Love and Loneliness in “Arthur” (1981) – Part 1

It’s awful being alone, according to millionaire playboy Arthur Bach, and nobody should be alone. And so he forestalls this feeling by getting drunk, picking up prostitutes, and laughing at his own jokes. Yet love in its true form can be a lonely business, as his servant Hobson reminds him, because it involves growing up, getting serious, and taking care of someone other than oneself … only to lose them—in one way or another—to the inevitable advance of time. What is it about working class Linda Marolla, whom Arthur first encounters in the process of shoplifting a tie for her father’s birthday, that gets him beyond this impasse? Wes & Erin discuss Steve Gordon’s 1981 romantic comedy “Arthur,” and why, if you want to learn to become independent, sometimes the best that you can do is to fall in love. Upcoming Episodes: Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt) Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Awful being alone, according to millionaire playboy Arthur Bach. And nobody should be alone. And so he forestalls this feeling by getting drunk, picking up prostitutes, and laughing at his own jokes. Yet love in its true form can be a lonely business, as his servant Hobson reminds him, because it involves growing up, getting serious, and taking care of someone other than oneself, only to lose them in one way or another to the inevitable advance of time. What is it about working class Linda Marolla, whom Arthur first encounters in the process of shoplifting a tie for her father's birthday, that gets him beyond this impasse? Today we discuss Steve Gordon's 1981 romantic comedy Arthur, and why, if you want to learn to become independent, sometimes the best that you can do is fall in love. This is Wes Alwan, and this is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Erin, it struck me watching this film again recently, rewatching it. I think I had seen it many, many times as a child. I would have seen this not long after coming to the United States in 1980. And I think it was probably on HBO or something. And that was something my little sister and I did. This is back when they had little guides, little like actual physical guides to what was on hbo. The same thing would be on like seven times at different times of the day. And my sister and I probably watch watched the same movie multiple times, a lot of hbo. But anyway, I've probably seen Arthur countless times. And so it's sort of one of those movies that's, you know, kind of woven into my psyche because of my childhood experience with it. I hadn't seen it for many years after that, and I don't know recently I what it is that it occurred to me that I wanted to watch it again. But I did. And then I suggested it to you for an episode and I was surprised when you said you were a fan, although it sounds like we had talked about it before and I had forgotten you were a fan or something. But yeah. What's your history with this movie? 2:39 Erin: My mom loves it, I think, and my, my grandparents too, maybe. So I grew up watching it, like if it was on or something. I would watch, and I always thought it was really funny, and then I understood it a little bit better when I was a high schooler or something like that. Watched it a few times, like, probably had it on in the background at a sleepover or something. It's just one of those movies that, like, was around growing up with my. Yeah, when I think about it, it's similar to several movies that my family really likes. Our official family movie, you know, we should have a sponsorship or something, is My Cousin Vinny. But this one's up there for movies that my family enjoys. And another one is the Thin man, which is a similar. You know, the subgenre of alcoholic comedy is. We can place this in the Thin man in that category, I think, which 3:27 Wes: we're gonna do soon. 3:29 Erin: Yeah. Yeah, we should do it around Christmas. 3:30 Wes: And we should do Lost weekend. 3:34 Erin: Less. Less of a comedy, more of a documentary. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know why. Like, I think this. I think, like, Dudley Moore's whole shtick in this is just really funny. There was a comedian back in the day who used. I forget his name now. Gosh, my dad will be so mad at me that I forgot this. But anyway, he was always on, like, the Dean Martin show, like, the roasts, or. He was always on TV, like, television specials in the 70s. And he was this guy who. His shtick was that he would always play a drunk person, you know, so during one of the celebrity roasts, he would come up and he would be totally sloshed, giving a tribute to whoever they were roasting. And he would always, like, not know who was being roasted and, you know, would get confused multiple times. And I wish I could think of this guy's name. Anyway, my grandfather couldn't stand him. Hated him, like, thought he was awful, thought that he wasn't convincing as a drunk. But he loved the Thin man, and I think he. I think he really liked this movie. Like, he. He would like the John Gielgud character in this movie best of all. But he had a high bar for what was acceptable drunkenness in acting. And that guy from the 70s did not cut it, but this apparently did. 4:39 Wes: Yeah, it's a real challenge even to do, I think, a drunk for a skit. I just see that as a very challenging thing to do as a sketch comedian actor. But to sustain it for a whole movie and also to