Movies That Settle: Swingers
Hey, welcome back and happy Spring, if you live in a part of the world where April is a Spring month. Wherever you are, I hope things are going well.
Before the actual topic of this post, I wanted to talk a little about The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, a podcast that I am part of that I always say is “my podcast” when I post the link here, but that seems rather elitist to say. Although my fellow podcasters do refer to me as the Commander.
Anyway, the next episode of Leaguepodcast will be our 500th, as far as our numbeirng system goes. We have had many interviews and what we call Special Edition Podcasts that we haven’t always numbered, plus Claynferno and I have covered the last few seasons of What We Do in the Shadows and Curb Your Enthusiasm on separate podcasts, but in the same feed. Point is, I have personally done a lot of freakin’ podcasts, over the last fifteen or so years, so if you need someting to listen to and like witty banter by old friends about movies and TV shows and the like, now is as good a time as any to give it a listen.
And now on with the show!
We all know that all things age, some age well and some do not. But everything and everyone ages. Especially me. I pretty much thought I was old even when I was relatively young, so now that I am in my late 40’s, well, I’m in my late 40’s. Make of that what you will.
But something I have been thinking about recently when it comes to movies and music is not necessarily the age of the piece, but when you experience it. In Nick Hornby’s Songbook, he writes that he does not consider himself a Bob Dylan fan (he then goes on to list about 20 Dylan albums that he owns because any fan of music should), but he wishes he could have been 19 in 1966 when “Like a Rolling Stone” was released to experience what it did for the culture. Personally, I wish I was alive and part of the movie-going public in 1975 to see Jaws, a movie recognized as the first summer blockbuster. Would I have been afraid to go to the beach, like a lot of people were? I don’t know. I do like the beach. Maybe I should pick another old movie that impacted the world. Planet of the Apes, maybe? Beneath the Planet of the Apes?
A lot of click-bait articles and people who don’t know better like to say things like, “That movie definitely wouldn't get made today,” but they are usually only saying that because it may offend a certain segment of society. And they are not wrong, but also a lot of movies wouldn’t get made today for a lot of reasons. Then again, Hollywood only seems to put out remakes and reboots these days, so anything is possible. But just because a movie wouldn’t get made today doesn’t mean it should be avoided. Most of them are just a product of their time.
Like 1998’s Swingers, for example. I don’t know if it would be made today, but not because it wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test because, let’s face it, there aren’t very many conversations in Swingers between male characters where they don’t talk about women (I feel like I should create a test for that.) No, It probably wouldn’t be made because the main crux of the movie - meeting women while out at a bar or a party and then asking for their phone number - is not really something people think or do or care about these days. Perhaps one day you could make a period piece about it. But movies are about stakes, and if the writer can get the stakes across effectively, then they have a good movie. I’ve never traveled through time, but I can enjoy Back to the Future. I’ve never dressed up as a clown to murder people (well, not yet), but I love The Dark Knight.
But when I was twenty-one (...It was a very good year…), one thing I was overly concerned with was meeting women while out at a bar or a party and then asking for their phone number. Scoring a number was a huge deal back then. And then the dance would begin. As in the movie, my friends and I would debate about how long to wait before you called the person, because to quote Vinve Vaughn’s Trent, “if you call too soon you might scare off a nice baby who's ready to party.” Ok, I never said that (out loud, anyway), but I probably said some things that would be considered sexist and wrong. But it was definitely a worry that straight men (and probably everyone in the dating pool) had about coming on too strong. And it’s been a long time since I was on an internet date, but I’m pretty sure there are similar issues now about reading a message someone has sent. I’m sure conversations about if you read the message, then the person will know, so you have to keep it marked as “Unread” still happen. So that aspect is timeless.
Believe it or not, however, there is more to Swingers than just meeting women. One thing that might go over some people’s heads is how “L.A.” the movie is. In my brief time in the city of Angels in 1998, I experienced a lot of what the characters in Swingers experienced: going to Vegas one night just for fun happens all the time. So does lying about your status in the film industry, like when Trent tells two women that he’s trying to impress that he is a producer, which is also perfect because most people don’t even know what a producer does, but they know that they see a bunch of them in the credits of every movie. And of course, driving everywhere, and taking your own car out to a party or bar, because if you do get lucky, you don’t have to worry about deserting your friends. This is obviously way before ride-sharing, and cabs in L.A. are just not a thing. My roommate and I even got dressed up and tried to go to The Dresden one night, only to discover there was a line, so we just went to our regular bar instead. We didn’t have the panache to recreate the Goodfellas kitchen scene like Trent and his boys.
Regardless of the city, though, a lot of young men in the late 90’s lived like these characters. While most of us saw ourselves as the smooth-talking Trent of their friend group, most of us, myself included, were probably more like Jon Favreau’s Michael… and maybe not even that cool. In his breakout role, Favreau plays Michael perfectly as the lovable loser-ish guy who misses his ex-girlfriend and is just trying to make his career and love life work in a new environment, and he decided to pick the hardest environment in the country in which to do those two things. And in most scenes, you are really rooting for him, but there are others where you just want to strangle him (with a phone cord, because some phones still had them back then) The obvious one is the answering machine scene, where Michael calls a girl he just met over and over again, basically going through every stage of a relationship with her answering machine, because the machine keeps cutting him off. That scene is still really hard to watch, all these years later. Maybe it’s a good thing there is no modern-day equivalent for that one. There was no backspace key for an answering machine.
