Bryan Gordon | Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall / 1987

the corporate dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bryan Gordon (screenwriter and director) Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall / 1987

 

Even today it seems somewhat amazing that at the 60th Academy Awards in 1988 Bryan Gordon’s 23 minute film, Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall won the Oscar for the Best Short Subject of 1987 (the same year that Michael Douglas won for Wall Street, Cher for Moonstruck, and Bernardo Bertolucci for The Last Emperor, all three representing separated and closed-off worlds).

     Gordon’s film not only satirizes the male business world—and by extension the entire Hollywood system since the motto by which all things are defined in this film is “What really matters is not how good you are, but who you know,” the long held explanation of Hollywood hires—but contextualizes it in a system that is eerily close to the gay bar scene of 1980s. I know, I was there and recall all too well that before you could go home with anyone you had to carefully take stock of everyone in the room, smile a lot, and stare alluringly into eyes until your vision was literally swimming with images of desirable young men—the equivalent of “dancing” in this film—in order to find an appropriate partner. And at a few gay clubs being a good dancer wouldn’t have hurt.

     Sam Logan (Boyd Gaines), having been let go with the merger of Fabtec and Wellpac, is sitting in a park waiting for his next interview at United Cracktell when he runs into an old friend Cal McGinnis (David Rasche) and spills his whole long story of being without a job and not receiving any new offers. Cal insists it’s all a matter of “contacts,” of “who you know” and finally agrees to take him to club, Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall, where all the right contacts hang out, including some of the major tec officials, which explains, Sam mutters, why every office executive and their workers disappear each day at noon.

     Even upon entering the room, Sam realizes that he’s finally found to the right place. At the Dance Hall, some men in suits sit at the bar, drinking and eating from a buffet, others are busy on the telephone—particularly Benny Berbel (Robert Wuhl) who with cigar in mouth attempts to make contact (any contact) with “the big boss” throughout the movie—but most of them are dancing with each other, making deals as they waltz, tango, rumba, and cha-cha-cha across the floor.

    Small ceiling lights focus on the industry leaders as each young future exec tries to get asked to dance by these important figures or with anyone who might introduce him to the top execs.

      As a newcomer, Sam predictably has a difficult go of it. At first, he can find no one to dance with, and when finally he gets asked to dance, it’s by a man who admits that he used to, once in a while, ask the powerful to dance, but they never would; he’s what they call “dead meat,” and that even being seen dancing with him might be dangerous. When Sam tells him that he’s looking for a job, the man politely breaks off dancing so as not to ruin his chances.      

     Another loser, Tom Osborne (Fred Willard) sits with his friend during the entire film (when he’s not on the phone describing his problems to his psychiatrist), both of them, in the typical macho male fashion, applauding “the good game last night,” both agreeing it was one of the best, and both agreeing, finally, that neither of them actually saw it; at another point Tom attempts to get his friend to tell him what people say behind his back. Another man asks the younger next to him “Can I use you?” to which the other asks, “What for?” “It doesn’t matter. Can I just use you?” To which the younger responds, “Of course.”

     Yet another gentleman at the bar keeps ordering martinis as he waits for his appointment (the metaphor for a lover) who never shows up. Another asks his friend, “Do you think this is the era of style over substance.” His friend immediately responds, in a straight version of a what might be a campy one-liner “Yes. And we’re winning.”

     Sam finally dances with a suave dancer who might be somebody, but when asked what he does, can only respond that he doesn’t know. His boss hired him because others were interested in him, but “now that he’s got me he’s not quite sure what he wants to do with me.” But the benefits are great.

      It is only in the middle of a very slow dance (The Four Freshman singing September Song) that Sam—narrating in a voiceover—discovers how truly powerful the powerful are, when one of the powerful approaches the disk jockey (Steven Memel) and asks for a different song to be played (April in Paris).

     Finally, Sam feels he’s gotten lucky when his dance partner says that he has a gut feeling that he’s right for a job and asks him if he begin next week; only to confess soon after that he has very little power and will have to confirm it with at least 4 executives above him. And at that very moment a bar employee interrupts their dance to tell Sam’s dance partner that there seems to be a problem with his credit card.

    Another of his dancing partners, semi-retired, claims he created and successfully marketed the phrase “Have a nice day,” and is currently testing the dance he performs with Sam, hoping to “market” it.

      For a moment Sam connects up with Cal again, who excitedly reveals he’s just been offered a new job, same pay, same thing, only better geographically located. He just couldn’t turn down such a nice thing, revealing what in the gay world we might describe as a beautiful justification of having cheated on your current lover. But as he admitted to Sam from the start, he’s always on the lookout for new positions.

      Sam is beginning to feel that he’s lost all opportunity and is ready to leave when he suddenly spots his best friend from his last job, Peter (Sam McMurray) dancing with the most powerful man in the room under the spotlight. He goes up to him just to great him, but Peter seems not to recognize him, declaring his name isn’t Peter. Miffed by Peter treating him as a “non-human, another species, an alien” when they had had lunch together every day for years, he returns just to remind him who he is. But once more he is dismissed as being “mixed-up.”

     Sam is on his way out, when the powerful man who he has been observing during the course of the visit calls out to him, introduces himself as Dick Tratten of the Tratten Group (Lyman Ward), and, declaring he is impressed with Sam’s honesty, asks if he wants to dance.

      Sam has clearly found the trick—or more appropriately in the language of the metaphor the film is playing with, has found his “trick.”

      The narrator’s voice reports “I’m pleased to tell you that I danced and danced and danced with Dick Tratten. We have a lot in common. And the rest is history.”

       Seldom before has the word “heterosexual” been so aligned with the homosexual world—except perhaps in Auntie Mame when the young Patrick, told by Mame to write down any words he did not understand during the party, mentions the word “heterosexual,” revealing that the discussants were obviously speaking of something other than the world they inhabited. 

 

Los Angeles, March 21, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2022).