Don't Try This at Home

Inducing Women to Swallow Numerous Unappetizing Things

In the unfailingly charming 9 1/2 Weeks, future pugilist Mickey Rourke persuades Kim Basinger to sit on the floor with her eyes shut while he force-feeds her olives, cherries, strawberries, pasta, Jell-O and jalapeno peppers, washing it all down with champagne, Perrier and milk, before finishing up by dripping honey onto her tongue and all over her legs. My wife being a Catholic, I knew she wouldn't go for any of this kinky, produce-oriented stuff, so I called a good friend who is known for her spirit of adventure.

"Are you asking if I would let anyone do it?" she inquired.

"Anyone."

"Yeah."

"You would?"

"Yeah."

"Even the jalapeno peppers?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Well, did you see 9 1/2 Weeks?

"Yeah."

"Well, don't you remember that it really hurt Kim Basinger's tongue a lot?"

"Well, it depends where you bite into the pepper. If you just eat the skin of the pepper and not the seeds, it doesn't burn."

"No, I think it burns no matter where you bite into them. But never mind, let me ask you another question," I said, recalling another of the film's fun couple scenes. "If a man threatened to hit you with a belt, would you agree to crawl across the floor like a doggie and pick up $10 and $20 bills he'd strewn on the ground?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I just wouldn't."

"Because it's too humiliating?"

"No."

"Well, why would you let someone feed you jalapeno peppers that are going to set your mouth on fire, but wouldn't agree to crawl across the floor to pick up money?"

"Because the one involves food, and I like food, but the other involves money, and I don't like money."

Why ask why!

My other female friends were flat-out opposed to any of the salacious Mickey Rourke-isms I suggested. None of them were interested in being blindfolded and fondled by a prostitute, spreading their legs for Daddy while lying on a king-sized bed in an upscale department store, or looking on submissively as I tried out riding crops in an equestrian-goods shop. Still, I was astonished and a bit unnerved to find that at least one woman of my acquaintance was willing to let a man stuff a whole cornucopia of fruits and vegetables into her mouth as she sat on the floor with her eyes closed. But New York is that kind of town.

The list of things that work in movies that will not work in real life goes on and on. For example, if you stand up to corrupt union officials the way Marlon Brando does at the end of On the Waterfront, your body will never be found. You cannot drive a car around San Francisco the way Steve McQueen did in Bulhtt or the way Dan Aykroyd does in The Blues Brothers without killing pedestrians or ruining your car or both. If you hit people with a pistol butt on the back of the head "to make it look good" the way they do in the old Westerns, they in fact will die. As for the famous scene in When Harry Met Sally... where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a Manhattan deli as Billy Crystal looks on, that would never work in real life because I can spot fake orgasms a mile away. Every woman who's ever been with me has gone directly to Jupiter, so I would know. Frankly, the humorous thrust of Meg Ryan's performance was always completely lost on me.

And then there is Vertigo. Seeking to recreate Jimmy Stewart's death-defying leap from one 15-story ledge to another, I jumped from my front porch to my neighbor's, a yawning chasm of, oh, about eight feet. I managed to sprawl safely onto his porch, but not without scraping my knee. However, when I proceeded to the next part of the experiment--having a friend the same size as me lean down and attempt to hoist me up onto his porch--the attempt failed miserably. And this was on a level surface, where my friend got to use both hands, and did not have to worry about plummeting hundreds of feet to a messy death. Proving that the entire opening sequence from Vertigo is just incredibly stupid and that anyone who would risk his own life trying to save another person by attempting to hoist him to safety while gripping a chintzy tile high atop a sloping building in San Francisco probably deserves to die.

In all of my experiments did I find any clever trick, gambit, ploy, scam, ruse or stunt that actually did work in real life? Yes, but only if you count the jalapeno peppers. Other than that, no. But I did find one incredibly cunning ruse that actually failed in a movie and--get this!--also failed in real life. A few weeks ago, after a ferocious argument with an editor, I began to toy with the idea of murdering him. After much idle rumination, I finally settled on the ingenious plot hatched by Ray Milland in another Hitchcock movie, Dial M for Murder.

As the reader will doubtless recall, Milland's scheme involves a set of latch keys, one in his wife's handbag, one concealed beneath the stairway carpet outside the apartment door. The killer hired by Milland is supposed to let himself in with the latch key, then hide behind the curtains in the living room, and then, when Grace Kelly comes to answer Milland's call from his club, sneak up from behind and strangle her. He is then supposed to put the key back in its place beneath the carpet and get the hell out of there.

Unfortunately, Grace Kelly kills the killer, who had already put the key back in its place after opening the door, so when Ray Milland comes home, he take a key out of the killer's pocket and puts it in Kelly's handbag, never realizing that it is actually the killer's own latch key, and not the latch key to Milland's apartment door. This creates problems for Milland later in the film, when his latch key ends up in a raincoat picked up by the indefatigable Scotland Yard detective played by John Williams. Milland then tries to use the key in Kelly's handbag, which doesn't work on his door, since it's the killer's key. This chain of events forces Milland to open the door with the latch key left under the hall stairs by the killer, who was supposed to keep the key until after he had disposed of Grace Kelly, but who messed up the whole plan. As a result, Milland is caught out and, presumably, fries for it.

I invited a friend over to the house one afternoon and we ran through this key thing several times. I didn't tell him that I was thinking of killing anybody; I told him the little stunt was something I'd planned for a surprise party. Well, to make a long story short, we screwed up completely. As complicated as Milland's scheme is in the movie, it's even more complicated in real life, and neither I nor my friend could ever get the hang of it. This being the case, I would suggest to readers who are contemplating the murder of employers or business associates or even spouses that they stick to blowtorches or AK-47s, and try to make the murder look like the work of an intruder. The movies are really no help at all in handling practical, everyday affairs. They're just incredibly stupid, and you're far better off running your life normally, like me.

Joe Queenan wrote about Barbra Streisand for our August issue.

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