Here’s the deal: VHS of the Week has been on hiatus for the last two months. In that time I went back and re-read every article that I posted to the site and was shocked to discover that I have yet to review a Nicholas Cage film! I also discovered that I mention cocaine in every single review...but that’s a whole ‘nother problem. Nicholas Cage is an Academy Award-winning acting titan and box office superstar with a staggeringly excellent filmography. He is also out of his goddamn motherfucking mind. At this point he should be enjoying the spoils of the elder statesman status typically afforded to one after a successful four decade career. Instead, some extraordinarily questionable financial decisions have left him banished to the B-movie ghetto. We’re talking the type of ostentatious spending that makes Liberace look like Mother Theresa. Dude bought cars and mansions and castles and dinosaur skulls and komodo dragons and millions of dollars worth of Elvis memorabilia and Elvis’ actual daughter. He bought a bizarro white pyramid in a New Orleans cemetery that is completely useless to him while he is still living (I’ve seen it with my own two eyes). These days he’ll take pretty much any acting gig that pays the bills (anyone seen Kill Chain? Or Prisoners of the Ghostland? Didn’t think so). It has been a precipitous decline for a guy who didn’t really do anything wrong...BUT who didn’t really do anything right either. Nowadays you are far more likely to spot him in someone’s grainy cell phone video on TMZ then you are to see him on the big screen. There he is scream/cry/singing Purple Rain at a karaoke bar after his fourth wife divorced him after six hours of marriage. There he is again...shitfaced on the Vegas Strip in the middle of the day...trying to (unsuccessfully) prevent his pal, real life manslaughterer and alcoholic liver disease in human form Vince Neil, from punching a female fan in the face. Man, if I was walking up the street and I saw Nic Cage and Vince Neil coming my way I would turn right the fuck around. Nothing good gonna happen there! Anyway, you get the point: the guy is a couple of limes short of a margarita.
I searched my shelves and was disappointed to find that I own just two Nicholas Cage flicks on VHS. Since there aren’t a lot of yuks to be found in Leaving Las Vegas, today we’re gonna talk about David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (which is a yuk factory?). We’ve covered Lynch extensively here at VHSOTW so I’m not gonna recite his bona fides again. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers...even though I would describe almost all of his profoundly disturbing films as unwatchably exhilarating (except for that G-rated flick about the old guy who drives his lawnmower mad far to see his brother. That one isn’t disturbing. I mean...unless you’re afraid of lawnmowers. Or the elderly). I also don’t feel like I need to bring up the fact that I saw Wild at Heart when I was 11 years-old again...but I just went ahead and did it anyway! All I knew of David Lynch at that point was Twin Peaks so I was expecting more damn good coffee and cherry pie. Wild at Heart might actually be David Lynch’s grizzliest movie...and that’s saying something! Story goes--after the first season of Twin Peaks Lynch fell in love with a novel called Sailor and Lula by Barry Gifford and decided to take a powder from the show to adapt that novel into a feature length film. Apparently Lynch had a hankering to make his own twisted version of the Wizard of Oz and found the perfect vehicle in Gifford’s novel. You’ll have to excuse me ‘cuz it has been a long ass time since I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz but I don’t recall seeing any aborted fetuses being casually tossed in the garbage in THAT film. I do know that you can apparently see a munchkin commit suicide if you slow down the tape and play Pink Floyd over it or whatever. Is that really what they were called: Munchkins? Is that still ok to say? I feel like maybe that word is problematic now.
So what happens is this: we open at a fancy ball at a fancy southern ballroom. Sailor Ripley (Cage) is with his blonde bombshell lady friend Lula (Laura Dern) and they are just minding their own. A man by the name of Bobby Ray Lemon approaches and tells Sailor that there’s a rumor going ‘round that he tried to fuck Lula’s mother in the loo. Sailor says “uh oh.” Bobby Ray Lemon pulls out a blade and says that he will now murder Sailor at Lula’s momma’s behest. Uh oh is right, dudes. Sailor doesn’t let this bother him none. He knocks Bobby Ray Lemon to the ground, crawls on top of him, and proceeds to smash his head against the marble floor until his brains are lying strewn about the ballroom like puddles of oatmeal. And when he’s done bashing brains? He lights a cigarette. David Lynch insisted that this film be marketed as a “dark comedy”. He also said that around 100 typically people walked out of the film after the first five minutes. I can kinda see why.
