Tough Guys Don't Dance is a 1987 crime mystery comedy-drama film written and directed by Norman Mailer based on his novel of the same name. It is a murder mystery/film noir piece. It was screened out of competition at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.[4]
The film received a mixed reaction from critics and was a box office bomb. It was also nominated for four 1988 Independent Spirit Awards.[5]
A month after his party-obsessed wife Patty Lareine (Debra Sandlund) left him, Tim Madden (Ryan O'Neal) is visited by his father Dougy (Lawrence Tierney), who tells Tim that he has stopped chemotherapy because "tough guys don't dance." Tim reveals to his father that there are parts of two murdered bodies in his cellar, and that while he doesn't think that he murdered them, he has been suffering from blackouts and hallucinations.
He recalls to his father how he had awoken five days earlier, after spending the night doing cocaine and having sex with pornographic film actress Jessica Pond in front of her partner Lonnie Pangborn, to discover bloody clothing in his car and a new tattoo on his arm featuring the first name of his former girlfriend Madeleine Falco (Isabella Rossellini). The new Provincetown police chief Luther Regency (Wings Hauser), who was now married to Madeleine, warned Tim to remove his marijuana stash from the woods before state troopers found it. Tim went to the stash and discovered a severed head hidden under the drugs. He later found out from Regency that Lonnie had committed suicide and Jessica was missing.
Flashing back, Tim remembers meeting Madeleine when he was working as a bartender. He then remembers meeting Patty, after he encouraged Madeleine to go swinging with Patty and her then husband Big Stoop (Penn Jillette). Afterwards, Patty promised to get rid of Big Stoop, marry and then divorce a rich man for his money, and then marry Tim so that he could follow his dreams and become a writer. On the trip back Tim and Madeleine fought, which caused their car to crash, and Madeleine suffered injuries that rendered her infertile.
Tim recalls reuniting with Patty after spending time in prison for dealing cocaine. Patty told him that she'd married her rich man, Tim's former classmate Wardley Meeks III (John Bedford Lloyd), and convinced him to hire Tim as Patty's chauffeur. Patty filed for divorce, and Tim testified against Wardley to help her get a large settlement.
Tim then recalls the events of yesterday. He reunited with Madeleine, who told him that Regency was having an affair with Patty and suggested they kill both of them. That night, Regency told Tim that he thought Lonnie and Jessica were sent to Provincetown with $2 million by Patty and Wardley to buy cocaine from Tim, and that he suspected Tim murdered Lonnie and Jessica. Tim went to check his stash and discovered that there were now two severed heads there. He was assaulted on the way back by his friends Spider and Stoodie, but he managed to escape with the heads.
Back in the present, Dougy identifies the heads as Patty's and Jessica's and disposes of them at sea. Tim is kidnapped at gunpoint by Wardley, who admits to sending Spider and Stoodie to assault him and then killing them both. He takes Tim to Helltown where they, as well as Patty and Jessica, are buried, and tells Tim his side of the story.
Wardley and Patty had sent Jessica and Lonnie to buy cocaine from Regency, but Jessica shot Lonnie when he threatened to leave with the money. When Patty and Regency arrived, Jessica threatened to turn them both in, but was shot by Patty. Regency took the money, hid Jessica's head, and had sex with Patty. Later, Wardley shot Patty after she revealed that there never was any cocaine, that she and Regency had scammed him, and that they were blackmailing him for an additional $10 million.
After telling Tim his story, Wardley shoots himself. Tim returns home to find Madeleine waiting outside for him, and they kiss. Inside, a drunk Regency admits to framing Tim as revenge for what he did to Madeleine, and to being in love with Patty. When Tim tells him that Patty is dead, Regency suffers a stroke. While recovering in bed, Regency taunts Madeleine as inferior to Patty, and Madeleine shoots him. Tim and Dougy dispose of the five bodies at sea, and Madeleine uses the $2 million to buy a house for her and Tim.
The script had revisions done by scribe/script doctor Robert Towne.[6] The production was filmed on location in Provincetown, Massachusetts.[7]
The film was a box office bomb, making only $858,250 (equivalent to $2,301,740 in 2023),[8] less than a fifth of its $5 million (equivalent to $13.4 million in 2023) budget.
Tough Guys Don't Dance received mixed reviews. It holds a 39% rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews.[9]
Hal Hinson of The Washington Post said that the film was "hard to classify; at times you laugh raucously at what's up on the screen; at others you stare dumbly, in stunned amazement".[10] Roger Ebert, in a 2+1⁄2 star review in the Chicago Sun-Times praised the cinematography, the Provincetown setting, and said that the relationship between Tim and Dougy was the best aspect of the film, but also had to say that "what is strange is that Tough Guys Don't Dance leaves me with such vivid memories of its times and places, its feelings and weathers, and yet leaves me so completely indifferent to its plot. Watching the film, I laughed a good deal."[11]
However, the film had its supporters. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader, said "Norman Mailer's best film, adapted from his worst novel, shows a surprising amount of cinematic savvy and style." Also, "He translates his high rhetoric and macho preoccupations (existential tests of bravado, good orgasms, murderous women, metaphysical cops) into an odd, campy, raunchy comedy-thriller that remains consistently watchable and unpredictable—as goofy in a way as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Where Russ Meyer featured women with oversize breasts, Mailer features male characters with oversize egos, and thanks to the juicy writing, hallucinatory lines such as 'Your knife is in my dog' and 'I just deep-sixed two heads' bounce off his cartoonish actors like comic-strip bubbles; even his sexism is somewhat objectified in the process."[12] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "some will find Tough Guys Don't Dance ludicrous; others will complain that it lacks big studio movie flash. True - but why mourn the absence of an expertise mostly made to distract audiences from the emptiness of the story they're being told? Whatever else you can say about this film, it's alive with ideas and a rich, strange view of the world. Even at its most awkward moments, Mailer's brilliance shines out of nearly every scene...He almost revives the soul, as well as the surface, of film noir, making it again a dark, lucid mirror of society's corruptions, wicked hypocrisies and evil glamour."[13]
Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune called the film true camp which can't be created self-consciously, observing that "Mailer begins from a position of personal involvement and at least partial sincerity, which makes the movie's ascent into sheer outrageousness seem more delirious, more dangerous and finally more entertaining. It isn't a good film (it doesn't want to be one), but it is a weird and funny evening at the movies."[14] Vincent Canby of The New York Times said that the film was "not the high point of the Mailer career, but it's a small, entertaining part of it".[15]
The scene in which Tim discovers his wife is having an affair has become famous due to its melodramatic line delivery and repetition of the phrase "Oh man, oh god!" Channel 4 Film said "The overkill is strangely compelling and Mailer's disregard for taste and convention ensure his film is a massive but spectacular and unmissable folly." The film apparently got enough of a following for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which owns much of Cannon's film library, to release an anamorphic widescreen DVD of the film on September 16, 2003. The disc contained an interview with Norman Mailer, a tour of Provincetown and the film's trailer. In August 2021 the film was released on Blu-ray by cult film label Vinegar Syndrome.
The CD soundtrack composed and conducted by Angelo Badalamenti is available on Music Box Records label (website).
