Better In Your Head?--INDECENT PROPOSAL

 

Spoiler Alert: for two million, sure.

THE BOOK-Written by Jack Engelhard, released 1988

THE MOVIE-Directed by Adrian Lyne, written by Amy Holden Jones, released 1993

THE STORY-During a decompression session in Atlantic City, recalcitrant corporate lackey Joshua Kane meets an Arab sultan, whose outrageous offer--one million dollars for one night with Mrs. Kane--inspires a spiral of spite and denial.

MIND THE GAP-The film took the novel's premise and ran off without so much as a weakly rueful chuckle. Divorce vets Josh and Joan Kane became former high-school sweeties David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore, each dreaming of a bank lobby). Josh is a speechwriter, the defiant son of Holocaust survivors; David is a dippy architect, the sheepish spawn of helicopters. The Murphys are approached in Vegas by debonair billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford). The couple are in dire need of dough, lest they lose the land upon which they plan to build their dream house. The Kanes are resolutely middle-class. They share the world's vilest vice, one which kills slower than kuru and surer than mad cow: greed.

The book is written in first-person, Josh's POV. His anxieties have anxieties, and your response to that tidbit determines if you'll finish, much less enjoy, Indecent Proposal. Persecution--first- and second-hand--drives his moves. He is not secure enough, not respected enough--because he is not rich enough. He'd do anything for more money. Or would he?

The Kanes are subjectively less likable than the Murphys, but objectively more interesting. They talk, oh Lord do the Kanes talk, spearmint bursts of convo so authentic I yearned to scrape the words off their pages with my tongue. The pair's repartee is hotter than the bland, passion-free sex scenes that Adrian Lyne of all motherfuckers foisted upon my brittle blues. (When the Kanes do strip and search, they do so "like people in danger." I'd be their third for free.)

"(A) hard, blood-filled penis" is the latest guest at the Literary Redundancy Party, and whatever dish they brought, it can stay covered. 

The misogyny of Indecent Proposal is monumental. Indeed, the very premise gives it away. Men are more harshly judged for shortcomings as fathers, not as husbands. Women catch hell for slip-ups in either role. A good wife is pretty and dutiful, always ready to fuck and be fucked, clean and conceal, forgive and forget. Occasionally, a good wife is a prize to be fought over by would-be conquerors. Her wishes are irrelevant. 

Robert Redford is the only fuckable person in the whole movie.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-Early '90s mainstream "provocative media" came no more blatant than the film Indecent Proposal. Sex, money, money, sex. (No rock & roll, since John Barry's clueless on how to do either.) The movie smashed at the box office despite critical excoriation, and the central question--well, would you?--dominated public discourse and inspired countless parodies.

The movie also sucks with a vengeance. Cinematic cordwood. Intellectually bereft, emotionally monochromatic, gross as a soft pretzel brushed with vinegar. Without the cultural friction, religious intrigue, or meditations on materialism, this is just a severely boring story. 

Don't ever approach me with any proposal that involves watching this rancid nonsense. I'd pay to sit through a double feature of Monster A-Go-Go and The Giant Gila Monster in a theater run by a junk-jockey and his untrained, unleashed pit bull before watching Indecent Proposal for free.