Quick aside: Laura Dern’s mother, Marietta Fortune, is played by the actress Diane Ladd, who I am only now learning is Dern’s actual mother! Hand on my heart...swear on a stack of bibles...I had no idea! I knew that Bruce Dern is her pops but that one required considerably less detective work. What a treat it must’ve been to share the screen with your 22 year-old daughter.....in a flick where she is sexed six ways to Sunday by Nicholas Cage. Diane Ladd was nominated for an Oscar for Wild at Heart...which is crazy because most folks HATED this movie. Except the French. They awarded it the Palm d’Or...a decision that so enraged Roger Ebert that he leapt from his seat and led the audience in a chorus of boos. That must’ve been friggin’ funny to watch. God, I miss that guy. Anyway, things worked out alright for Laura Dern. She was just three years away from putting high-waisted khaki shorts on the MAP in Jurassic Park! And another 27 years away from the great Laura Dernaissance of 2017. You know...when she starred in every other HBO limited series and won like 25 Emmys.
So Sailor is sent to the pokey for turning that dude’s skull into mashed potatoes...but only for 22 months...which is 20 months longer than Vince Neil served for killing the drummer of Hanoi Rocks. Lula is there to pick him in her dope ass Thunderbird convertible the minute he walks out of the joint. She brings him his snakeskin jacket, which is a symbol of his individuality and his belief in personal freedom. That’s what he says, anyway. Like...five times. (His entire performance here is just one long Elvis impersonation) They immediately drive to a motel and get right to the gettin’...and that shit is GRAPHIC! 23 positions in a one night stand graphic. Afterwards they laze around in their damp, fuck fog, rip a ton of cigarettes, and engage in your typical post-prison jibber jabber. Lula talks about how her Uncle Pooch raped her when she was 15. She also says that she believes people will be driving Buicks to the moon in the very near future. Ummm....ok then. There’s lots of cutaways (including this one shot of a random fire that keeps popping up because it must be important some which way) and flashbacks and flash forwards. We flash back to that infamous night at the ballroom and learn that Mrs Fortune DID try to fuck Sailor! She asks him if he’d like to do the thing and he says “no ma’am” and then offers her a cup of coffee. A real southern gentleman, this guy. Mrs Fortune does not take rejection lightly. She tells Sailor that he got too close to a fire one night. Not that cutaway fire we’ve been seeing?? What are the chances!? She also tells Sailor she’s gonna cut off his balls and force him to eat them. I feel like I would pass out before I got through the first ball. Just sayin’.
Sailor decides he’s gonna break parole and take Lula out to sunny California. To do what exactly we do not know. This is supposed to be a road movie so they gotta go someplace, right? Before they split they go out dancing at a heavy metal club. They check out a band called Powermad, who play super speedy thrash metal, (dun nun nun nun nun nun nun nun nun NAHHH) and dance like no one should ever dance at a metal club. While Sailor is busy flailing around, doing a dance that can best be described as “the Nicholas Cage,” some bozo tries to cut in on Lula. When Sailor sees this he stops the band....just stops them COLD! He asks the bozo to apologize...and then burns the dude’s hand with a lit cigarette when he refuses. Sailor turns to the band, who are patiently waiting to return to shredding ass, and says “y’all have a lot of the same power E had.” What do you mean, E? E as in ecstasy? He grabs the mic and starts singing “Love Me” by Elvis Presley. E as in Elvis. Powermad=Elvis. And the band...they know the fuckin’ song! They even know the harmonies. This whole scenario is really far-fetched, even for a David Lynch movie. Although I gotta say...Nicholas Cage has a totally decent set of pipes. I know I already mentioned this but so obsessed with The King, Nic Cage was, that he went out and married the man’s only living child. And we could talk about how weird it is that Lisa Marie Presley married a guy who was obsessed with her dead pappy...but the weirdness of that union shrivels in comparison to her previous marriage to MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON! Girl, what the fahhhhh???
Sailor’s little live band karaoke Elvis performance gets Lula TURNT so they go back to the hotel for another NC-17 balling sesh. Afterwards she asks him why he didn’t sing “Love Me Tender.” He’s like “Love Me”....”Love Me Tender”....same shit. Just be thankful I didn’t sing “Suspicious Minds” or we’d still be at the bar!” No, what he really says is that he will only sing “Love Me Tender” to his wife. Tough break, slam buddy! They continue to lie around and shoot some breeze. Speaking of breeze--Lula asks Sailor if he ever randomly hears wind. Dude, David Lynch movies are built on random wind! That and jazzy Angelo Badalamenti tunes. That shit is a given. Lula says her daddy died in a fire. Not that cutaway fire we keep seeing for no apparent reason though, right? Couldn’t be! Sailor tells Lula he started smoking butts when he was 4 and that his folks both drank themselves to death shortly thereafter. I guess they both rolled snake eyes in the family lotto, eh? (note to self: review Nic Cage film Snake Eyes).
