Is Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Still Relevant?

 

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? (1967)

Directed by Stanley Kramer

Columbia, 108 minutes, not rated.

★★

 

 

 

Does a “classic film” ever cease to be one? I raise this question because I recently rewatched Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? to see how well it weathers. Answer: Not very well. It’s certainly true that a post-racial society exists only in the naïve rhetoric of the woke, but GWCTD mostly reminds us of how much has changed since 1967.

 

Its premise is straightforward. Twenty-three-year-old Joanna “Joey” Drayton (Katharine Houghton) cuts her trip to Hawaii short to return home (San Francisco) with a surprise in tow: her thirty-seven-year-old fiancé, Dr. John Wade Prentice (Sidney Poitier). She’s white and he’s a “Negro,” the term of preference in 1967, but Joey “knows” her parents Christina (Katharine Hepburn), a gallery owner, and Matt (Spencer Tracy), a crusading publisher, will love John. After all, they’re both liberal. Of course, it’s not that simple.  Both are surprised and Matt is very much against the idea of nuptials–for social reasons of course. So too is their black housekeeper Tillie Bix (Isabel Sanford), who thinks Prentice doesn’t know his place. As it transpires, John’s parents, John Sr. (Roy E. Glenn Sr.), a retired postal carrier, and his wife Mary (Beah Richards) have reservations as well–for, you know, social reasons. The only person other than Joey who is enthusiastic is family friend Monsignor Mike Ryan (Cecil Kellaway). Even Dr. Prentice promises Matt no wedding will take place without his blessing.

 

The entire racial comedy/drama takes place in a single day as Dr. Prentice must fly to Geneva that evening, with or without Joanna. In order to keep the focus on race, director Stanley Kramer and screenwriter William Rose transformed Prentice into a veritable black Superman. Prentice is handsome, a widower whose wife and son died years earlier, and a renowned physician about to take a posting with the World Health Organization. Audiences of the day were challenged to confront their own “If only he were white” biases, as Prentice’s character, qualifications, and sense of honor were impeccable.

 

GWCTD was considered bold in 1967. It came just three years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 theoretically desegregated American society. Alas, there is often lag time between the passage of acts of Congress and widespread implementation. Tillie and John’s father were not playing Uncle Tom roles; they were from the generation in which what was under discussion could not have happened. There are references to 17 states where the Prentice/Drayton marriage would have been illegal. That also remained true, though the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision in June 1967 overturned bans on interracial couples.

 

Entrenched custom no doubt factored into decisions to interject comedy into the drama. Some of it is embarrassing by current standards, none so much as an impromptu dance between a white delivery boy and a sexy black part-time helper. (Memo to filmmakers: Never show actors performing a dance craze du jour; it will look insipid by the time it wraps.) Even the film’s title comes across as amusing, as if white viewers were expected to laugh uncomfortably about what they’d do in the same situation. It was the right touch for the time, as GWCTD was a box office smash and even did well in the South. That despite Poitier’s big speech on his humanity. (Poitier specialized in impassioned monologs.)

 

The film garnered 10 Oscar nominations and won two: Hepburn as Best Actress and Rose for Best Screenplay. Hepburn’s win, for a merely competent turn, seems like one that happened because the Academy stiffed her for better past roles. In many ways this was Tracy’s film, but everyone gave strong performances with the exception of Houghton–Hepburn’s niece–whose cluelessness and lack of a strong adult self simply don’t resonate.

 

In retrospect, the most notable thing to be said is that this was Tracy’s final film. He was so ill at the time that no one would insure him. He, Hepburn, and Kramer put their salaries in escrow in case he had to be replaced. Tracy died 17 days after the film wrapped and Hepburn, whose Parkinson’s disease was visually evident, was so devastated that she never watched the theatrical release. These matters are sad, but they don’t change the fact that watching GWCTD today is like watching a documentary on rotary dial phones. Does it remain a classic? More like a quaint artifact, I fear.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Kitty Macfarlane: May 2023 Artist of the Month

 

Kitty Macfarlane

Namer of Clouds (2019)

Navigator Records

 

 

I follow Karine Polwart , one of my favorite folk/traditional artists of all time. When Polwart recommends someone, I take notice. My artist/album of the month is a bit unusual in that the featured recording came out in 2019. I had not heard of Kitty Macfarlane until I sampled her on Polwart’s Website, but I’m sure glad I did.

