to comment on. The movie is so slight, it practically begs your pardon as it passes you by. It’s one artless slap-sticky incident after another with a periodic seventies flute soundtrack interlude stringing them together into a blocky whole.

Nothing coalesces. No character has a motivation remotely believable. It is mentioned briefly that Frisbee is writing a book about all the crazy shit she's done, and then it's never mentioned again. Every actor is terribly bland, with the exception of Mackenzie Phillips, who reads every like it was the dénouement of the original Bad News Bears, and Harry Dean Stanton, who is always a joy, even when he’s playing a rapist.

This film leads me to believe that Bruckheimer had aspirations of making artier fare when he started out. Pauline Kael apparently even liked it, which only fortifies my notion. I get the impression that the Bruck wanted to make Paper Moon and wound up with…well, fuck, he wound up with Rafferty And The Gold Dust Twins.

Bruckheimerisms: The use of a square old couple in jeopardy for comic effect is definitely a motif that shows up again in Bruckheimer films, although the stakes were not nearly as high in Rafferty.

What I learned: Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins is a quirky road comedy starring Alan Arkin and prominently featuring the song “You Are My Sunshine.” Years later, Arkin won an academy award for his role in the quirky road comedy Little Miss Sunshine. Coincidence?

I also learned that Sally Kellerman was hot.

*In a crime against commerce, some of his other early films are unavailable on DVD as well, but thankfully, in the year between this post and last, most have been put on Netflix instant view.