TIN MEN (1987)
Directed by Barry Levinson
Touchstone/Buena Vista, 112 minutes, R (language, booze, drugs, infidelity)
★★★★
I recently gave a talk at the Three Sisters Sanctuary, whose roadside entrance features a giant tin figure. So, naturally, I viewed the 1980s comedy Tin Men. In this case, the term tin men references a long-gone practice of door-to-door salesmen (almost always men) trying to entice homeowners to re-side their dwellings in aluminum. I recall two tin men hit my childhood neighborhood in the 1960s, which was weird given that we and everyone else in the neighborhood lived in down-market rented concrete block duplexes. No sales there!
Tin Men was the second film in director Barry Levinson’s Baltimore quadrilogy; the first, Diner (1982) is considered his masterpiece, but Tin Men is also funny and a slice of 1980s social history. Bill Babowsky (Richard Dreyfuss) drives his brand-new Cadillac off the lot and straight into a Caddy owned by a rival, Ernest Tilly (Danny DeVito). This touches off an escalating vendetta between the two at a time in which older it’s-a-man’s-world norms are crumbling in ways paralleling aluminum siding sales. Yet, Levinson’s Baltimore is a place where second wave feminism has just begun to send ripples across the Chesapeake Bay and there’s no sign of the tidal wave on its way. After exhausting bar confrontations and innovative ways to antagonize each other Babowsky, a confirmed playboy, ups the ante by seducing Tilly’s wife (Barbara Hershey). There’s a layered story about how this develops, though I will say that it was supposed to be settled by a pool match, but very little is settled between two guys so hardheaded we suspect their noggins are made of granite.
The domestic part of the movie now seems dated, but this is the part where I say that history is what it was, not how the squeamish would reinvent it. Levinson’s take on Baltimore’s delayed embrace of change was especially true of working-class families of the 1970s/early 80s, many of whom saw feminism as middle-class nonsense. That too was about to change; comedy aside, Levison’s film is about what is fading and emerging.
That was true of salesmanship as well. Door-to-door sales practices were rife with high-pressure tactics, dishonesty, and outright fraud. In part this was because many of those pounding the sidewalks were paid entirely or mostly on commission. You don’t have to be an economist to know that no sales = no paycheck, a condition Tilly knew firsthand. It’s no wonder that regulatory agencies investigated unfair labor practices on the part of both sales staff and the companies for which they toiled. Tin Men is, thus, the story of a “sunset industry,” the term given to work in the process of disappearing.
The history lessons aside, Tin Men is an amusing movie. Few actors play the short guy with a sharp tongue, swagger, and irreverence with the verve of Danny DeVito. In Tin Men, though, Richard Dreyfuss is a worthy adversary. He’s oily, arrogant, and stubborn, though not quite as emotionally bullet-proof as he believes. Barbara Hershey is also quite good in a tough role. On one level she has to play pawn to male games, but she deftly shows how stupid male tricks left the door open for subtle and clever manipulation. In other words, the battle of the sexes wasn't as one-sided as advertised.
If you can cruise past bad 1980s clothing, shopworn values, and the very idea that a big Cadillac once conferred status, Tin Men will both edify and make you chuckle. For what it’s worth, the soundtrack is from Fine Young Cannibals. They too were all the rage in the early- to mid-1980s.
Pay attention to what Babowski and Tilly consider next when their tin men careers come to an inglorious end. Stagflation loomed on the horizon, Caddies were out, and adjustments were necessary.
Rob Weir
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