By Edward Kelly
Chances are you won’t know what I’m talking about. If you think Jerry and Tom refers to a certain incorrigible cartoon mouse and his constantly in-pursuit cat foe, then, no, you don’t know what I’m talking about. And that’s okay. Because hopefully it will become clear what this movie means, at least to me. Jerry and Tom is a film from 1998 and it stars Sam Rockwell and Joe Mantegna. They play two hit men who spend their time talking a lot and whacking people. Honestly, it isn’t a great movie. It’s not bad either. It’s just, y’know, whatever. Which is kind of unfortunate for me. Because five minutes after it ended I realized that I am now, officially, an adult.
See, I used to love talking about movies no one had ever heard of. I used to think it elevated me or something. I didn’t have much of an identity in high school (aside from being pretentious) so dropping Solaris into a conversation was a pretty great way to feel intentionally alienated, which was a weird goal I had sometimes back then.
In the early years of the 00s, I was a total film snob and even worse I didn’t deserve to be one. I had no background in film and I wasn’t particularly dedicated to making sure I watched all of Hitchcock or Truffaut’s work. I was basically a guy who thought, “Okay, if I’m going to spend many of my Friday nights aimlessly wandering around Blockbuster, then I better watch some stuff from the ’70s so I can at least have a shallow understanding of the film canon.” But often I was even too lazy to make the trip to the video store, so I just lay on my couch half-asleep watching whatever mid-90s flick TBS had the rights to air. The basic cable channels were so hard up for content that they’d show movies thousands of times over – but, if you watched this particular airing, a guy would teach you how to make guacamole before and after the commercials.
But since I was a snob, I would often become tired of the pedestrian fare and flick over to Bravo. This was before Bravo decided to switch their programming to a decidedly more catty-botox-riddled-women-who-don’t-particularly-like-each-other-and-don’t-mind-being-morally-reprehensible-for-the-cameras vein. No, these were the days when Bravo was trying (and apparently failing judging by the screeching-harpy network they became) to be the cable version of PBS. All their programming was focused around that most ubiquitous of terms: “The Arts.” Keen on cultivating an ostentatious rep, the channel turned over its Friday nights to the Independent Film Channel (IFC-which apparently now considers Arrested Development, a TV show made entirely via financial support of the FOX Network, to be both “independent” and a “film”).
Nonetheless, IFC Fridays on Bravo were pretty awesome. They showed movies like Shallow Grave and Reservoir Dogs so the 15-year-old me was pretty much in love. I watched it without fail, if only so I could continue to pepper Coen Brothers references into everyday conversation and continue my awful habit of sneering at friends who liked those “popular movies” where characters were “likable” and “spoke English.” Then one night, they showed a little movie called Jerry and Tom.
I remember watching the first scene of the movie, a striking hook in which Sam Rockwell nervously paces across an empty bar, Joe Mantegna calmly smokes a cigarette, and a guy tied to a chair with a sack over his heads tells the pair lame jokes. The dialogue is written in that clipped Mamet style that was all the rage at the time and features several unwieldy monologues that have nothing to do with the plot. As a 15-year-old, I immediately thought this movie was brilliant, but only bothered to watch that first scene (I can’t remember why… maybe I actually had a life that one night and couldn’t watch my usual six hours of television).
What followed was weird to say the least, because while I eventually grew up and went to college and stopped being such an ass-hat, Jerry and Tom stayed with me. It became a sort of filmic torch that I carried. Every video store I went to, I looked for this movie. Every film buff I met, I asked if they had seen it. When I originally heard about Netflix, Jerry and Tom was the first movie I searched their database for. Oddly, even if a video store did have it or a film buff had seen it, I didn’t want to rent it or talk with anyone about it. I just wanted confirmation that it existed, but I was never all that pushed to actually watch the whole thing.
But a few weeks ago I saw it would air again. I set the DVR and thought it would simply languish in unwatched limbo. But one night, while surfing the Internet with little else on TV, I pushed play.
Here’s the part where I’d like to say that it was great, amazing, totally affirming everything my 15-year-old self once believed in. Not so much. I’m not knocking the movie, but it is, as they say, just a movie. It’s flawed but nevertheless one of the more interesting hitmen stories, more fitting as a play (appropriate since it started as such) than part of the wave of Tarantino imitations it found itself swept up in. It didn’t shatter the indie movie world, partially since the film’s marketing tried (and failed) to ride The Sopranos coattails, using the signature guns-for-Rs and the lamest of lame puns. Just take a look:
“These guys make The Sopranos sing.” Well done.
Such is the sad truth of independent cinema: if you are a talent that is truly remarkable and unique, you and your movie won’t stay secret way for long. But most of the time it’s a bunch of sensitive college students looking to retread Richard Linklater. And I can’t judge those people. No, I never made an independent film, but I went through a pretty hardcore Bright Eyes phase. I once spent $7 on cigarillos. I attempted to understand David Lynch.
But those days are gone and that’s not really a bad thing. I like having somewhat more mainstream taste and I really enjoy being able to engage people in conversations about pop culture.
So, with that in mind, allow me to say: even if you didn’t know what you were reading, and possibly still don’t, thanks for trying it out. It means a lot to me.
Edward Kelly is a recovering film snob and ass-hat.
