Dawson's Creek S03E17

First off, Mighty Big thanks to Sars, for letting me play in her own personal wonderland twice in one month. Also thanks to the Screener Fairy, who's provided me with promotional tapes of this and many other fine feature films over the years. If you haven't seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon yet, you have no idea how cool it really is.

Also, this recap is MBTV-MA and is intended for our adult and teen viewers only. It contains sex, violence, strong language, and more drug references than you can shake a Thai Stick at. Consider yourself warned.

We open in the classroom of an unnamed Pittsburgh university (if by "unnamed" you mean "Carnegie-Mellon"). Michael Douglas's voice-over tells us it's a Friday in February while his voice-actual reads a story to his students. He identifies Tobey Maguire as the author, and then asks the class for their opinions. The students, one of whom is played by a good friend of mine, all hate it. They're ripping into the story mercilessly when Katie Holmes raises her hand and saves the day. She likes the story, and while Michael Douglas's voice-actual thanks her, his voice-over explains that she rents a room from him off-campus, and that she always wears red cowboy boots. I suppose they're more appropriate to the winter weather than a strappy dress, but they're still pretty ugly. The students argue about the story some more. Tobey Maguire keeps leaning forward and blocking my friend's shot. Finally, Professor Tripp (Douglas) dismisses the students, and reminds them to attend something called "WordFest" that evening. Another voice-over tells us that Douglas's wife has left him, and then Katie comes over and asks how he's doing. Her expression makes it clear she'd like to be the one taking over for The Departed Wife. She and Douglas leave, and Tobey Maguire, who hasn't moved once since leaning forward, asks him to turn out the classroom lights as he goes.

In his car, Douglas voices-over that he needs to clear his head. Then he lights a big joint. There's been a lot of awards hype surrounding this film, and apparently Michael "Ganja Is Good" Douglas feels he deserves an Oscar nod for this role because he smokes pot and puts on a few pounds. I guess that makes me Tom Hanks. Or James Van Der Beek. Anyway, he then proceeds to exposit what "WordFest" is (a weekend seminar/party for authors and publishers), provide backstory on his editor (Robert Downey Jr., who published his first novel seven years ago and is still waiting for the follow-up), and foreshadow the rest of the movie (the follow-up isn't done yet). This movie throws out enough exposition to choke a horse in the first fifteen minutes, and then spends the ninety minutes or so cruising to a nice leisurely finish. It's well-done, but I get the feeling I'm going to be on page six of the recap before the end of act one.

Now we're at the Pittsburgh airport, which is without a doubt the best airport at which to get stuck in a snowstorm, as it has a mall right in the middle. Douglas is there meeting Robert Downey Jr., as well as Robert Downey Jr.'s new friend Antonia Sloviak, a strikingly tall woman with a strikingly large Adam's apple. They walk through the airport, and we get a shot that's supposed to make us think Antonia is about two feet taller than Douglas. Since I fly out of this airport about a dozen times a year, I know that she's on the people-mover thingy, but if you don't, it's a pretty funny shot. Baggage claim. Oh, the joyous hours I've spent there. Not. Douglas tells Downey that Antonia is a transvestite. Downey tells Douglas that he's stoned. Douglas, not Downey. You know, in case you were confused. RDJ asks about the follow-up novel, because he's under pressure at work. Douglas tries to stall, and then for the first (and what I can only hope will be the last) time ever in a movie, the line "What in the hell and a hootenanny is that?" is uttered. Turns out, it's a tuba in a spotted cowhide case, riding along the baggage carousel. Of course, it belongs to Antonia.

Cut to the car, headed through the Ft. Pitt tunnels. Props to the director, since you really do pass through here on the way from the airport to town. As opposed to Bruce Willis's Striking Distance, in which a two-minute car chase manages to visit every neighborhood in a three-county radius. Douglas explains the origins of his car, and it's long and complicated and boring and all you really need to know is that he got it from someone who owed him money. He also notices that Antonia wears Cristal perfume.