make the character sympathetic, not only an extreme alcoholic, but sympathetic, and to have the whole effect be comedic is really, really quite an accomplishment. Dudley Moore. It's Interesting. I didn't know much about his career other than this movie. It turns out he's a composer and he was in this sketch comedy troupe in England that I think predated Monty Python or overlapped, but predated. It's called beyond the Fringe. I don't know how much you know about him, but he was a diminutive 5 foot 2 guy. He had, had, had, I think a club foot in childhood that he got made fun of for and a limp that he got rid of but was always self conscious of. What I'm trying to get at is there's a number of qualities he has that I think makes him one of the few people that could have pulled off this role. It's an amazing screenplay, I think. I think it's like a very close to perfect type of screenplay, but I just, I can't imagine many people pulling it off. So just looking at the Wikipedia page on the movie, Moore was not the top candidate for, for this role. Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, John Travolta, Richard Dreyfuss, James Caan. It would have been a dis. I mean, I can't imagine the film not being a disaster. 6:09 Erin: Seems like the standard for that is men who were alive in 1981. That's what they were looking for. 6:15 Wes: I mean, they also considered John Belushi. Okay, yeah, but even, even John Belushi. I think part of the problem is the character has to be adorable because there's no way to pull off someone who's so alcoholic. And the implied layer of deep sadness and tragedy underneath that and the potential destructiveness of that. I mean, you have a number of tasks, right, to make the film believable. You have to be able to say, this guy, despite being such an incredible alcoholic, has all these redeeming qualities and is capable of love in the right circumstances and all of that. And then the other part of it is just for him to be likable at all, in spite of his being a drinker and a playboy. Anyway, I just think this is a case of a movie where fortuitous, perfect casting really makes it work. Makes it incredible. 7:06 Erin: I think that's right. I guess I think of this movie, though, as like an advertisement for alcoholism. Like it's a happy alcohol movie in that way. It's like the Thin Man. The comedy comes from the drunkenness, like most of the comedy comes from it. What I like about this film is that it doesn't contain the usual plot contrivances of contemporary romantic comedy. Right. So extended duplicity on the part of one or both of the people in the central pair, there's some sort of misunderstanding that creates comic situations and then conflict. So in a more typical plot, we might expect that Arthur would conceal his engagement from Linda. You know, their relationship would develop, and then there would be a dramatic scene. You know, he would be, like, dodging calls from Susan, you know, whatever, you know, and then there would be a dramatic scene in which she would find out the existence of Susan, but, you know, run off before Arthur could explain. And then he would be forced to choose Linda and poverty in order to win her back. Instead, like, he tells her almost immediately that he's engaged to somebody else. So the comedy has to come from something else. It basically comes from the alcoholism and the one liners. And in that regard, I think it's, you know, it's really, really similar to the Thin, which is a comedy murder mystery. So the weight of the comedy there. There's no romantic comedy plot like in the Thin man. The main couple is already married. And the comic elements are just that while they solve the murder, they like to drink all day long, basically, and flirt with each other. So that's it. And so the comedy is just one liners and alcohol and one liners about alcohol. So, yeah, I think there's even an oblique reference to Thin man at some point. 8:48 Wes: Oh, interesting. 8:48 Erin: In Arthur. 8:49 Wes: Yeah. Looking at old review reviews of this movie, I saw one negative review that just saw it as a bunch of gags strung together, which is inaccurate, and then another one which was appalled by the treatment of alcoholism as if it was just this casual, unimportant thing, which is a moralistic approach. And of course, yes. Could this movie be made today without highlighting the out and making something, a serious subplot of the alcohol? Of course not. Because the moralistic tendency in the culture is far too strong to let the alcoholism kind of fly under the radar in the way it does in this movie. This is one of these movies which could be made in the 80s, but probably not anymore. I know they tried to remake it with Russell Brand. I didn't look at that. It sounds like it was a disaster. And as you can imagine. And again, Russell Brand is not the right type of guy to do that. If he is adorable, he's not adorable in the right kind of way. There's got to be almost an innocent boyish quality, which is precisely what Dudley Moore has. But, yeah, I don't think it's a real criticism of the film to say that they don't make enough of the alcoholism. I think it would have ruined the film if they tried to. And it's obviously a problem. And it's a problem that he has to overcome by finding love. And he convincingly does that. And the roots of the fact that that's possible for him are right. In Hobson and his relationship to Hobson, he had someone who