 

Macfarlane hails from Somerset in England and is both a lovely singer and a smart, thoughtful person. Let’s start with the title track of Namer of Clouds. It’s an offbeat title, but it befits the song. Ever wonder where we get categories such as nimbus, cumulous, stratus, and so on? Give credit to Luke Howard who thought of them back in 1802. The song imagines him as a small boy doing what kids do, gazing into the sky with amazement at the shifting shapes of clouds. Howard took it to the next level: The changing shapes, the chaos and calm/The shadows cast as winds collide/Tries to explain with words not written/Put name to face, the need to define.

 

You’ll get all of that, though the first things that will strike you is Macfarlane’s own sense of calm and a voice whose purity invites comparisons to a young Joni Mitchell. Mitchell, ironically, released a 1969 album titled Clouds that included the song “Both Sides Now” with its quotable line: I really don’t know clouds at all. Macfarlane does.

 

Macfarlane has keen environmentalist instincts. “Wrecking Days” catalogues the damage done by the things we cast into the sea and reappear on the strandline (the highwater mark on a beach); “Man, Friendship” simultaneously muses upon climate change and hope, which is quite a trick. “Seventeen” parallels coming of age with the observation that nature cycles–the growth of trees, the growth of lichen, the migration of birds, tides, and so on–are both humbling and bewildering to the young. Some of the songs actually incorporate natural sounds. You’ll hear a rushing waterfall on “Morgan’s Pantry.” In this case, sea morgans are legends, not people. This is Macfarlane’s take on a traditional song about rather nasty sea creatures that lure sailors to waterfall portals to another world. “Glass Eel” ponders both continental drift and the miraculous 4,000-mile annual migration of small transparent eels. (Puffins find them delicious!)

 

Macfarlane dazzles us with voice and wonderment, not flashy instrumentation or dramatic arrangements. Her lyrics employ an economy of words that invites us to intersect our narratives with hers. “Starling Song,” for example, is just twelve lines long, but there’s much room to draft stories in lines such as Like the rush in a sea shell or a hum in the maize/Or the mutter of pages turned in haste. “Frozen Charlotte” is the wordiest song on the album, but they come from poet Seba Smith that recount a decidedly weird 1839 event in which a vain young woman was so determined to attend a dance despite the frigid winter weather that she arrived frozen to death. (Some versions say she was found in her bath.) In a level of the macabre only Victorians could conjure, alabaster white frozen Charlotte dolls enjoyed a 70-year run of popularity.

 

Macfarlane draws inspiration from all manner of things large and profound. Among the latter is “Sea Silk,” and you’ll hear background clicking. It’s the sound of needles from a woman she met off the coast of Sardinia spinning delicate silk strands that appear brown inside but glow gold in the sunlight. By now you won’t be surprised when I say that Macfarlane spins some gold of her own: I’ll spin saltwater into sun/Until the time I am undone. How good is Macfarlane? Even Iggy Pop, the Grandfather of Punk, is a fan.  

 

Rob Weir

 

Nightmare Alley: Icarus Retold

 

NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947)

Directed by Edmund Goulding

20^th Century Fox, 111 minutes, Not rated.

★★★

 

 

 

When it comes to lessons for the human condition, the ancient Greeks had the bases covered. Do you recall the myth of Icarus, who made wings of wax but flew too close to the sun and tumbled into the sea and drowned? It has long been a lesson in hubris, a warning that those who arrogantly climb too high often meet a bitter end. Nightmare Alley takes that tale and sets it in a traveling carnival.

 

The setting is the Great Depression. Young Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Tyrone Power) is looking for a break and thinks that the “carny” he has just be his ticket. He enlists as a roustabout but has a decided sense of superiority. Before going any further, you need to know that the term “geek” used to be a very derogatory term. It too came from Greek and loosely translates as “fool,” but it’s worse than that. In carny terms, the geek was a broken-down performer who has lost his wits–nearly all were male–whether through drink, drugs, or mental collapse. Most carnival geeks were so unbalanced that they became sideshow freaks the likes of which bit the heads off chickens and snakes.

 

In Stan’s mind, though some of his carnival colleagues were nice enough, most were just a step or two above the resident geek who sometimes needed to be locked up for his and the public’s protection. Stan does, however, like Pete (Ian Keith) and Zeena (Joan Blondell) Krumbein, Pete because he’s harmless and Zeena because she’s so sexy that her flirtations have driven Pete to the bottle. Stan wouldn’t mind a piece of her action, but she rebuffs him. Instead, he turns his attention to the far-too-young Molly (Coleen Gray) and apprentices himself to Zeena. The latter holds the “code,” the bag of tricks and signals that allow “mind readers” to astonish audiences. Before long, Stan is a star clairvoyant and augur.

