Have Perplexity, Will Travel
There is no easy way to calculate the worst job in the movies – gaffer, key grip, and best boy arouse suspicion because they do not spell out what these fine people actually do, always a bad sign, and ‘fourth stunt body double’ gives the impression of a plucky but not particularly bright gentleman taking on the action sequences that the first three guys simply refuse to do – but I think I know which is the best.
This fellow – he is always a man – may be the sidekick of the detective hero. He may be the police captain who is sometimes a partner and sometimes a rival to that same hero. He may be a fellow from back home who is trying to track down the main character in Europe and bring him back home to his family. He may be a member at the main character’s club who has a casual friendship going with this main character.
Whatever his occupation, relationship to the hero, age, looks, manner, style, or accent, he has one main characteristic.
He just doesn’t get it.
For the better part of the movie you can always count on this character to miss the key scrap of dialogue between the guy at the newspaper stand and the crooked cop, the telltale small pen flashlight cased in onyx that seems to keep changing hands, the unusual shade of polish on the nails of the brunette who hates the blonde but still kind of admires her moxie, and the caliber of the slug that they dug out of Big Jimmy.
He doesn’t start out so perplexed.
There is a point there in the early going of the movie where he seems to be tracking with all the action.
He gets that the mysterious redhead has a history that doesn’t quite add up, and senses that there is more to the relationship between the counterfeiter from Des Moines and the clerk at the bank than is apparent to the casual observer.
He may even, at the very limits of his understanding, feel that there is something just not right in the way the maître d’ keeps eyeing the combination lock on the safe that the owner of the restaurant, Madame Toussaint, keeps tucked under her desk in the back office, and that the butler at the country estate walks with the same limp as “Hardcase” Ronnie Brackwell, King of the London Underworld, as the papers have dubbed him.
But, boy, that is about it.
This fellow has a certain amount of savvy but no more, and it is used up at just about the time the opening credits have concluded.
It would have been better for him to dole it out frugally, for these other details that the camera lingers on – the shade of fingernail polish, the safe in the office, the butler’s limp and so on – turn out to be red herrings intended to throw law enforcement and the rival gangs off the track.
This fellow – again, note that he is always a man, for the makers of the movie and the general viewing public are in accord that a woman just couldn’t be so dumb – having used up all his observational and deductive powers a moment or two after the starting gun sounds, is at an absolute loss for the rest of the movie.
When he thinks he and his companion are being tailed, his companion looks over at him and says, “That’s what we want them to think, Jake. Actually, we’re the ones tailing them.”
Children in the street come up to him on a dare and tell him that the numbers jotted down on the back of the torn envelope aren’t a phone number at all but coordinates on a map of the floor of the ocean, and he nods his head meaningfully as if it all makes sense now, while the kid runs away laughing and collects his winnings from the rest of the gang.
Things unfold so quickly and the people around him are just so damned clever and such masters of disguises and what not that past a point he just throws up his hands and goes with the flow, like a leaf that has dropped from an overhanging tree into a rushing stream.
Finally, at the end of the movie, the hero sits this fellow down, perhaps on a park bench, perhaps at this club that they both belong to – have I said that he is always a man and why that is so? I think I did, for I know I meant to mention it – and goes through the whole scheme scene by scene, helpfully aided by the moviemakers themselves, who flash brief shots in a kind of flashback montage laying out once and for all what was really going on.
There is a good deal of sleight of hand in this sequence:
Some deft pocketing of purloined ancient coins from the bottom drawer of Cavendish’s desk who used to work for the British Secret Service, Cavendish that is, not the bottom drawer
A guard dog whose ears have been plugged with softened wax for the duration of the evening so that he cannot hear
Laser beams and anti-laser beams that battle for dominance in The Artifacts Room
A score of whiskey barrels just large enough to house a score of smallish men, presuming they find a way to breathe underwater, or in this case, underbourbon
And electronic listening devices secreted in the cork of the world’s most valuable bottle of wine.
These items are just for starters, but you get the picture: nothing is as it seems, you have to pay attention to what didn’t happen more than to what did happen, and it is amazing how quickly a woman can change from a green-eyed redhead to a chocolate-eyed brunette given a moment or two in the restroom facilities at the local bus stop.
“And so you see, Baxter, the Jewel of the Red Nile was never properly in the safe at all, nor, as some people thought, was it in the small cosmetics bag that was transferred from The Countess to the mysterious gamekeeper in the woods. It was, as you clearly now see, safely ensconced in the Convent of the Sisters of Hope, carried closely by Sister Marie herself, who in the last war was an integral part of The Resistance. You do see, don’t you, Baxter?Baxter?”
Well at this point poor Baxter is nearly weeping.
He bursts out. “And that’s it, right? There’s absolutely no more twists and turns, no more double-crosses, no more disguises, and no more corrupt plastic surgeons? You’re the person I think you are, right, and so are all these other fine people around me? That’s it, that’s it, that’s it? Right?”
And the hero at this point assures Baxter that this is indeed it, slaps him heartily on the shoulder, and tells him what a capital fellow he is, and next time they have an adventure together he promises to keep him a little more informed along the way.
My point, my point in all this, and it seems to have taken me a while to get here, is that someone plays this Baxter.
He plays him with all the furrowed brows and puzzled looks that the part calls for.
His eyes fog over with a lack of understanding and he is forever looking off into the middle distance to hide the fact that his mental gears have not only stopped turning but are now turning in reverse. He is, in short, dumber now than he was a moment ago, and though it scarcely seems possible, he will be dumber still another moment further on than he is now.
His incomprehension is not just play acting, either. This guy really doesn’t get it! You can see it in his eyes and in the tilt of the head that everything that is going on around him is essentially beyond him.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I recognize that look. I in fact see it in the mirror every day. My features comfortably arrange themselves into this portfolio of baffled expressions, which you may call Resting Clueless Face if it pleases you.
The phrases, “Say what, now?” and “So you mean that…?” spring naturally to my lips.
And, an important point, I do not need a finely tuned jewel heist caper to bring out the bafflement. Everyday life does just fine in this regard. This should tell any director worth his salt that here is a fellow that can hit the ground running. It is like hiring a boxer for a small part in a boxing movie.
In this case, hire a thrown for a loop fellow for a thrown for a loop movie.
Though not all of us have gone to a fancy actor school, natural talent still has to count for something.
Hiring someone actually clueless to play a clueless character is the next step in realism for the innovative director looking to make his mark. They only have to pick up the phone.