could play a real parental role in his life in the way his ruthless parents did not. This is another interesting tidbit. I think the director was bothered by the fact that Dudley Moore had an English accent in the film. It doesn't quite make sense because the father has an American accent. But it was too much to play the drunk and do the American accent at the same time. I think for more. And so they left it. And then one could take the implication, well, he got the accent from Hobson, so it kind of works out perfectly. But you have these two countervailing forces of someone who is spoiled and lonely and uses alcohol to deal with that fact, and then the possibility of love. And if it becomes about the alcoholism as a kind of pathology, some sort of pathologized mental health thing, and the way we might treat it today, you lose out on the, that very important thematic element that love is what's missing and love is what has to save the day. 11:19 Erin: I sort of assumed that after the credits roll, he sort of keeps drinking. Like he doesn't, he doesn't have to stop drinking. You know, it's very tied to the money, it seems to me. Like the movies that have happy drunk. 11:31 Wes: He promises Linda he's going to be a good boy. 11:35 Erin: He's, he's a good boy when he drinks. It's fine. No, these movies work where there's so called happy. Alcoholism is where people have money, right? And they don't have to work, so they can afford to drink all day. Like it doesn't become tragic because they're missing work or they're, you know, they're going on a bender and nobody can find them and meanwhile their family is starving or something. Right. Like the money and the alcohol, I think, are tied together. This is the same in the Thin Man. Like they basically like solve the murder plots either while drunk or just like in between drinks. But they're super wealthy couple, so that's what makes this funny. 12:10 Wes: But drinking is a competitor for intimacy in a way. It's like they, they bind to the same receptors, so to speak. The two compete with each other and people substitute the social with alcohol, which is interesting because of course, socially, culturally, socializing and alcohol are associated with each other. Alcohol can make it funner, easier, whatever. But alcohol in a way can become the object of desire. It can give one a sense of togetherness, of not being alone because of its disinhibiting effects. It can kind of create a sense of togetherness even when no one is there. So in that sense, I don't think the potential tragedy is avoidable. Even if he's rich. 12:55 Erin: Well, I just mean that in the end he doesn't have to give up the wealth. Right. And for me, in the film, the way that alcoholism and wealth are together, the way they kind of have to be together, it seems to me to be like he can still have his. He could still have fun, right? He could still be rich and avoid poverty and have fun. And that seems to me to be tied with like the money and the alcohol are kind of a two. They're kind of a package deal. 13:22 Wes: Yeah, don't worry. I'm not envisioning him joining AA and becoming one of the people who's for whom sobriety is drink so much. That does not sound like fun. 13:33 Erin: Well, we see him use alcohol to cope, right? Like he has to get drunk in order to meet his father. He, you know, whenever he goes into a situation he doesn't want to be in, he has to be drunk in order to force himself to, to do these things. Right? And we see that he gives it up when he's taking care of Hobson. But yeah, a teetotaling life seems like a, like a sad one for him as much as a drunken life. 13:54 Wes: Well, yeah, and I think we should take your idea seriously that his drinking is over determined. We can give it some pathological explanations, but it can also just be fun. You get a sense of that fun through the entire movie. He likes to laugh, he likes to joke around, he likes to have fun, he likes women. And then so, you know, the movie starts with his laugh. He's in a car and you just hear. Before you see Arthur, you hear this maniacal laughing as the opening credits roll and the wonderful romantic theme song. This is an incredible. I love this song. How do you feel about it? 14:29 Erin: It's okay. No, Soft rock is not. 14:32 Wes: Burt Bacharach co wrote this. 14:34 Erin: Yeah. I hate Burt Bacharach. 14:35 Wes: You don't like Burt Bacharach? Oh my God, I didn't know that. 14:40 Erin: But anyway, I wasn't raised in an elevator. I don't like Burt. 14:45 Wes: Interesting. Yeah, so the first thing we hear is his laugh. And then of course, that's something that continues through the Whole movie. And I don't know. Do we hear it at the end? At the end, we hear him. We get a reference to the driving through the park. You know, how I love the park. Which he says it's a callback to what happens in the beginning of the movie, I think, when he's just picked up a prostitute. Yeah. So we kind of get bookended with the park, which is a kind of romantic image, but it's uncompleted when the movie begins. It's romance that is unfulfilled and at the end, fulfilled. A nice image, I think. But I think we're not getting the same book ending with his maniacal laughter. I mean, what we do get is him. I think Linda has the last laugh, actually. He makes a joke about. Well, he says he turned down the money. And then she takes it rather casually, actually. I felt like the father in that moment, you know, 15:42 Erin: so great. 