The next morning the kids light out for New Orleans....but old Marietta Fortune has other, less sexy plans in mind for the duo...and her other plans have other plans! She decides to hire her boyfriend Johnny Farragut, played by former world’s greatest human Harry Dean Stanton, to track down Sailor and kill him. She then immediately turns around and hires this cat named Marcellus Santos to kill Sailor AND Johnny Farragut! This lady done did more hiring than a Walmart at Christmas! Marcellus Santos is played by the guy who played The Dane in Miller’s Crossing (J.E. Freeman). I started to wonder why I haven’t seen this guy in much as of late so I looked him up and come to find out he’s been dead since 2014. So there’s that. Marcellus Santos works for some profoundly David Lynchian character named Mr Reindeer, who looks like an octogenarian caterer who hangs out in the private dining room of Galatoires surrounded by topless prostitutes. He tells Marcellus Santos that he’s down for some murder-for-hire gigs but that he needs one silver dollar for each gig. Seems like a fair price to me. Meanwhile, Johnny Farragut is barreling towards NOLA, completely unaware that there’s a bounty on his head. He also listens to the song“Baby Please Don’t Go” the ENTIRE WAY to New Orleans...but clearly does not pay attention to the lyrics.
Sailor and Lula arrive The Big Easy and hit Domilise’s to eat shrimp po’ boys and to tell each other more sex stories. Sailor talks of being deflowered by a woman who came equipped with “assault weapons and nasty magazines.” Says that this lady gave him a “boner with a capital O”..which is a weird ass way to spell bOner. Far from growing jealous, Lula tells Sailor that his story has got her “hotter n’ Georgia asphalt.” I have only visited the state of Georgia on one occasion...in the month of March...and I found the asphalt to be tepid at best....but I don’t doubt that shit gets hot in the summertime. They head back to the hotel...again...and scissor fuck for six hours straight....again. Afterwards, Lula tells this story about her alien and Xmas loving cousin Dale (Jingle Dale!). This story really doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. It is shown in flashbacks and is never mentioned again. The only reason I’m mentioning it now is because Jingle Dale is played by CRISPIN GLOVER...and the big payoff to this little aside is that Dale likes to let cockroaches crawl up his asshole! You heard it here first: George McFly is a bug fucker. Oh yeah--Sailor also tells Lula that he murdered her father at the behest of Marcellus Santos in that fire we’ve been seeing so much about. She is not even a little bit mad.
While the kids are going for their 18th sex in two days, Mrs Fortune starts to experience buyer’s remorse. She is racked with guilt for having double crossed HDS. As well you should be, madam...as well you should be! She gets so upset that she smears lipstick all over her face (like...her ENTIRE FACE) before barfing everywhere. She travels to NOLA to stop Marcellus Santos from killing Johnny Farragut but she’s too late! Or--she gets there in time but they kill him anyway? Things start to get really confusing right around this point. There’s a bunch of voodoo hoodoo and some blonde lady screaming “fuck me, Reggie” who may or may not be Isabella Rosellini. And there’s this other blonde lady with her leg in a brace...who is maybe also Isabella Rosellini? Does she really play two roles in this movie? I could look it up but I am way too lazy slash don’t care what the answer is. The thing to know is that Harry Dean Stanton is dead...and even though he’s only in the movie for like 5 minutes it is forever poorer without him.
Sailor and Lula keep driving west with the top down...cranking Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” Now there’s a forest fire of a song! That Herb Ritts video?? Sexy with a capital X! Their reverie is cruelly interrupted when they spot a wreck on the highway. They hop out to see what the what and find bodies lying hither and yon. There’s one survivor and it’s Sherilyn Fenn...on furlough from Twin Peaks. She’s running around talking a bunch of nonsense and bleeding out her head/face/mouth area. Lula is like “oh shit I think this bitch is gonna die” and then she totally does. 86 Audrey Horne. Lula is super tore up about this. She thinks it’s a bad omen and whatnot. She’s like “remember what happened to Jim Morrison after he saw those dead Indianson the highway?? I don’t want to start writing bad poetry, Sail!”
Instead of getting back on the 10 and busting ass all the way to Pomona, Sailor detours to the town of Big Tuna, Texas. He needs to see Isabella Rosellini for some reason...maybe to ask her how she liked working with Ted Danson in Cousins. As soon as they check into their motel Lula starts to blow chunks. This movie cost $10 million smackers to make and I’m gonna say most of that money was spent on fake brains and fake vomit. Sailor sees that his lady is ill so he gives her one of those candy necklaces and tells her to think of him when she eats it. She’s like...that’s wicked sweet...but I would’ve preferred a spoonful of Dramamine, ya dense prick. When night falls they head out to sample the sights and sounds in the courtyard of the motel/trailer park they are staying at....and here’s where things go completely David Lynch. Out there they find John Lurie of Fishing with John fame...just hanging out. Jack Nance...motherfucking Eraserhead himself...shows up and spits a bunch of mumbo jumbo about his dog like HUH?? A gaggle of grossly overweight naked ladies appear and begin giggling and dancing around the fringes. And here comes the most DFW actor in the history of acting Willem Dafoe...looking extra Willem Dafoe-ish. Dafoe plays Bobby Peru, a Vietnam vet with Vietnam problems and a pencil-thin mustache and gums that look like pureed Gremlins. He says he wants to take his One-Eyed Jack peeping in the seafood store...and that is the least grossest thing he will say in this movie. Sailor and Lula are like “that sounds nice...we’re gonna go back to our room and see if Just the Ten of Us is on!”