 

Stan oversteps in his conquest of the innocent Molly and by an accident involving Pete. The carny hands force him to marry the girl he has ruined. (Back in those days if you tried on the goods, you bought the outfit.) There is no arguing with an angry crew backed by strongman Bruno (a perfect role for Mike Mazurka). Poor Molly tries hard, but she’s too naïve to realize she’s just a fling and a useful flunky in Stan’s act. It’s just a matter of time before Stan decides that dumping the carny–not completely an act of volition–is his ticket to even greater stardom.

 

As a solo act, “The Great Stanton” soars and is the toast of big theaters in Chicago. He remains troubled about Pete though, and seeks psychological counselling. As such narratives tend to spin out, guilt and ambition begin to get the better of him. He flies too high for Molly’s comfort when he tries to grift Ezra Grindle (Taylor Holmes), plus highfliers are seldom as smart as they think they are. Enter his femme fatale, Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker), who knows a phony when she sees one. Soon the Great Stanton is getting mighty close to the sun. It’s just a matter of time until his wings melt, and Nightmare Alley wends its way to a dark ending.

 

This film grew on me ex post facto. Tyrone Power is very good as an oily jerk, but he’s not enough to rescue the film from overdosing on histrionics and predictability. The movie was based upon a novel by William Lindsay Gresham. Who, you might ask. Exactly. He didn’t get much help from the treatment given by Jules Furthman. He was a talented screenwriter, but he stumbled in this film by failing to differentiate between foreshadowing and bloody obvious! Nightmare Alley has entertaining moments, but don’t expect to be astonished.

 

Let me end with a few more Icarus analogies. Tragically, Gresham never came close to duplicating the success of his Nightmare Alley novel. His life was chaotic–a bout of TB, a venture into Dianetics, alcoholism, marital woes–and he committed suicide in 1962. That was tragic, but it was a geek-level descent into foolishness to do a remake of Nightmare Alley in 2021. Despite a big cast filled with famous names, the only thing its carny geek decapitated was the corpse of a turkey.

 

Rob Weir  

We Are the Light Doesn't Ignite

WE ARE THE LIGHT (2022)

By Matthew Quick

Avid reader Press, 246 pages.

★

 

 

 

Sometimes minimalism is efficient and appropriate. Sometimes it’s just minimal. We Are the Light falls into the second category. Perhaps I should have known better. Matthew Quick also wrote Silver Lining Playbook, which was made into a movie that I found schmaltzy. Like it, Lucas Goodgame, the central character of We Are the Light, is a damaged man.

 

Goodgame is part of a survivors’ group from a mass shooting at the Majestic Theater in Somewhere or Other, Pennsylvania, that left his wife Darcy and 16 others dead. Lucas isn’t too sad, though, because he believes that Darcy is an angel who visits him regularly. He even collects feathers that he says are from her wings and claims to have seen the souls of all the dead rise.

 

But when he writes to Karl, his Jungian therapist, and asks to see him to talk about all of this, Karl ghosts him. He writes letter after letter–often dropping them off at his door–until a restraining order makes him stop. Is Lucas so delusional that he has scared off his therapist? Lucas also angers Sandra Coyle from the group when he rebuffs her effort to enlist him in a gun control movement because he says he needs to focus on his grief before getting involved in politics.

 

The entire story is told through letters to Karl, which are loaded with Lucas’ take on Jungian theory in which he tries to apprise him of how he’s trying to heal himself. He tells of how his African-American friends Isiah and Bess are praying for him, of how Jill from the Cup of Spoons Diner has been cooking for him, and  how he has allowed young Eli Hansen to camp out in his backyard. That’s surprising because Eli has become the town pariah as it was his older brother Jacob who was responsible for the mass murder.

 

An old adage holds that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing and this holds true for Lucas’ various “insights” into Jungian psychology. Even if you have only passing familiarity with such concepts, you can tell that Lucas understands some of its form, but not much about its function.