15:42 Wes: You know, even rewatching it, it's. And then, of course, you know, I took the money. I mean, I'm not crazy. And then she laughs. And I think, that's the. That's the last laugh in the movie. But. But laughter pervades all of this. And the gags, I think they're not just cheap and disconnected and sketch comedy bits strung together. 16:00 Erin: No, not at all. I paid a lot of attention to that opening scene with Gloria, which is, I think, the name of the prostitute. Right. And. Well, first of all, that in itself is a little bit of an advertisement for alcohol. Like, she's definitely not amused with him until she starts drinking his Scotch and then she really gets on board. It's like. It's like telling us how we should be watching the movie or something. Like, just have a glass of Scotch in your hand and you'll think this is hilarious. I really like what happens in that opening sequence when he goes to the Plaza and he runs into his aunt and uncle. And I guess it's his Uncle Peter and his Aunt Pearl. But because of his accent and it's slurring his words, it sounds like he's saying Aunt Paul, like Peter and Paul. Anyway, it's this great microcosm of the plot because they are trying to tell him to grow up, you know, and they could see how drunk he is, and they're kind of, like, annoyed with him, and he just ignores them and takes it in stride. But anyway, this one one liner I was really interested in when he says to Gloria, well, Gloria asks him, how rich are you? And he says, I wish I had a dime for Every dime I had. I love that, I love that. I tried to pick it apart and I was thinking, okay, so there's like longing and satisfaction within the same one liner, right? Like the fantasy one liner is like, I wish I had a dime for what. But actually he does have so many dimes, right? So it uses like this apparatus of this fantasy wish fulfillment expression to actually express what is like a reality for Arthur. And I was thinking about how this drunkenness too, like, you know, connecting his being drunk and saying this to his wealth, it seems less like a desire to escape at times in the film. There are times when he uses it to escape, but in this instance and in these ebullient moments, it seems less like a desire to run from this wealth or this responsibility than an expression of the wealth itself. Since he does take so much satisfaction too from being rich. Right. It allows him to have a lot of fun and to have a lot of toys. I see this something as like I wrote, I wrote in my notes like a high of satiety or something like that rather than an escapist high, like the ebullience he gets from having his needs met or having a good deal of them met anyway. And something similar I think is happening in the script when he jokes and then immediately pronounces his joke funny. It's like he's fulfilled. Like he's comedian and audience, right? So he's immediately like he wishes for something and then he finds that he already has it. You know, I wish I had a dime for every dime I have. Oh, I actually have everything I need. Like I'm totally self fulfilled. So this high of like a sense of completion or a sense of fulfillment, obviously he needs something. The whole plot is about the fact that he actually needs someone. He needs Linda, and to a certain extent he needs Hobson. Right, but that gets, well, he needs him quite a bit. But I mean, going forward that sort of gets transferred a bit. But there's something here about his desires being met and him pronouncing that fun and good rather than he's not inherently corrupted by this. He maintains like a childish love of having his needs met and a satisfaction at that rather than becoming gimlet eyed about it or becoming corrupted by his needs being met all the time. 19:13 Wes: Yeah, one could say, well, he's spoiled, his development has been arrested and he's a man child. But there are benefits to staying a child as well, which is he can hold on to his playfulness. He's not ruthless like his family as his father or his grandmother says, we are a ruthless people. He's not status driven. He's not money driven. Ironically, I mean, he is and he isn't. He doesn't want to lose the money. And I like the fact that the movie, you know, in the end, of course he takes the money. But yeah, he doesn't have to worry about money and he doesn't have to worry about status. So there's that self satisfaction, as you're calling it. I think that's important. The dime joke captures that perfectly. And as you pointed out, and then also finding his own jokes funny, so he can be perfectly happy with making himself laugh. And he laughs in the car at some point with Gloria and she's like, what are you laughing at? And he's just like, oh, sometimes I just think funny things. And then he's laughing in his sleep later on. It's kind of a pure playfulness because he's not just trying to manipulate other people or to use his humor and funniness to get something out of them. It's kind of a self sufficient. He's entertaining himself. He can be good with that. That doesn't of course, solve the problem of love, but it's not a bad thing to have. Not a lot of people have that. You know, there's another element here which is related, which is the class element. So I think it's important that Linda will end up being from working class in the beginning of the movie. Right. There's a kind of gravitation towards people who have different social and economic status than him. So