WordFest. A voice-over explains that Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand) is the University chancellor, and that her husband is the dean of the English Department, and Michael Douglas's boss. There's a pre-Fest party at their house. As they approach the house, Antonia comments on the greenhouse, and we learn that gardening is the Chancellor's hobby. "I thought you were the Chancellor's hobby," snarks RDJ, and we begin to realize why Douglas's wife has left him.

Inside, Frances McDormand comes running up to greet them. They exchange some small talk, and then McDormand stumbles. "High heels," she says. "I don't know how anyone can walk in [them]." "Practice," replies Antonia, and McDormand executes a picture-perfect double-take upon noticing the Adam's apple. Heh. I love me some Frances McDormand. At this point, the family dog Poe makes an appearance, and starts barking angrily at Michael Douglas. Well, actually, he's barking at a spot a few feet to the left of Douglas, because he's blind. Douglas and McDormand take the coats upstairs while RDJ and Antonia head into the party.

Upstairs. McDormand and Douglas collapse on the bed together. They mack, X-Files-style, which is to say, not at all. Instead, they both have big news for each other. "You first," she says. "This morning" he starts, but that's all he manages to get out before she interrupts with "I'm pregnant." He's surprised. "I think Walter would find this beyond surprising," she tells him. They lay back and stare off into space, lost in their thoughts. She smells Cristal, and isn't happy to discover that she wears the same perfume as a transvestite.

Blind dog close-up. Isn't that a Black Sabbath album? If it's not, it should be. In the background, Walter is babbling to Antonia about Joe DiMaggio and his 56-game consecutive hitting streak. He then segues into a discussion of Joe's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and offers the observation that "all women secretly want to be Marilyn." Antonia couldn't agree more. She comments on Poe, and he replies, "He's blind, but he still gets around." Cut to Michael "Fatal Attraction" Douglas cleaning his glasses. Heh. That's worth a few subtlety points.

We follow Douglas into the living room, where Katie Holmes has been cornered by Q -- who to my eternal dismay, is not being played by John de Lancie. He is, however, played by Rip Torn, and he's hitting on Katie pretty hard. Well, who wouldn't, really? I guess this is where I confess my oddly enduring schoolgirl crush on Katie Holmes. Which is no where near as bad as having a crush on Matt Damon, but it's kind of embarrassing nonetheless. Q gives her a big smile. Don't trust him, Katie. He's just trying to lure you back to his continuum. Douglas snarkily VOs that Q is a best-selling author who churns out a new book every eighteen months. Q can't hear the insulting voice-over, so he just leers at Katie and babbles on like some kind of twisted poet until Douglas's voice-actual interrupts to tell him that she's a successful, published author herself. Q doesn't care. He just wants to see her naked. Well, who wouldn't, really? For the record, Katie's smile isn't any bigger on the big screen. Still at half-mast. Much like Q.

Anyway, Michael "Basic Inhale" Douglas heads outside and tokes up in the backyard. He tries to get 56 consecutive hits off his joint as he watches Sara and Walter argue through a window. I remember this one time in college when some friends and I went to a faculty party stoned off ouruh, never mind. By the way: Hi, mom. Douglas notices Tobey Maguire standing at the end of the driveway. He walks over, and we get a weird Sergio Leone-style gunfighter shot of the two of them facing off in the driveway. Tobey is carrying a little toy pistol. He explains that it belonged to his mother, and he carries it for luck. Douglas offers him a hit, but Tobey refuses, saying, "I don't like to lose control of my emotions." I don't know about that. I've seen a lot of Tobey's movies, and I'm not sure he actually has any emotions. He certainly never shows them. The boy looks like he was carved out of the finest mahogany. They chat for a few minutes, and clean up most of the remaining exposition. Tobey isn't like Michael's other students. Michael isn't like Tobey's other professors. Tobey isn't dating Katie, and he's a very fast writer. There. That's pretty much everything you need to know for the rest of the movie. Their task complete, Michael tells Tobey there's something inside he wants to show him.