 

The plot takes other odd twists. Jill, who was Darcy’s best friend, seems to have moved in with Lucas almost immediately after Jacob shot up the town. Is she a grief maven or a grifter? That’s not nearly as weird as a subplot involving a way to help Eli to graduate from high school via a credited post-drop out project. The grand idea is to make a monster movie starring Eli and other locals that will debut at (gulp!) the Majestic Theater. This, somehow, is supposed to help the community heal. This really angers Sandra, who is convinced that Eli is as psychotic as his sanguinary brother. Lucas tells of his battles with Sandra, how the movie is proceeding, and his sadness that Eli has grown closer to two others and has moved out. All of this is detailed in, yep, letters to Karl–17 in all, one for each victim. Karl remains silent.

 

The last part of the book takes place nearly four years later and updates us on Lucas, his new Jungian therapist, his relationship with Jill, how Eli has fared, and Karl’s fate. If you sense you’ve been setup for a cheap plot ploy, who am I to dissuade you? You might like the resolution and manipulative sentimentality better than I did, but everything is pretty much what I expected from a novel that’s a classic one-trick pony.

 

About the best I can say for We Are the Light is that it didn’t turn into an evangelical Christian novel filled with miracles. Still, if this book is optioned, you’d do well to read reviews from respected film critics before viewing it. By all means avoid  trade magazine hacks and anyone who calls it “timely” because of it deals with the national plague of mass shootings. Let me be clear; those people insult Aurora, Buffalo, El Paso, Nashville, Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Virginia Beach, and all the other places where real people suffering from real anguish continue to grieve.

 

Rob Weir

Murder, My Sweet a Forgotten Noir Masterpiece

 

MURDER, MY SWEET (1944)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk

RKO, 95 minutes, Not rated.

★★★★★

 

 

 

Many people think of Humphrey Bogart as the quintessential Philip Marlowe, but not many know that Dick Powell was the first to portray Raymond Chandler’s famed detective. Nor do they know that many film buffs consider Powell’s take on Marlowe the best. That can be debated, but Powell was certainly closer to what Chandler had in mind; his Marlowe was less sure of himself, made numerous false steps, and was less callous. Murder, My Sweet was adapted from Chandler’s novel Farewell My Lovely and RKO didn’t have to pay Chandler a dime as they had already purchased the film rights four years earlier for a mere $2,000.

 

The prelude to the film shows a bandaged-eyed Marlowe telling police Lt. Randall what he knows about the double murder that lies at center of the narrative. In essence, it’s a setup for flashbacks. Moose Malloy (former pro wrestler Mike Mazurki) has just been paroled after eight years in prison and wants Marlowe to help him locate Velma Valento, his girlfriend before he was sent up. Marlowe and Malloy visit a joint where Velma once sang, but no one remembers her except for boozy nightclub owner Jessie Florian (Esther Howard) who insists Velma’s dead. Moose refuses to believe it and strongarms Marlowe into continuing his inquiries.

 

Moose is as dense as a concrete block and Marlowe has a potentially more lucrative client, Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton), who wants Marlowe to be his personal guardian as hands over ransom money to a third party for jewels he claims were stolen from him. Some bodyguard! Marlowe is knocked out and when he comes to, he has to report Marriott’s death. Strangely, the cops warn him to drop matters as the case involves Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger), a quack psychiatrist. Enter Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley), who tries to get information out of Marlowe and has a cockamamie story about $100,000 worth of jade that she says belonged to her elderly father (Miles Mander), who has recently remarried a much younger woman, Helen (Claire Trevor).  Stranger still, Amthor appears to inform the dim-witted Moose that he knows of Velma’s whereabouts.

 

As you can see, this is not your straightforward white hats/black hats tale. What do we have here? Is this a wicked step-mother tale, a take-your-pick of dueling femmes fatales, or is everyone as mad as a March hare? All Marlowe knows for certain is that he likes the cut of Ann’s jib, and that too sounds alarms. Add a kidnapping, some mind-altering medication, a double cross or two, assumed identities, gunplay, and stories that don’t even close to adding up.

 

Raymond Chandler isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the man knew how to plot complex murder mysteries. That’s one element that makes Murder, My Sweet a certifiable film noir masterpiece, though one that has been unjustly underrated. Another standout feature is its deft mix of foreshadowing and shadows, courtesy of director Edward Dmytrk and cinematographer Harry Wild. I suspect that politics is a reason why Murder, My Sweet has fallen from the limelight. If Dmytrk’s name sounds familiar, he was one of the Hollywood Ten that appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Whereas most of the Ten (and numerous others) went to jail and/or were blacklisted for suspected Communist Party membership, Dmytrk avoided said fates by confessing his guilt and fingering other suspected communists. It saved his career but made him contemptible when alleged subversion in Hollywood later proved considerably more smoke than fire. Some never forgave Dmytrk and still others accused him of ripping off Orson Welles’ hypnotic use of light in Citizen Kane. Both condemnations perhaps have merit, but there is little denying that Dymtrk was a highly skilled director. (He won a Best Director Oscar for The Caine Mutiny in 1954.)

