Rug Rats

One highly noticeable thing in wig movies is that the characters themselves are often stunned by the wigs they confront. Take Hook. The first time Robin Williams, as Peter, sees Julia Roberts as Tinker-bell, he's so terrified by her wig that he has to put on his glasses to make sure he hasn't been visited by a diminutive, airborne Richard Simmons. Armed with a disorienting pageboy in Richard III, Olivier is able to befuddle his rivals and seize control of England just by prancing around and fiddling with his bangs. And in_ Farewell to the King_, Nick Nolte, a white man alone in Borneo area 1942, is able to take over an entire aboriginal race because its leaders are too cowed to resist a man bedecked with an Allman Brothers wig almost 30 years before the band was even formed.

For my money, though, the finest example of pure wig terror is Pulp Fiction. Done up in a wig so large, so greasy, so inappropriate and so stupid that it outguns partner John Travolta's 1978 AC/DC roadie hair extensions, Samuel L. Jackson knocks on the door of an apartment housing three preppies who have ripped off his boss. When the boys open the door, they see Jackson's wig. Not his gun. Not even his facial expression. Just his wig. All three react with an expression of abject terror. They react this way because they know that a man capable of wearing a wig like that is a man capable of anything. Anything.

Not every Wig That Doesn't Even Pretend Not to Be a Wig is equally successful. For example, if you're a middle-aged man planning to assassinate the president of the United States, and you're already being played by one of the strangest-looking guys on the entire planet (John Malkovich), it's probably not a good idea to tip off the Secret Service by wearing a gigantic mane that makes you look like Ted Nugent: the Full Oingo-Boingo. For that matter, if you're married to a guy with a pronounced tendency toward hallucination and drug abuse, you shouldn't confront him on a daily basis with the red, banged, kewpie-doll mane Meg Ryan favors in The Doors. And finally, if you're an actress of limited range and find yourself out of your depth in a movie that would suck even if you were any good in it, don't try wearing a steam-ironed version of Meg Ryan's Doors wig to divert the audience's attention from your absurd Irish brogue the way Julia Roberts does in Mary Reilly.

Which brings us to the phenomenon of the serial wig--the hairpiece that keeps reappearing in different films, though not always on the same head, and not always at the same studio. As we have seen, Mel Gibson's Braveheart locks originated with Cats and did time in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The wig Julia Roberts wears in Hook miraculously resurfaces on Jane March's skull in Color of Night, then runs completely amok atop Neve Campbell's head during the last 20 minutes of Wild Things. Similarly, Lord Larry's wig in Richard III takes a decade off before reappearing on Peter Sellers's head in What's New, Pussycat?, then takes about 25 years off before putting in a surprise appearance atop Bronson Pinchot's skull in the abysmal comedy Second Sight. And, I would argue, the ball of cotton that Tom Hulce wears as Mozart in Amadeus is the same wig that later surfaces, slightly combed out, on the head of David Bowie as Warhol in Basquiat. A friend assured me that Bowie's wig in Basquiat was, in fact, borrowed from Andy Warhol's estate, which would mean that my theory was completely off base. I disagree. It is my earnest belief that Andy Warhol purchased a wig that once belonged to Mozart, loaned it out to Hulce while he was making Amadeus, reshaped it for his personal use, died, and then his estate lent it to Bowie. Of course, as is so often the case with my theories, I could be wrong.

Although I love bad wigs as much as the next person, I sometimes worry that Hollywood is slowly becoming dependent on obstreperous hair. The Fifth Element has entirely too much hair. So does Boogie Nights. Even The Saint is too wiggy. But the most wig-saturated film I have seen in recent years is surely The Jackal, in which Bruce Willis sports yuppie hair, redneck-fisherman hair, car-mechanic-on-vacation hair, tough-guy-with-mustache hair, Greg Kinnear hair, blond boater's hair, surfer boy hair, and brown cop's hair.

That's why I covered my son's eyes when we went to see the film. My son isn't old enough to know that all a man needs to assassinate the first lady of the United States is a wig and a portable cannon. I don't want him going to bed every night worrying that men with bad wigs can wield that much power. He's far too innocent to be told the truth about Howard Cossell, Marv Albert and Burt Reynolds. When I was a boy growing up on the mean streets of Philadelphia, my father tried to protect me from terrifying images. I think that if he were still here today, and he found out that I had covered my son's eyes rather than let him see Bruce Willis's wig in The Jackal, he would have felt justifiably proud. And my dad was bald.

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Joe Queenan wrote "Don't Try This At Home 3" for the July '98 issue of Movieline.

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