HAZELTON

up large chunks of their lives, but they pursue their touchingly foolish dreams with a vivacity and dedication bordering on the heroic. Their energy is inspiring, their directness disarming, and their follies not all that different from those of sophisticated people. In the end, they are a strangely moving lot, whose very ludicrousness wrings your heart. You laugh and cry simultaneously, which makes rainbows in your eyes. The most terrible thing Lynda can say to Melvin, whom she has remarried but is leaving for a second time (now with two kids instead of one), is “You’re a loser, Melvin,” which he achingly, ardently denies. Fundamentally, all these characters are losers, but they do not admit it, and therein lies their glory: they are the gallantly walking, waltzing wounded, too dizzyingly busy to lie down in defeat.

Demme and Goldman see this lower-middle America plain, but they see it with affection. They observe its follies without minimizing them, but also without patronizing, sentimentalizing, or judging them. In a Reno strip joint, one of the girls dances naked but for a cast on her forearm; in a drive-in marriage chapel, an aged professional witness gets a minor heart attack from the effort—or joy?—of kissing the bride; Lynda, in curlers and just getting out of bed at her mother’s place, consumes a quickie breakfast from orange juice to coffee while Melvin woos her over the long-distance phone into another go at marriage; Melvin and his daughter Darcy watch Easy Street, their favorite giveaway show, through fancy, dimestore sunglasses; a pretty married woman seduces her milkman (Melvin, now Milkman of the Year) in the most guileless, almost virginal, fashion; a counterman in a drugstore (played by the real-life Melvin Dummar) watches approvingly as Lynda uses the store’s mustard, ketchup, salt, pepper, and whatnot to spruce up a homemade farewell sandwich for her daughter, whom she is sending back by Greyhound to her father.

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About the Author

Nika Hazelton

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up large chunks of their lives, but they pursue their touchingly foolish dreams with a vivacity and dedication bordering on the heroic. Their energy is inspiring, their directness disarming, and their follies not all that different from those of sophisticated people. In the end, they are a strangely moving lot, whose very ludicrousness wrings your heart. You laugh and cry simultaneously, which makes rainbows in your eyes. The most terrible thing Lynda can say to Melvin, whom she has remarried but is leaving for a second time (now with two kids instead of one), is “You’re a loser, Melvin,” which he achingly, ardently denies. Fundamentally, all these characters are losers, but they do not admit it, and therein lies their glory: they are the gallantly walking, waltzing wounded, too dizzyingly busy to lie down in defeat.

Demme and Goldman see this lower-middle America plain, but they see it with affection. They observe its follies without minimizing them, but also without patronizing, sentimentalizing, or judging them. In a Reno strip joint, one of the girls dances naked but for a cast on her forearm; in a drive-in marriage chapel, an aged professional witness gets a minor heart attack from the effort—or joy?—of kissing the bride; Lynda, in curlers and just getting out of bed at her mother’s place, consumes a quickie breakfast from orange juice to coffee while Melvin woos her over the long-distance phone into another go at marriage; Melvin and his daughter Darcy watch Easy Street, their favorite giveaway show, through fancy, dimestore sunglasses; a pretty married woman seduces her milkman (Melvin, now Milkman of the Year) in the most guileless, almost virginal, fashion; a counterman in a drugstore (played by the real-life Melvin Dummar) watches approvingly as Lynda uses the store’s mustard, ketchup, salt, pepper, and whatnot to spruce up a homemade farewell sandwich for her daughter, whom she is sending back by Greyhound to her father.