Ten Films That Showed Hollywood How To Live

Fatal Attraction (1987)

The husband in Fatal Attraction says, Gee, I'm sorry, but I'm too busy to go away with the family. And, of course, in his business (lawyering) as in the picture business, the claims of family regularly take second place to the "pressure" of business. Isn't it the rewards of business dedication that let the family be happy? That is the justifying argument that the husband makes in his head when he is also not entirely averse to a little time "on his own." For loyalty is to be expected from those "ordinary people," the wife and children, but the properly ambitious, hardworking husband deserves a little liberty. How can he stay so lovable if he doesn't keep that itch for adventure?

Not that Michael Douglas's character in Fatal Attraction is a predator. No, Douglas is an archetypal actor because he makes it seem as if his adventures are imposed on him. No matter how lusty, or naughty, he manages to keep that upright, boyish self-pity that marks an adorable victim. And so he has the mixed luck to meet a devilishly attractive and flexible woman, a sensational fuck, but crazy, too. And, I ask you--he asks himself--is it my fault she isn't "realistic"?

The lesson here is quite complicated. It begins with the guy being restored to a bachelor-like freedom. Then he benefits from a chance meeting and the woman's desperate availability: her freedom is oddly confining next to his, for she is a prisoner of her nature and need. He is the sexual adventurer--notice that it is extreme sex he seeks out, sex on the edge, like sex in a movie. Presumably, sex with his wife is nocturnal, under cover of dark, entirely ordinary.

The crazy woman demands more: she doesn't know or admit the rules he's playing by; doesn't grasp the way his freedom has nothing really to do with his life, his family, those solid things. So he has to kill her--and there are producers and executives who will take any excuse to kill (or eliminate) a woman. A guy like this would especially appreciate it if his own wife put the key bullet in, looking after her careless man.

Working Girl (1988)

"I've got a head for business and a bod for sin," promises Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. All the politically corrects in Hollywood jumped on this film when it came out. "Breakthrough!" they cried, without noticing that Melanie had also given a neat definition for the whoring trade, and advertised anew the endless openings it has for working-class girls.

Modern Hollywood is very self-conscious about the way it has boosted such names as Sherry Lansing, Laura Ziskin, Amy Pascal, Paula Wagner, et cetera. Look at the women we've got in the executive class, they say. Working Girl is an anthem of this cause. But whoever claimed that Hollywood could be passed off as business, as opposed to blind gambling, schmoozing and job slavery? And whoever said that Hollywood is any readier now to give up being the boys' club it has always been?

Actually, if you look closely at Working Girl (which isn't pleasant--it's an awful picture), you can see just how much fear and loathing of women remains. The film holds up two women for inspection: Sigoumey Weaver, who, as the villainess, serves as a warning against education, ambition, dress sense and the business morals men take for granted. All she gets for presenting the perfect image of what actually succeeds in the world is being blackballed and called "bony ass."

Then there's Melanie--supposedly the model of working-class sense and probity--who can hardly say some of the long speeches she has without expiring, and who is shown all through the movie as something between an apricot danish and a sticky bun. The camera hates her! It spies on her in her tacky underwear in compromising positions.

When all is said and done, her "success" amounts to a small office at the end of the corridor with a secretary who's going to give her some of her own medicine. What else does she get? Harrison Ford, who behaves more like the janitor in a suit than someone capable of the real business life that neglects home and family. Why this film instead of Working Mother or Working Wife? Ask The First Wives Club.

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David Thomson is the author of Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, published by Knopf.

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