The framing of the film is the Mormon Will. After
Howard Hughes died in 1976, his purported will was found in the headquarters
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This will had a number
of beneficiaries, but 1/16th of Hughes fortune was left to a Mr. Melvin Dummar,
worth $156 million. Dummar claimed that back in 1967 he had picked up an
old beat up bum in the desert and dropped him off at the Sands Hotel in Las
Vegas. The old man had told him that he was Howard Hughes, but Dummar didn't
believe him. This will was contested and eventually thrown out as a forgery.
Dummar till his dying day said his story was true.
The film takes him at his word and narrates
it from Dummar's point of view. Nobody knows if any of it is true. But it
really isn't the subject of the film occupying only the first ten minutes
and the last fifteen minutes of it. The rest is Melvin Dummars. The years
between picking up Hughes (Jason Robards) to the will showing up. They were
messy years of various low paying jobs, cars and a house being repossessed,
children, marriages and divorces. Unlike very few films out of Hollywood,
director Joanathan Demme delves into the economic strata of low wage rural
America; always on the brink of being broke, always on the move, always having
relationship issues but always hopeful, ready to take chances. Far away from
glamor and success. The American bedrock. The dreamers.
Once Melvin (Paul Le Mat, American Graffiti)
drops off Hughes, he heads home to his wife Lynda (Mary Steenburgen) and
daughter in their trailer. In the morning, she wakes up to see his truck
being repossessed and decides that is it. She and the daughter leave and
she goes to work in a strip joint. Steenburgen said she hated doing the nude
scene and I felt pissed that they made her do it. It was totally unnecessary.
But her performance throughout the film is a delight. Her tap dancing routine
is a hoot. Coming right off Time after Time, she is amazing. Life never gets
any easier.
The film views Dummar and the other characters
getting through life as best they can with compassion and a sense of humor.
You look for a break in your life, but a part of you knows it will never
come. It almost did for Melvin. In the film also is Gloria Grahame as Lynda's
mother, Dabney Coleman as the judge and Michael Pollack as his friend.