 

Nor can we deny that Murder, My Sweet was a game changer for Dick Powell. He had previously been cast in squeaky clean roles, a sort of Pat Boone type. Powell yearned to be a serious actor and this film helped him tremendously in that pursuit. Hs Marlowe was not as cynical or as tough as Bogart’s, but it was considerably more nuanced.

 

I am a film noir geek and a Bogart fan, but those confessions aside, I’d rank Murder, My Sweet among the finest of the genre. And, yes, I’d say that Powell was a superior Philip Marlowe.

 

Rob Weir

Gordon Lightfoot: A Tribute

 

1971: Philadelphia Academy of Music

 

I knew the name, but I was first lured by the venue, one of the best places to hear music in North America. When the show began–always late in those days–the house lights dimmed and a circle of light spilled onto center stage. Gordon Lightfoot stood in its midst and began to strum his 12-string. Then came a rolling baritone that seemed to sweep in from the Canadian prairie. Thirty seconds  into “Early Morning Rain” I knew what I had to do next.

 

When I returned to my South Central Pennsylvania home, I drove to a music store in Hagerstown, Maryland, to buy an acoustic guitar. I figured I’d better start with six strings, a good choice as I didn’t know an Am from an auxiliary verb. I picked up a cheap piece of junk a step up from a Sears Silvertone and the man at the counter refused to sell it to me. He handed me an Epiphone and said, “This is more money, but if you buy that other guitar you’ll be back in two weeks. This one will last you.” He was right. I still own that old Epiphone, though I seldom play it anymore. But you can guess what song I played after I learned three chords.

 

Imagine how I felt when I learned, on May 1, that Lightfoot had passed away at the age of 84. People often ask me to name my favorite musician. That’s a dumb question as tastes change over time and I’ve run through dozens of “favorites.” There are none, though, whose impact on me has been as profound as Gordon Lightfoot. Bob Dylan once said he never heard a bad Gordon Lightfoot song. I could probably name a few, but I know what he meant. I have a binder full of Lightfoot songs I play that keeps getting thicker, though my hands and voice are shot.

 

A lot of them aren’t hard to play because Lightfoot was always about the song, not the performance. He once told me that almost everything he did was capoed so he could re-use the same chord shapes. That’s not entirely true, but if you hear anything really complex on one of his songs, it’s probably either Rod Shea or Terry Clement you’re hearing. Lightfoot was a storyteller, not a showman.

 

He is probably best known for epic songs such as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “The Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” the latter of which was once (and might still be) part of the soundtrack for a documentary film on Canada’s first transcontinental railroad shown at the Museum of Civilization on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River across from Parliament. Ironically, though, a lot of his very best were marked by concision. Listen to “I Heard You Talking In Your Sleep,” which lays out a world of pain in just two short verses. Or “River of Darkness,” which Marty Robbins covered and brought Lightfoot to public attention. “The way I Feel’ was the first song I ever finger-picked. Why? Just 16 lines–four of which are repeats–and two chords (Dm/Am7).

 

He has been called a pop star and a folk singer. True enough, but he was also an acoustic country throwback to the days in which country music wasn’t tarted up with pretense and bullshit. If “Second Cup of Coffee” and “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” aren’t country songs, no one is yet to write one. The man sang about roadside diners, snow falling on windowsills, hitch-hiking, ice on the river, Chinook winds, the Rockies, and the bottle on the table. Yeah, country.

 

He tried the Greenwich Village scene and a stint in La-La Land, but they didn’t take. He went back to Ontario and spent most of his life no further from his home in Orillia than Toronto, 90 minutes to the south. On “Highway Songs” he sang:  …headin’ north across that line/Is the only time I’m flyin’.  Because he stuck, unlike Canadian-born stalwarts like Drake, April Lavigne, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot became a symbol of Canadian pride. I was in a B & B in Ottawa just before COVID and got into a music discussion one morning and talked about how Lightfoot almost died of an aneurysm. When I mentioned that I had interviewed him twice, the room hushed: “You interviewed Gord!?” I got so much cred I didn’t have the heart to tell them I only earned $50 a pop from those interviews.  