Back in the room Lula tells Sailor that thinks he might be preggo...probably on account of the 117 sex-a-thons they’ve had overthe last hour and a half of the movie. Sailor says he’s stoked. He tells her he’ll take care of her...and that he won’t let things get any worse....which usually means that things are about to get much, much worse and quickly. And boy howdy! Do they ever! The next morning, while Sailor is out changing the oil on his T-bird for an obscenely long time, Bobby Peru forces his way into their hotel room. I’ll let Wikipedia describe what happens next: “While Sailor is out Peru enters the room and sexually assaults Lula, forcing her to ask him to have sex with her, before leaving, stating he has no time. I mean...ha...ha....ha? This scene is just fucking hideous. David Lynch and I....we go our separate ways on this one.
Ugh...anyway...afterwards Bobby Peru goes to find Sailor...who is STILL changing his goddamn oil. Seriously, don’t they have a Jiffy Lube in Big Tuna. Peru takes Sailor to the local watering hole for some local craft IPA and a plate of poutine and offers to deal Sailor in on an upcoming score: they will rob a bank and Sailor’s cut will be $2500. Man, what the fuck are they gonna do with $2500 in LA?? Rent an apartment at the Oakwoods for a month and a half? Shit, he could probably get that much for his snakeskin jacket at the right Buffalo Exchange if he turned on that Nic Cage charm. Sailor takes Bobby up on his offer. When Sailor arrives back at the hotel Lula is shit pissed ‘cuz dude has been changing his oil for like 10 hours. She cries hysterically and says “the whole world is wild at heart and weird on top,” which is the title of the movie we are watching plus a bunch of other words.
The next morning Bobby comes to pick up Sailor so they can commit felonies but he has Isabella Rosellini in the car. Sailor is pissed. He’s like “didn’t this lady suffer enough in Blue Velvet” but Willem Dafoe is like “I spent 1986 making Last Temptation of the Christ so I’ll show YOU suffering!” When they get to the bank Nic Cage puts some pantyhose on his head...which has GOT to be an homage to Raising Arizona! (I’ll be takin’ these Huggies and whatever cash you got). The robbery goes off without a hitch until Bobby Peru goes all Mr Blonde and starts plugging the tellers. Bang...bang...bang! Sailor trains his gun on Bobby only to discover that he has been given a gun filled with blanks! Peru and Isabella Rosellini are in cahoots with Marcellus Santos and Marietta Fortune and everyone else in the movie who is bad! It’s a quadruple cross or something! Sailor and Bobby run out of the bank to find a lawman lying in wait. The copper shoots Bobby like 12 times...which is bad. He then falls forward onto his own shotgun and accidentally blows his head off...which is worse! His skull sails through the air before splattering onto the pavement like an extra large cherry Slush Puppy. Sailor is arrested and sentenced to six years in the slammer...which is pretty damn lenient, all things considered. Lula clutches her candy necklace and wails and then starts eating the necklace. Marietta Fortune forces her to move back home and get a job at Hobby Lobby.
Sailor keeps his head down and does his bid and emerges after six years looking exactly like he did six years earlier. Lula is there to pick him up with their brand new son! Well...I mean...he’s not exactly brand new. He’s six. Lula has named him Pace for reasons that are unclear. Sailor hops in the coupe and they all ride off into the sunset together. Oh wait...first Sailor decides that he isn’t digging the vibes so he abandons his family for about 10 minutes. He walks along the Los Angeles river and is beaten by a flash mob of movie muggers. While he’s laid out on the concrete he receives a visit from Glinda the Good With, played by none other than LAURA PALMER! She tells him that he shouldn’t turn away from love...and when Laura Palmer speaks...you listen! Sailor chases down his family, who are conveniently stuck in traffic just two blocks away. He drags Lula onto the hood of the car and starts singing “Love Me Tender” while the kid looks on...thoroughly bemused. So I guess that means Lula is his wife now? He’s the one who made that bullshit rule! The credits roll. And you know...I think “Love Me” is a much better song than “Love Me Tender.” The end.