Word: plotting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...actor in the early '80s there was plenty of roles, but mostly in the tits-and-zits teenpix that emulated Porky's. Cruise did time in a dim comedy, Losin' It (1982), about some lads who visit Tijuana to mislay their virginity; he played the sensitive one. From its plot synopsis, Risky Business (1983) promised more of the lame same. An affluent high school senior has an affair with a hooker (Rebecca de Mornay), dunks the family Porsche in Lake Michigan, turns his house into a brothel and still gets into Princeton. Sounds like the Reagan era in miniature...
Keep the Change chronicles the cross-country escapades of Joe Starling, a blocked painter who endeavors to "put his old life to an end" by stealing his girlfriend's car and setting out from Florida to reclaim the Montana ranch left to him by his father. As the plot progresses to its ironic denouement, Joe courts his teenage sweetheart, rekindles a love affair with the land and comes to terms with some family ghosts -- both dead and alive. Like most McGuane protagonists, Starling is at a gallop between his past and future, an existential cowboy with good intentions...
...script unfolds, it becomes clear that the characters in the detective plot are all based on the people around the writer at the studio -- indeed, the same actors play both sets of roles. This connection leads to countless comic effects. In the splashiest, the perennially disappointed "other woman" (Randy Graff) of both plot lines switches characters, costumes and locales in mid-song, all without missing a beat of her ferociously funny lament, You Can Always Count...
...detective plot borrows classic elements from the likes of The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye: a missing girl (Rachel York) who turns up, clad only in a sheet and beckoning for comfort, on the detective's flophouse bed; the sultry wife of a rich, infirm old man, who fibs as automatically as other people breathe; the detective's torch-singer ex-girlfriend, now reduced to offering more private entertainments; and a spooky guru bilking the faithful. Librettist Larry Gelbart cheerily exploits these cliches without sneering at the genre. In telling the Hollywood side of the story, however...
...Plow) and film scripts (The Verdict, The Untouchables). Not surprisingly, the characters in these works are defined by what they do, not what they say. If their words count, it is because Mamet counts their words, using as few as possible to make his point and move his plot...