that's the immediate thing we get in the movie is this contrast, this rich guy, these aren't high class call girls. He's just pulling up on the street and picking up street prostitutes. And the other thing we get at the beginning is this sense that alcohol, in a way, he's using it to obliterate his ability to make discrimination. So he says, would the more attractive of you please step forward? Which is great in a sense, it points to a desire to not discriminate, to not make one person feel rejected or left out. But on the other, it points to the fact that his own desire is sort of being obliterated by alcohol, his own ability to discriminate. Then he says, no, actually you're both attractive. With the one who thinks I'm attractive, please step forward. You know, so then it takes into account what it is they want. And then it gets rather poignant because he talks about, I think she says, you know, what do you have in mind? And he starts out with VD and then he says, you know, I want to spend the evening with a stranger who loves me. Which is quite a significant way to put it, right? A stranger who loves me. 22:02 Erin: Yeah. You know the thing about drinking affecting your decision making? That's what Susan's father says to him, right? I don't drink because drinking affects your decision making. And he's like, you may be right, I can't decide. And he says, no one in my family ever drinks. I'm kind of thinking about Susan as the kind of, kind of the mirror image of Arthur actually. Right. Like she doesn't drink, but she's totally self fulfilled. Like she wants Arthur. It's really unclear why that is, but 22:27 Wes: she's entirely self sacrificing. 22:29 Erin: Is that what it is? I think Susan is low key, the most fascinating character in this film because she's so opaque, you know, I mean, you think when you. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be watching this for the first time and the way that she's described by Arthur, you think that she's going to be this really ugly, terrible, bad mannered. Like he calls her an asshole. You know, he implies heavily that she's very ugly. And then you see her and she's fine. She's Jill Eikenberry, right. The only way I can understand her character is by assuming that she just really wants to get married. She's devoted to this idea of having a big wedding and of going through the motions of life and she figures that Arthur is a good person to do that with. So no matter what Arthur does or how he treats her, she's going to be happy because he's wealthy and she gets to have her little like, you know, she's a bit of a princess, right? So she gets to have this big princess wedding and he's the means for her, her to do that. I think that's how we can understand her. But that kind of means that she is also a bit of a cul de sac of a human being who doesn't. I mean, he wants to reach out, right. And make a connection, but is sort of, kind of also thwarting his ability to do that. And his family is thwarting it too, though that's presented as an external constraint that he has to bury Susan. But of course it's entirely internal constraint. It's just Arthur growing up and deciding not to care. Susan is kind of the same way. Like she seems to have no outwardly directed desire. She wants to have a wedding. It's going to be with Arthur, but you could probably replace him with someone else and she wouldn't know the difference. She doesn't seem to really need him or anyone. Right. 24:10 Wes: Well, she's there to serve, you know, when we first hear about her. And this is part of the way the plot element with Gloria is used in the beginning, right? So after the interaction with his aunt and uncle, they're at the table together. And this is where we learn, you know, what the central conflict is. Says there's only one woman for me and I can't stand her. Which is great, right? We don't learn why he can't stand her specifically. We don't know their history in detail. We don't know what it is she sees in him, except that this is just an arranged marriage and their fathers want them to get together and she's going to comply with that. And he doesn't want to comply with that. He wants real love. And it seems as if for Susan, love is all about self erasure or masochism or being a servant, which sounds, in a way, perfect for Arthur. In fact, in that same scene, he says, aren't waiters wonderful? You know, right after he talks about, my father wants me to marry her, but I'm not going to. And then after the waiter comes, he says, aren't waiters wonderful? You ask them for things and they bring them. Same principle as Santa Claus. So he's surrounded by servants. And there's a lot in the movie, of course, that focuses on this relationship between the wealthy and the people who serve them. And Susan seems to want to put herself in the position of a servant. You know, she'll say to him, you know, don't you get it, Arthur? I'm not going anywhere. No matter what you do, I will be here. I'm paraphrasing. I haven't found a place in the script. You know, you'll never be alone. There's nothing you can do to drive me away. And she holds that line to the very end of the movie. The only thing that turns her is when he finally rejects her and says, there's another woman. And when that other woman, Linda, has, you know, has shown up to the wedding. So it's pretty. At that point, it's pretty clear. And then the call is to Daddy. So she reveals herself to be a bit like