They sneak back into the house, only to be busted by Katie. Everyone is heading over to the WordFest itself. Just then, RDJ and Antonia come down the steps, with wrinkled clothes and a post-coital glow. RDJ is thrilled to meet Tobey, who conveys nervous anxiety by looking down and to the left. That's it. Down and to the left. Down and to the left. Katie makes the film's one concession to contrived dialogue when she points out apropos of nothing that Tobey knows all about suicidal movie stars. And she's not kidding either. He reels off a list of about a dozen celebs who offed themselves, including Dorothy Dandridge, William Inge, George Reeves (TV's Superman), and Lupe Velez. Most of them were drug related, and I can't help but notice that RDJ is listening to all this quite intensely. Having read the novel this film is based on many years ago, I was anxiously awaiting this scene from the moment I found out that Downey had been cast. Now that it's here, I'm forced to admit that it was weird and more than a little unsettling. It's also important to know that RDJ is doing some full-throttle flirting with Tobey while he lists the names. Anyway, Katie, Antonia, and RDJ head off to WordFest. Douglas leads Tobey upstairs.

In the master bedroom, Douglas enters a code into a safe, and opens it to reveal a rather plain looking brown jacket. Then we pull back to a black-and-white photo of the jacket, except it's being worn by Marilyn Monroe on her wedding day to Joe DiMaggio. When Tobey realizes what he's looking at, he flips out. He's petting the jacket and cooing about how happy she must have been. Given the level of creepiness he's exuded so far, I'm surprised he doesn't put it on and start singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President." Instead, he starts crying, talking about how lonely the jacket looks in the closet. Douglas hears a noise outside and suggests that they get moving.

He heads out into the hallway, only to be accosted by Poe. Douglas tries to sneak by, but Poe hasn't lost his sense of smell, and much like my own dog, he knows pot when he smells it. Poe runs up and sinks his teeth into Douglas's ankle. There's some struggling and grunting, and then Tobey suddenly appears, pistol in hand. He caps Poe with two in the chest. Bark the doggie, nevermore. There's a moment of shock, and then Douglas drags himself to his feet. His ankle is bleeding. They argue about whether or not it was necessary to kill the dog. Tobey freaks out and wants to get a mirror to see if Poe is still breathing. Douglas takes the gun away from him.

Cut to the car. Poe is lying in the backseat. Michael "A Perfect Murder" Douglas tells Tobey that he'll take the blame, because he's got tenure. Cut to the WordFest parking lot. Douglas and Maguire load Poe into the trunk. Tobey remarks that it's a pretty big trunk: "It fits a tuba, a suitcase, a dead dog, and a garment bag." "That's what they used to say in the ads," replies Douglas. Tobey then asks if RDJ is gay, which Douglas does in fact confirm. He's searching Robert Downey Jr.'s suitcase for drugs. I'd imagine that sentence gets written quite a bit. Certainly more often than "Blind dog close-up." He finally finds a bottle of codeine and some airline bottles of scotch. He downs a couple of pills, and offers them to Tobey. "No thanks, I'm fine." "Oh yeah, you're fit as a fucking fiddle," replies Douglas. Maguire consents and tries to swallow a pill, but ends up hacking it out onto Douglas's jacket. Mmm, phlegmilicious. He tries again and finally gets it down.

Inside, Douglas and Maguire stand in the back of a crowded lecture hall, listening to Q and his pretentiously pompous pontification. A particularly purple passage causes Maguire to cackle madly, and everyone turns to stare at him. Douglas sees Sara leave and follows her out. The drugs are starting to kick in, and he staggers through the hallway. Pictures of Q smiling. Posters of WordFest with Sara on them. A spookily lit statue of a the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. Douglas remembers his own impending fatherhood, and passes out. Fade to white.