 

 

He was no saint. Gord married thrice and freely admitted he was a heartless Lothario in his youth. Listen to “I’m Not Sayin’” or “For Lovin’ Me.” They’re  catchy and brutally honest, but are definitely bad boy fantasies. You sometimes wonder how they came from the pen of the same guy who wrote the gorgeous “Song For a Winter’s Night” or the regret-filled “If I Could read Your Mind,” both of which vie for the status of my all-time favorite Lightfoot composition.

 

I could go on and on about Gordon Lightfoot, but I’ll just say that the news of his death hit me like a line from “one of his songs: I’ll be alright/I’ll be alright if I don’t have to smile.

 

Rob Weir

Dave Barry's Swamp Story Releases Tomorrow

 

 

SWAMP STORY (May 2, 2023)

By Dave Barry

Simon & Schuster, 320 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

Dave Barry is a funny man, a talent he wields by writing id-driven broad humor. Like old-time comics such as Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield, he throws one thing after another at us until we chuckle despite ourselves. Swamp Story is another tale set in one of Barry’s favorite lampoon targets: Florida.

 

As the title suggests, Swamp City is set in the Everglades. If you’re thinking alligators, snakes, and sinkholes, you’re on the right track. Add gold hunters, eccentrics, con artists, lovable losers, and lawlessness and you’re well on your way. There’s something about isolated spits of land abutting sinking mud, marshland, and deep water that make them refuges for the socially marginal. That’s where we find Phil and Stu trying everything to eke out a living, including hiring themselves out for children’s birthday parties. Only a besotted divorced guy in need of money like Phil would dare to show up for a Frozen-themed party armed only with an over-sized Dora the Explorer head. Let’s just say that it didn’t go well except on TikTok.

 

Meet Jesse Braddock, who plays the role of the beautiful golden girl who made bad decisions. She grew up in Connecticut comfort, rebelled against her parents, and ran off with a guy they warned her was a jerk. Now she has a baby, Willa, is living in the Everglades, and boyfriend Slater really is a jerk. He proves that by being more interested in shooting video of a giant python wiggling toward Jesse and Willa than in chasing away the snake. No wonder she likes to walk paths through the Everglades to get away from him and his crazy friend Kark. In one trip, she happens upon something that might be linked to a legend of buried Confederate gold. If only she had known she was being stalked by Billy and Duck Campbell, two rednecks, who plot to force her to show them where she found it, beat her up (or worse), and make off with the gold.

 

Now meet brothers Ken and Brad, the owners of Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer, a business begun by their father and uncle. To say that it’s out of the way and was an idea whose time never came understates matters. It’s one of those eclectic general stores that dot the American landscape where you stop in hope of lunch, glance at the décor and decades out-of-date dusty merchandise, and decide all you really need is gas and a soda. Phil’s Internet notoriety gives Ken an idea. After reading about Michigan Melon Heads–diminutive humanoids with gigantic heads who are rumored to be fierce–Ken convinces Phil to spray paint the Dora head, creates a film crew, and launches a hoax. He uploads deliberately blurry videos to suggest that Melon Head Monsters have migrated to Florida. Before you can say “‘Glades Man,” the handle for the shirtless and brainless Slater, 8.3 million people have seen the clips and curiosity seekers pour into the area and stop at Bortle Brothers.

 

The plot thickens and so does the cast. Patsy Hartmann was once a star TV reporter for Miami’s Channel 8 until a younger anchor forced Patsy out of the limelight. Guess who is tapped to go to the Everglades to cover the Melon Head story and stay for the annual python roundup? There is also Andrew Pletzger, an egoistic real estate developer; Eric Turpake, an attorney as crooked as a Bortle Brothers fishhook; an obese former University of Florida football player and purveyor of drugs nicknamed Pinky; U.S. Secretary of the Interior Whitt Chastain, who hates the outdoors; and python wrangler DeWayne “Skeeter” Toobs, who arrives for his interview on a runaway airboat and with his “emotional support boar” Buddy. Danger abounds in the Everglades, perhaps none as ominous as a crime gang led by Kristov Berliuz.

 

What could go wrong? Throw this many offbeat people into one small part of swamp and the sky’s the limit. In the hands of Dave Barry, though, even danger is a subject for absurdism and cheap laughs. His Florida makes Texas seem like a bastion of choir boys by comparison. Aside from occasional off-color language and comeuppance to those upon whom we’d wish it, though, Barry prefers belly laughs to distress. We laugh along with him because we know that he knows that everything is meant as a big goof, not high art.

 

Rob Weir