Arthur in the sense that she's another rich person whose development has been arrested because her capacity for independence, just like his, has been compromised by the fact that there's not enough necessity in her life. Right. Money vitiates necessity that people, they don't have to work, they don't have to become independent, they can rely on daddy all their lives if they want. Or the equivalent $750 million, whatever it is, when he's being threatened by his father, he's going to lose that 750 million. And then another comedic moment. Actually, Susan is a very nice girl. Have you ever seen her face when the light catches it just right? Of course, you can't depend on that light. It's really great. And of course, yes, it's not that she's not good looking, it's that for whatever reason, he's not in love with her. There's not that chemistry. And what we get from the movie is that chemistry for him involves someone of a different class, a different socioeconomic status. And so we should think about how does that complement him. It's right after the scene where his father says, you got to marry Susan that he meets Linda in Bergdorf Goodman. 27:19 Erin: Yeah. I don't think about Bergdorf Goodman as like a site of gift buying. In fact, Linda is there to get, not buy a gift for her father. Right. And yeah, I thought quite a bit about the frequent Santa Claus references in the film and how this maybe, maybe this ties into this laughing at his own jokes thing. Right. Like he seems to be able to be both child and Santa Claus. Right. Like he can bestow his gifts upon himself, but what he really wants to do is be the Santa Claus for someone else that seems to be important 27:48 Wes: to take care of another person. 27:50 Erin: Right, Right. 27:51 Wes: I think he says that to her, to Hobson. I've never taken care of someone else. He says it to Hobson. He's only been taken care of. 27:58 Erin: Yeah. And I guess the fact that Susan doesn't, I mean, it's fascinating that Susan doesn't need him at all. Right. Like she doesn't. It's not like she's a gold digger and needs his money or anything. She is self sufficient on that score. So the class element seems to involve him needing to find someone whose life could actually be improved by his money. Someone who could be helped in that way. 28:16 Wes: Yeah. Well, it's interesting when he sees her, it's really funny what attracts him to her. Right. He sees her, he's like, Hobson, did you see that she stole that tie? It's the perfect crime. Girls don't wear ties. So the idea is that maybe she's a kleptomaniac. 28:36 Erin: It would be perfect if she murdered the ties. 28:38 Wes: You're right. She's just stealing for fun. She's stealing for no reason. So I think you're right to associate this with the dime joke and the finding his own jokes funny because there's a certain self sufficiency. She's not stealing something because she needs something, but she's in that moment, it looks like she's stealing something just for no reason, for the fun of it. It turns out. Right, it's a variation on that. She's stealing to give. She's stealing because out of love. She's stealing to give something to her father. But it's still not selfish. It's still not oriented towards herself. So his way of this, in a way is his pathway to love or to the concept of selflessness. He has to go through the phase. What he's seeing is potentially an act of extreme need at least and selfishness of committing a crime. But then he sees it as something else. He sees it as playful. Playful is the mediating term between need and love. So it's really an act of love. So he's misperceiving it, but he's getting at something important. And I think it's also important to say again with his. I think it's with his father. At some point his father says we're all criminals and, and we get what we want. So there's a parallel to the. Whatever criminal element there is to being filthy rich and to being ruthless and to this low grade criminality of someone who's working class, poor and committing a crime not in the service of exploitation and wealth and status but a crime in the service of love. And then Hobson says something, which is great, by the way, this. Because of course he's noticing that Arthur has misinterpreted the concept of perfect crime. And he says if she murdered the tie, it'd be the perfect crime, strictly speaking. So he says it's not a perfect crime, but it's a good crime. 30:31 Erin: Yeah, I hadn't realized that element of. But of course that he's attracted to her because she's stealing. See, when I watch the scene, I can just tell like she's in this really garish outfit. Right. So she just looks like someone. I mean, that's why she attracts attention. That is a kind of a fascinating. Yeah. 30:49 Wes: Wearing a red hat, a yellow jacket, Cowboy hat. Yeah, Right, red. What color are her pants? 30:56 Erin: I think they're white. Maybe they're white. But she's wearing, you know, she's wearing primary colors actually, come to think of it. I think Is Gloria wearing blue? Sort of like blue and then red and yellow. It's like. 31:07 Wes: It's like red spandex tights and a blue top. Yeah. Very garish. 31:15 Erin: Yeah. 31:16 Wes: Very similar, actually to Linda. Yeah. 31:17 Erin: It's like Arthur is just this little kid who's looking at primary colors on a mobile or something, you know, like he's truly distracted by the shiny object. 