The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) was on this morning, so I just had to stay in bed, “in recovery” from my Covid and flu shots, and so, being in bed, I just had to watch it.

Michelle Pfeiffer was 31 when she took on the role of the call girl-turned torch singer. The Bridges brothers, the Baker boys, a brother-brother act, are her accompanists. The elder Baker (Beau Bridges, the elder brother in real life) decides they need a female singer to rejuvenate their jaded performances, and her becoming part of their act makes things complicated.

A critic called the film “Romantic Noir” and that’s just about right. It’s an absorbing movie, not a happy one, because the romance doesn’t work itself out to our satisfaction. And the exterior scenes are filmed in a Seattle that looks as it if it could be the Great Depression: weedy vacant lots, boarded-up buildings, walkup apartments just beginning to go to seed, cheap hotels and cheap ballrooms with dirty back offices.

Pfeiffer, then thirty-one, was not sure she could bring this scene off because she didn’t consider herself “sexy.” A choreographer was assigned her and walked her through the song and the moves until, finally, the scene belongs to Pfeiffer.

At this point in the plot, that Pfeiffer has decided to declare her intentions to Jeff Bridges, a cynical man who, fortunately, loves his black Lab, Eddie, and the lonely little girl who comes through his apartment window to visit them.

Here’s the song’s opening, and I would submit that the head snap at the end, the direct gaze suggest that it’s all over for you, Mr. Jeff Bridges.

I think that if a movie scene is authentic, it reminds you of something else you’ve seen, even if it’s seemingly irrelevant. Pfeiffer’s head swivel reminded me of Diana Ross and the Supremes. Here they are on the Ed Sullivan Show, and watch for the hip move and then Ross’s head swivel. For us poor dumb men, the littlest things women do fascinate us, if “fascinate” is anywhere close to being the right word.

Speaking of “poor dumb men,” by the time Pfeiffer climbs down from the piano at the end of “Makin’ Whoopee,” you know that Jeff Bridges is doomed. That’s okay. He can take it. Or he thinks he can. The movie will decide how it wants to work this relationship out.

P.S. I decided it would be unfair not to add the entire scene. So, in the interest of fairness…

I was surprised that Moonstruck was on this morning. I was not surprised that, while I started watching halfway through—Rose is undergoing her transformation at the hair salon, and then she buys the shoes, “ruby slippers” and that drop-dead dress— I had to watch it to the end and then all the way through Deano’s voice and the credits.

What a marvelously written film. The words made the actors wonderful. So I had to look it up. It had some Nora Ephronesque elements, and, for romantic comedies, she was one of our greatest screenwriters— but she’s not Italian. Nope. But neither is the screenwriter for this Moonstruck. John Patrick Shanley is (obviously) Irish-American. But his early years equipped him to write the Academy Award-winning screenplay script for this film.

So I looked Shanley (above) up on Wikipedia. Here’s why he has the chops for this New York love story:

Shanley was born into an Irish-American family in The Bronx, New York City. His mother worked as a telephone operator, and his father was a meat-packer. The neighborhood Shanley grew up in was considered very rough.

Shanley’s academic career did not begin well, but ultimately he graduated from New York University with honors. In his program bio for the Broadway production of Doubt: A Parable, he mentions that he was “thrown out of St. Helena’s kindergarten, banned from St. Anthony’s hot lunch program and expelled from Cardinal Spellman High School.” He was heavily influenced by one of his first teachers, Sister Margaret McEntee, on whom he based the character of Sister James in his play, Doubt. While at Cardinal Spellman High School, he saw two school productions that influenced him: The Miracle Worker and Cyrano de Bergerac.

After his freshman year at New York University, Shanley was put on academic probation. He then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, serving in a stateside post during the Vietnam War. Following his military service, he wrote a novel, then burned it, and returned to the university with the help of the G.I. Bill, and by supporting himself with a series of jobs: elevator operator, house painter, furniture mover, locksmith, bartender. He graduated from New York University as valedictorian in 1977,with a degree in Educational Theatre, and is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

What makes this film such a treat for me are both the unexpected turns, like the “love him awful” exchange, and the revealed wisdom that mark Shanley’s dialogue.

And then there’s this moment, when, for once, the director tells you all you need to know without being pushy about it. It’s the morning after the opera, and it’s all over for Loretta. She’s in love.

(I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the heartache of seeing the World Trade Center towers that live on in the shots that establish this as a New York film. I feel the same pang of sadness for two more films I enjoy, Working Girl and Gangs of New York.)

Olympia Dukakis, whom we lost two years ago, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and she is somehow both regal and funny, even when the funny bits are a little rueful, as they are in her bittersweet scenes with the late John Mahoney, the university professor who chases his coeds—he reminds Rose that her own husband is being unfaithful—which leads to the eternal questions she asks: “Why do men chase women?”

I guess I’ll have to add this film to the list (Casablanca remains at the top, with John Ford’s The Searchers and the first two Godfathers close behind) of films I could watch a thousand times. I owe its screenwriter at least that many thanks.