Fade back to see the Virgin Mary statue replaced by Sara. Okay, that one's gonna cost at least two subtlety points. She's leaning over Michael "Coma" Douglas, trying to wake him up. She tells him he had another episode, and then helps him to his feet. They look at each other for a moment, and then he tries to confess what happened to Poe. She stops him, thinking he's going to break up with her. She finds the codeine pills, still grasped in his hand. This movie has a lot of little moments that are done extremely well by the actors. McDormand is always fantastic, but even Douglas is doing pretty well here. Sara tells him she's getting an abortion. She lights a cigarette to demonstrate her lack of concern for the baby. Douglas grabs it from her and stubs it out. More fighting. She professes her love. He looks unwilling to commit. Then he picks up his coat, and Tobey's gun falls out. He tells her it's fake, and she grabs it and points it at his chest. They just stare at each other. Finally, the doors swing open behind them, and the WordFest patrons spill out. RDJ and some random extra are dragging out Tobey, who is clearly stoned out of his gourd. He's narrating all the action as they carry him, only he's doing it in the third person, like the writer he is. Douglas asks if he's okay. "He's narrating. He'll be fine," replies RDJ. Antonia asks for a ride home.

In the car. Douglas is driving; Antonia is removing her make-up and now insists on being called "Tony." Director Curtis Hanson gets the two subtlety points back for not putting "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" on the soundtrack here, which I can assure you Tarantino would have. It's also worth noting that Bob Dylan handled all the soundtrack duties for this film, and even chipped in a new, original song for the opening credits. As you might have noticed, I'm a fan. Anyway, Tony tells Douglas that RDJ's career is basically ruined, and that Douglas's follow-up novel is his only hope for salvation. Shot through the rearview mirror as a car passes by, Douglas quite literally freezes like a deer in the headlights at this thought, and then Tony gets out of the car and leaves the movie forever, which is sad, because Michael Cavadias is a pretty good actor, but it's also probably for the best, since I'm not sure this sentence could get any longer -- oh, wait, it can. Cavadias isn't as pretty as Cibrian, even with the pretty, pretty wig, but he's pretty pretty nonetheless.

Now we cut to a bar in what is purportedly the Hill District here in Pittsburgh. And while the bar portrayed in the film does in fact exist (and is about five blocks away as I type this at my desk at work), the set they're using looks nothing like it. Anyway, Douglas walks in to see RDJ and Tobey seated at a table in the back. RDJ's hand is suspiciously out of sight under the table, and Tobey looks to be unconscious. On the dance floor, Katie and Q are twirling. Douglas sits at the table, and RDJ criticizes him for "staging a raid on [his] pharmacopoeia." I'd imagine that sentence gets written quite a bit. Certainly more often than "Mmm, phlegmilicious." They argue about Tobey. RDJ informs us that he has a novel he finished in one semester, and Douglas is concerned about the prospect of RDJ and Tobey getting it on. He says he's not sure if Tobey is gay. RDJ is positive that he is. Their order is taken by a pregnant waitress named Oola, and that (like everything else in the first twenty minutes of this movie) will be important later.

As they drink, they spot a guy sitting across the room, and start playing the time-honored writer's game of making up a life story for him. Michael "The Game" Douglas describes him as "President of the James Brown Hair Club For Men," and while that's a fairly apt description of the guy's appearance, I know it's not actually true, since I'M the President of The James Brown Hair Club For Men. Of course, I'm not just the President. I'm also a member. They name the guy Vernon Hardapple, and his life story has to do with jockeys and horse-killing gangsters. Tobey pipes up with an ending to the tale, and they realize that he's been awake the whole time and heard their argument about his sexuality. Katie saves the day again by walking over to ask Douglas to dance. They head out onto the floor and begin a slow dance, which Katie finds difficult because she was clearly forced to carry a big old box of bad dialogue with her from the Creek. Sample: "You know, I'm not the downy innocent you think I am." Translation: "I can be sexual, Dawson." I'm simultaneously aroused and repelled by this scene. Anyway, Douglas tries to let her down easy, but she isn't having it.