31:25 Wes: She's wearing a blue and red striped shirt, a red hat and a yellow coat. And she has this red bandana tied around her neck. 31:32 Erin: Yeah. 31:33 Wes: For some reason I didn't write down the color of her pants, but they're also very contrasting. 31:38 Erin: But anyway, it's obvious to me watching that scene that she's stealing something out of need because of the fact that she doesn't, you know, she's dressed in this really garish way in Bergdorf Goodman. And, you know, Susan has. I think she's usually seen in white. 31:53 Wes: It's like a low class conception of what style would be. 31:57 Erin: Yeah, I mean, she looks fabulous, but that's. She's Liza. 32:00 Wes: That's. Well, okay. 32:03 Erin: But I mean, if you're going in there and you're trying to look like, sedate, like someone who shops at Bergdorf's, then you don't look, you know, and. And if you're trying to steal something, you don't wear something that makes you look like a stop sign that attracts a ton of attention in the store. Unless you think that that is like a kind of reverse psychology that you figure you're trying to call so much attention to yourself that no one will suspect you. But. 32:27 Wes: Yeah, hidden in plain sight. 32:29 Erin: Yeah, but. Yeah, so. So I immediately registered the class difference and therefore never thought about the fact that she, you know, that what. What you're talking about, that she doesn't need the tie, she's just stealing it for fun. I never put that together because to me it's obvious that she is not someone who ordinarily shops at Bergdorf's and is just trying to get something for some reason, you know, presumably a. Because she can't afford it. 32:51 Wes: He's caught her eye. Yeah. She's working class, she's dressed garishly. From my point of view, she's committing the perfect crime, which is an unselfish crime, broadly speaking, whether it's because girls don't wear ties or because she's buying and getting it for someone else. 33:08 Erin: This isn't Diane Keaton. Right. Then we'd say it's not a perfect crime. 33:12 Wes: Right, exactly. And in the end, he seems to like her chutzpah, her toughness, her directness. And this is a very. Especially at the time in the 80s. I mean, in a way, this is how working class is coded and especially New York City. New York City plays a similar role in a lot of 80s movies including, by the way, Ghostbusters, which we'll do soon. But in a way, it was sort of seen as the gruff but heart of gold essence of the nation. That's sort of the psychical role that New York City had at the time. I can tell you, as someone who lived at the time. So this is not just about what I've gleaned from movies, but I remember this being the psychological significance of movies. And it's changed. I don't think people understand what New York means in the same way you were born more recently. 33:59 Erin: I associate that with working class Italians. That's basically the city became Italian Queens, the Bronx, certain parts of Brooklyn, though that was already changing in the 80s a bit. She's Linda Marolla, she's Liza Minnelli. She's, you know, that's what's being coded there, Jews and Italians. 34:17 Wes: But the idea is gruff but lovable New York City directness and harshness. But there's really something ultimately sweet about it. And it's closer to the core of American identity than wealth and being upper class and being refined. So it's almost like a kind of Eastern urbanized version of the American spirit in the sense of pioneer spirit. I think it's that sort of conception of Americanness. Ultimately, Hobson says about her she does have a certain Eleanor Roosevelt quality that says she's sensational. 34:56 Erin: Usually I have to go to a bowling alley. To meet a woman of your stature? 35:02 Wes: Yeah. In a way, him and Linda are quite alike. And she'll say, I like this guy. They are sort of reality principles for Arthur and they perform that function through sarcasm and directness in a humorous way. So Hobson has no trouble being very, very insulting in a funny way. And the other thing I want to just point to in this initial interaction when they've followed her and that the security guard has followed her out onto the street. And then they follow and watch. And then Arthur saves her from the security guard by pretending to be with her. Then they do this little improv scene and she slides right into it with no problem. Which is good because she's training to be an actress. Right. She says this is also part of the dynamic. This is mirrored later on in the movie when Susan catches them in the stables and she Comes up with a silly melodramatic skit, that improv skit that he can. Yes. And. And then immediately jump into seamlessly. And that's something that they have from the very beginning, this ability to seamlessly enter this imaginative reality together, even if it's one that involves deceiving. Deceiving a security guard, deceiving Susan. It's the perfect crime, you might say. The crime of two ness Creating this. Yeah. 36:23 Erin: All acting is lying. Yeah. I love when. At the end, when Susan is like, what about Harold? When they're in the wedding scene and she's like, harold, oh, you're. For me, it was like, clearly this was just used as an excuse to, like, help her, you know, exit the scene. And one that she never thought Susan would take seriously. And in fact, she hasn't put two 36:50 Wes: and two together even at that point. Yeah. He says, we were shopping together, and she's like, where the hell have you been? That's great. And then, of course, he uses that to kiss her, which, you know, this is another thing that you couldn't do in a movie today. But she says, not in front of these people, dear. They might think you're an animal. 