Barely released in theaters when it was finished and tossed out on home video in a flash, “The Linguini Incident” took on a cult film afterlife thanks to its cast — David Bowie co-stars with Rosanna Arquette, Buck Henry, Andre Gregory and Marlee Matlin — and its director’s insistence that it was badly recut and “dumped” by its distributor.
Trend-setter, style, pop and rock icon Bowie didn’t make a lot of movies, and here’s one that captures him in all his Thin White Duke Fending Off Middle Age glory, paired-up with Peak Arquette, the coquette of her age thanks to “Desperately Seeking Susan” and “Baby It’s You.”
So Richard Shepard, an award winning TV (“Ugly Betty,” “Girls”) and film (“Dom Hemingway”) director thought it would be worth going back and making a director’s cut of his film along with a 4K restoration that renders the 1991 release shiny and “new.”
Re-issued on Amazon, it’s being hawked as a “forgotten gem” of Bowie’s film career, a caper comedy/rom-com that saw him take a shot at playing a straightforward romantic lead. But is it? A gem, I mean?
No. It’s still a cult film, with virtues that can be magnified by whatever cult embraces it while ignoring the inconvenient truths about jokes that don’t land, a romance that’s a non-starter and the “cute” that it aspires to and sometimes achieves.
It’s very much of its era, a picture wallowing in the ’80s downmarket artsy chic of NYC best remembered in the forgettable “Slaves of New York,” and a caper comedy with “green card” implications, a “Green Card” without the heart.
Arquette plays Lucy, a waitress to the “trendsucking leeches” at the tony Manhattan eatery/bar Dali, run by co-owners and pretentious tyrants Dante and Cecil (Andre Gregory of “My Dinner with Andre” and Buck Henry).
The gay couple may profess a sentimentality about their staff. They hired a deaf woman (Marlee Matlin) who requires an ASL interpreter to fulfill her duties as hostess, for instance. But to a one “every waitress fantasizes
about robbing” the joint, thanks to its pricey popularity and skinflint owners, Lucy narrates.
Lucy’s living the Manhattan in the ’80s dream — waitressing by night, rehearsing by day. But she’s not up for cattle calls or “A Chorus Line.” Lucy dreams of being an heir to Houdini, an escape artist. To that end, she collects every artifact that tarot card reader and shopkeeper Miracle (veteran Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors) offers up that was once owned by “Mrs. Harry Houdini.”
Lucy’s act has her dressing like a ’20s flapper and trying and inevitably failing to pick a lock, escape a sack or slip a noose she’s gotten herself into, theoretically for the entertainment value of others. The first rehearsal we see ends with her almost hanging herself, shackled and helpless, in her apartment.
Perhaps the new bartender, Monte (Bowie), will come to her rescue. He introduced himself quoting The Doors.
“Hello, I love you.”
Bit his “I think I want for you to marry me” isn’t something Lucy falls for, as he’s lied to every waitress in the joint. He was a “test pilot,” performer in the “English rodeo” or “in a coma for eight years,” he’s said. He lies like he breathes. What he really needs is a green card wife, and in a hurry.
As she needs that one last expensive talisman — Mrs. Houdini’s ring — to ensure she’ll do a winning audition for some sort of lesbian burlesque review that three humorless Spaphic sisters are casting, and he needs money to bribe a bride, maybe they should rob Dali and split the proceeds.
Eszter Balint plays Vivian, Lucy’s flaky, avante gard bra designer (“Bayonet Bra!”) who is needed to play “the trigger man” for the holdup. As she’s warm for Monte’s form, she and Lucy will have to make a pact that they’ll keep until the cash is divvied up.
“No one in this room is going to have sex with anyone else in this room. We’ll be platonic. Like our parents!”
There’s cute banter between “Lucy the Ethereal” and “Monte…the emasculated.” There’s time for a wintry walk on the beach at Coney Island to seal the deal.
And when the robbery doesn’t go quite as they planned, at least one and all can take comfort in the fact that the New York newspapers have entirely too much fun writing punny or alliterative headlines about those who take from and traumatize the trendy.
The repartee amongst the leads, and between Gregory and Henry and Matlin and ASL joker Michael Bonnabel, is the fairy dust sprinkled over this somewhat stiff comedy that makes it endurable. Look for future “News Radio” star Maura Tierney and “Drew Carey Show” regular Kathy Kinney in tiny supporting roles.
But there’s a reason Bowie was always best in cameos, faintly kinky dramas or horror. He never had a “romantic lead” vibe, not in rom-com terms anyway.
Iman, the statuesque Somali model/actress he was married to and who pops up in a crowd scene at the restaurant would probably beg to differ.
Arquette effortlessly carries her antic, chatty half of the “couple” off. Bowie doesn’t, as he gets little help from the script and none from the pacing — which is too slack and sluggish when “screwball” was what this picture was meant to be.
There are moments that charm and depictions — “real” struggling artist New York apartments of the era, for instance — that add time capsule appeal to this “cult film.”
But sometimes, you’re better off leaving your cult film to live off its legend, its reputation and your insistence that it was “ruined” by others. Especially when the director’s cut evidence proves otherwise.
Rating: R, profanity, sexual situations
Cast: Rosanna Arquette, David Bowie, Eszter Balint, Buck Henry, Andre Gregory, Marlee Matlin and Viveca Lindfors
Credits: Directed by Rochard Shepard, scripted by Richard Shepard and Tamar Brott. An Academy release recut for re-issue on Amazon Prime.
Running time: 1:36
Movie Nation 