Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987)

"Tough Guys Don't Dance" is one of the strangest movies I have seen for quite some time - and I've watched a LOT of movies! Technically the movie is sound, with good photography and well chosen location. But everything else is bizarre. All the characters in the movie speak oddly, unlike the people you usually encounter in various aspects of your life. The acting is also over the top at times, perhaps to compliment the strange dialogue. Those facts may turn off some viewers early, but I had to admit that those attributes to me made the movie compelling - for the first third or so. After that point, the movie starts to become very confusing. There are some things that are never explained, like the hero's new tattoo and his dog suddenly appearing in a scene. (Was the movie's length cut down in the editing room?) Still, I admit that the movie is probably unlike any other cinematic experience you've had, so more adventurous and patient viewers may find it very rewarding. And I have to also admit it's a heck of a lot better than Norman Mailer's earlier movie "Wild 90"!

In scenic Massachusetts, haggard and hungover Ryan O'Neal (as Tim Madden) discovers a severed head in place of his drug stash. Bummer. Flashbacks dog Mr. O'Neal on his quest to solve the mystery. "Tough Guys Don't Dance" was nominated for several movie "Worst" awards by the organization calling them the "Golden Raspberries". It received dishonors as "Worst Picture" of the year, "Worst Actor" O'Neal, "Worst Actress" Debra Sandlund (as Patty Lareine), "Worst Supporting Actress" Isabella Rossellini (as Madeleine Regency), "Worst Director" Norman Mailer, "Worst Screenplay" (Mailer again), and "Worst New Actress" (Sandlund again). The film faced stiff competition from "Leonard part 6" and "Ishtar" but Mr. Mailer won, in a tie, the worst director honors; clearly his was the award most deserved. The aforementioned stars really are awful (some scenes are all-time worsts), but some of the other players are appealingly sleazy. ** Tough Guys Don't Dance (5/16/87) Norman Mailer ~ Ryan O'Neal, Debra Sandlund, Wings Hauser, Isabella Rossellini

Outside of some nice location shooting in and around Provincetown, this is just awful, incompetently made from start to finish. Ryan O'Neal, in one long lugubrious flashback, tries to explain to his Dad why there's severed heads in his basement and a tattoo on his arm. The problem all started, you see, when he answered a SCREW ad.....Bad acting, ranging from stiff and wooden (O'Neal, Rosselini) to over the top (Tierney, who nevertheless gets a couple of good lines in, and Hauser, hamming it up as a semi-psychotic sheriff). Prose as purple as all get-out, probably inevitable when you consider Mailer's involvement. Incompetently put together, mostly told in flashback for reasons I can't understand, other than Mailer couldn't figure out a better way to get the information in. A story that doesn't make a lick of sense, although future scholars of Mailer will have to see this to see all of Mailer's issues dramatized: mostly women as either whores or maternal mothers who entrap you and faux Hemingway macho romanticism. Laugh out-loud funny at some points, although I'm not sure if it has enough brio to recommend it to fans of bad movies, as not a lot really happens, all in all.Better just to avoid it.

I read the book last year. After so many years of disappointments I tried once again to find a piece by Norman Mailer that had the impact on me of "The Naked and the Dead". Alas "Tough Guys" is not that book. However it is a genuine hoot. A hard boiled mystery with a rapid succession of over the top scenes and characters. Not by any means an important book but a a great light (or lite) read.The movie however is just a mess with the exception of Wings Hauser. I was charmed that Mr. Hauser the King of the B Movies finally got a part that let him eat the scenery. John Bedford Lloyd is a problem as the protagonist's effete and ineffective rich college buddy. Lloyd is a big guy and a superior actor. He has been type cast as the the big guy in "The Abyss" and several other roles. He towers over poor little Ryan O'Neal. The nerdy Lloyd character was supposed to have always looked up to the physical O'Neal character. Mailer the director wouldn't change the lines written by Mailer the writer. Poor Lloyd spends all of his scenes hunched over trying to look smaller.It's even worse than the Shawshank Redemption where a 6'5" Tim Robbins tried to be the small weak guy the other cast members talk about.We keep hearing that most of directing is casting but why do we get Peter O'Toole a foot to tall for Lawrence and Mel Gibson a foot to short for Wallace?