I had a couple of options for 1991, but this is what I ended up with. This blog entry is about a film that I don't think you've probably heard of, but has had a profound effect on me. I remember seeing it and considering for the first time that writing TV was perhaps something that would be interesting to do.
The film stars the late and great John Candy as a soap opera writer, Jack Gable. He is hopelessly in love with the soap's star played by Emma Samms, a hopelessly bad soap actor, played by David Rasche, Raymond Burr as the soap opera family patriarch, the also late and great Jerry Orbach as the soap's producer, Renee Taylor (also known as The Nanny's mom), Andrea Thompson (also known as Talia Winters from Babylon 5, nerd alert) as a nurse, Dylan Baker and Charles Rocket as the patriarch's sons and Mariel Hemingway as an aspiring actress/new girl in town on the soap opera.
The film begins quite brilliantly in my opinion following Jack's cable guy around town as Jack furiously waits for his appointment. We follow him to work and learn of his crush on Rachel/Laura and the struggles he has with his producers on keeping his vision of the show. They've brought in another writer behind his back Arnie Federman to rewrite what he's done. Rachel/Laura quickly invites herself along to a weekend with Jack and then spurns him. He is then hit by a trunk loading her luggage into his car and knocked out. He wakes up in Ashford Falls, the town his soap opera is set in. He finds that all the characters are in tact, much to his chagrin. "He's operating on people? He's an actor! Not even a good one!" Even more intriguingly that whatever he writes on his typewriter comes true, which gives him unreasonable power. (Do you see how this film makes TV writing look like a good idea?) He decides to play the hero and tries to win over Rachel/Laura, all the while fighting Federman's rewrites and oh, yeah, Robert Wagner shows up. He has ridiculous scenes where he rescues Rachel on horseback and buys back his own Ferrari GTO 250 at an auction, as well as a climactic and hilarious party scene where he plays piano, dances with Rachel/Laura and his typos come back to haunt him. All the while though, he finds himself torn as he falls in love with Mariel Hemingway's character, Janet.
There are also a lot of nice touches in this film like the transvestite auto mechanic, one of the brother's incestuous lust for Rachel and Raymond Burr is hilarious in this, his last film performance. He gives every line the greatest level of soap opera gravitas, even as he waits for the cable guy, "I'll tell you how I am! I have black bars on two! And seven!" Overall, I think this film is a hidden gem and maybe isn't the best, but I love it.
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