(Don’t watch if you have crippling second-hand awkwardess)
But to me, the movie isn’t really about how to score with women, as it seems like nobody in the movie even has sex. The eternal debate I have in my head is whether or not Trent really cares about Michael or if he is that friend that you enjoy hanging out with but they also kind of make you feel better about your life choices (Admit it, you have at least one.) Trent seems to be patronizing him sometimes, like at the casino when he declares that Mikey is the “big winner” and then raises his arm in triumph. But he also seems to be giving him a genuine pep talk every time he tells him he is so money and he doesn’t even know it. And my favorite pep talk is when he tells Michael that when he approaches a woman in a bar, he doesn’t want him to be “the guy in the PG-13 movie that everyone really hopes makes it happen.” He tells him he wants him to be “the guy in the rated-R movie.” Is it a little problematic by today’s standards? Maybe. But I don’t think Trent is trying to win any feminism awards. That was just what guys talked about in the 90's, if you were lucky enough to have a friend like Trent.
Yes, I usually fall on the side of “friend” in the Trent/Michael argument. Would Trent take a bullet for him when the thugs wanted to throw down and their friend Sue pulled a gun? Who knows? But as a wing-man, in the situations they usually found themselves in, you couldn’t ask for a better person to have at your side. Maybe I’m being naive, but I want to believe that Trent wasn’t just blowing smoke when he told him that he was money. And yes, Michael (and I) needed to hear those things, and that’s what friendship is really all about. True friends tell you what you need to hear when you need to hear it.
As the movie goes along, Trent is exposed as a mere mortal. After Michael exchanges numbers with a woman (Heather Graham, no less) by actually being himself, and even swing dancing his way into her heart (thanks to lessons he took with his ex, ironically), it is a very drunk Trent who embarrasses himself in a diner, standing on the table and swinging his jacket around. And in the final scene, when Michael is telling Trent that he elected to take a phone call from Graham instead of his ex, whom he’d been pining for the entire movie, Trent interrupts him because he thinks a woman across the restaurant is making eyes at him. When we learn that the woman is actually making eyes at her infant child, Trent is again embarrassed, and the audience is left to believe that Michael is going to be ok, and it is Trent who might need the pep talk. It’s a nice happy ending, if, to quote Indiana Jones, you believe in that sort of thing.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Trent is not Michael’s only friend. I’m not talking about his fellow actor Charles, who appears briefly but utters one of my favorite lines, of the movie and of life, when Michael sees him at a crowded bar and asks him if he wants to go to a party with them later: “This place is dead, anyway.” Side note: I just learned that the actor who played Charles, Alex Desert is now the voice of Carl and Lou on The Simpsons. I haven’t watched it lately, but I really hope one of those characters says the iconic line at least once in an episode.
No, the friend I’m referring to is Ron Livingston’s Rob, who we learn followed Michael to L.A. from New York, chasing the same dream. We first see him advising Michael on how to let his ex-girlfriend know that he is over her by actually getting over her. It’s actually a very funny scene that we used to see a lot back in that era, and it definitely sets the tone for the entire movie. It is hinted that Rob had a similar long-term relationship go sour, but his real problem isn’t with women, but with his career. He mostly laments that it was suggested that he audition to be Goofy (as Charles points out, “At least it’s Disney, right?”) Rob is upset because he was Hamlet in an Off-Broadway play, and he says he was good, and now he is relegated to Goofy. He even claims that he would prefer to be Mickey, “an icon.” The irony is that, in Rob’s final scene, he says that he actually got turned down for Goofy, and that he “would have killed for that part.”
I don't know if there is a name for the type of character trope that Rob represents in movies. He’s not exactly a Manic Pixie Dream Guy, because if he was more manic maybe he would have gotten the Goofy role. But he is that sage character that helps the male lead get through their crisis. He’s not exactly Samwise or Short Round, but he saves the day after Michael sequesters himself in his home after the embarrassing answering machine incident. Rob doesn’t even know about that, even suggesting he call her since it’s been two days, but he knows that Michael misses his ex-girlfriend, and Rob has heard quite enough about that. Michael mentions that he is thinking about moving back to New York, and Rob gives him a different kind of pep talk. He tells Michael that would be a bad idea because he is actually doing great, career-wise. He reminds Michael that he has an agent, and that he even got into the Union (I assume he is referring to the Screen Actors Guild, which is no small feat.) And the real capper is when tells him that he doesn’t look at what he has. He only looks at what he doesn’t have. And that’s the kind of friend we all need once in a while.
So, people can feel what they want about Swingers. Some might think it is just about meeting women, which trivializes them (there aren’t any real female characters of note, I will admit, but there aren’t any in Shawshank Redemption, either, and you can’t convince me that movie isn’t awesome). You may think that it’s not really relevant because of all the swing music and because that’s not how people meet anymore (I remember from my internet dating days, almost all of the women I looked at said that they were “tired of the bar scene.” Probably because of experiences with guys like Trent.), and that is a valid point, as well. But I prefer to think that Swingers is about friendship, and helping your friends when they’re down. Michael was in a bad place when it came to his ex-girlfriend at the beginning of the movie, but he got by with a little help from his friends, and found the confidence to land a beautiful baby. And he didn’t even have to tell her he was a producer.
What do people think of Swingers these days? Am I over-analyzing what is essentially a dumb buddy flick? Is it another case of me rambling on about the “good old days” even though things are actually still good? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to like and subscribe, and check out my wares at Red Bubble and my comic book, and be excellent to each other.