37:07 Erin: Oh, sure. You could do that. I'm sure you could do that in a movie. It's a cute moment. 37:11 Wes: Well, I think today it would be treated as sexual assault. 37:13 Erin: I don't think so. I think it would work fine. Okay, she's just stolen something, so she deserves it. I'm just kidding. 37:23 Wes: I have a feeling that that's a line that you're going to want cut out. 37:26 Erin: Okay, forget it. 37:27 Wes: We'll cut it. 37:28 Erin: We'll cut it. 37:29 Wes: But I know I don't want it cut out. So let me just say that on record right now. If it stays in, I'm fully for that. 37:36 Erin: All right, so she's an actress. She's training to be an actress. That, to me, shows that she's capable of, like, having fun of. You know, she has a. She has a healthy imagination. And so she's someone who, though she is. She's in a bad situation. You know, this is treated really lightly in the film. But her father is out of work. He can't find a job. You know, she's working at this diner to make ends meet. They're not comfortable. They're not living a comfortable life. And the father seems really torn up about his inability to get a job, though it's all handled really lightly. So this is someone who maybe would ordinarily have practical concerns that would make her Less inclined to be fun and goof around. Like, this is a kind of, you know, she's in a situation that isn't very funny. And instead, her being an actress and her quick wit and everything in the scene shows that in spite of those circumstances she is capable of having fun at the Arthur idle rich kind of playful level because of this capacity for imagination. I think this playfulness, which for him, as we've already said, involves alcohol, she can join in on that. She knows how to have fun in a similar way that he does. And some of that is just kind of indulging him a little bit. Like when they go on the date to the arcade and she mostly just kind of watches him do his thing. But she seems to get pleasure out of that. Yeah. So she has a high capacity for. Or else tolerance for his level of fun. 39:03 Wes: Yeah. One other thing I want to say about this scene is that Hobson misinterprets what's going on. He misinterprets it as a situation in which he has to protect Arthur from riff raff the way it's implied that he has been doing for a very long time and does with the prostitute. Right. So in the morning, he basically says, get out to the prostitute. We're done here. Hobson has to stand in. You get the impression Arthur could actually easily be taken advantage of if Hobson weren't there to be mean to people on his behalf and to set up boundaries and barriers on his behalf. And that's what Hobson thinks he's doing in this situation. Right. He's saying a lot of mean things. Apparently, they're going to be partying and she says. He says to her, good luck in prison. And then she gives him this look, which is absolutely priceless. But she doesn't get defensive. She takes it all in stride. This is something genuine for Arthur. It's not just another woman he's picking up. And it takes Hobson a while to realize that. I don't think he fully realizes it until Arthur goes off on him for saying mean things about Linda later on and, you know, says, listen, old man, blah, blah, blah. And it's not only Hobson who will have to come to see that, it's everyone else. So you get the impression that the same dynamic is going on with his family. His grandmother ultimately relents and says, okay, you know, you can have the money and marry Linda. But she only relents when she sees that it's something genuine. In other words, Arthur's family doesn't take seriously his capacity to love and to have a real relationship. So the arranged marriage is a workaround to that. He's going to stay a child forever. He's not capable of real relationships with people. So we're going to stick him in this marriage. It's the best we can do. But in fact, the best that you can do is fall in love. Sorry, I just thought of that. That's very corny. It's not the best he can do. The best he can do is fall in love. 41:05 Erin: Profound words. 41:07 Wes: Hobson and his family, they underestimate his capacity for love, but not without reason. Of course. It's based on what they've observed for a very long time and his alcoholism. But it will turn out he has a greater capacity than they thought. And it involves finding this particular type of woman who he can laugh with and engage in a shtick with. But also it involves things that he's gotten clearly gotten from Hobson. Hobson has been a real father to him. Hobson sounds like has been his one true, real loving relationship. And as Hobson is on his way out, he's able to shift the affection that he has for Hobson to a new person and go from being taken care of to being a. Being a caretaker. All right, anything else we want to say before we end part one? 41:56 Erin: Lots. But I'll bring it up in the next episode in part two. 42:06 Wes: patreon.com subtext podcast. Or you can wait a week and part two will come out. 42:12 Erin: Thank you, thank you, and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast. Please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. 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