Fightin' Words by Patrick Keller "Mannequin Overboard" Editor's note: In an effort to bring a wider variety of content, Fightin' Words brings you incisive commentary on filmmaking from the 1980s, examining a story about how love conquers all. It oughta kill a few minutes anyway. Fightin' Words DVD review: Mannequin Release Date: December 26, 2001 MGM Home Entertainment At last: Mannequin. This Christmas will see the digital release of this sadly underappreciated film from the late 1980s. It was a less complicated world then, a world where one could actually believe that a man's love for a fiberglass dummy in the window of a department store had the power to turn it (the dummy, not the window) into Kim Cattrall and get him into all sorts of misadventures with a flamboyantly gay black man. It was a simpler time when simpler audiences flocked to see this movie to the tune of $60 million, which in 2001 dollars is roughly equivalent to $62 million, give or take $.5 million. Which is still more than Oprah's last movie made. But to truly understand the phenomenon of Mannequin, one has to study the enigma that is co-writer/director/mastermind Michael Gottlieb. Gottlieb, the auteur behind the Hulk Hogan tour de force Mr. Nanny and 1990's unforgettable Shrimp on the Barbie with Richard "Cheech" Marin, was born some time in the early or mid or possibly late 20th Century to parents who were also alive at the time. He was born in the United States, or perhaps not. At some point, he attended school, and may have received some higher education at a college, university or trade school. Eventually, possibly prior to directing Mannequin, Gottlieb developed a passing interest in the film and/or television industry. Then, in 1986(ish), Gottlieb and/or co-writer Edward Rugoff came up with the concept of a young man's undying love for a plastic representation of a woman. Though dismissed by many as a transgendered Pinocchio, this is actually a bittersweet fable for the modern era, where contemporary man is so alienated from his fellow man that his most fulfilling relationship is with an inanimate object. (Though, to be fair, the inanimate object does have breasts.) Young Jonathan Switcher, played by Andrew McCarthy, is an Everyman for the ages, an ubermensch, but with really great hair. But even in this empty, impersonal world, Switcher is not without companionship. Actual breathing companionship, that is. He is befriended, as we all are (in a metaphorical sense), by an effeminate black man named Hollywood. It is tempting to believe that Gottlieb intended this as a statement on race relations in the waning years of the millennium, a time where swishy men of color are free to associate with bland white men who sexually fixate on department store property played by Kim Cattrall. However, even this unstoppable duo are not free from the grasp of corporate greed, in the form of Illustra, a competing department store attempting a hostile takeover of Switcher's employer, Prince & Co., possibly due to a shortage of gay black window dressers in Philadelphia. Though many point to Oliver Stone's Wall Street as the representative chronicle of 1980s greed, Mannequin beat that film to the theater by almost a year and undoubtedly must have had a profound influence on Stone with its stark portrayal of corporate takeover. Mannequin actually works as a street-level, blue-collar counterpart to the executive maneuverings of Stone's film, though the latter undoubtedly suffers in comparison for its failure to tackle the flamboyant homosexual minority perspective. But at its heart, Mannequin is a love story, a surprisingly complex one at that. For who doesn't relate to the longing of Andrew McCarthy and his hair in this film, as they ache for the companionship that would complete them? And when they finally find it, are we all not a little bit closer to complete? But Gottlieb cheats his audience by scuttling McCarthy off with his blonde bimbo ex-mannequin (hope I'm not spoiling the ending), rather than his true soulmate, Hollywood. The trite, tacked-on ending reeks of interference from studio executives, who were undoubtedly uncomfortable at the prospect of portraying a realistic interracial relationship between a black window dresser and a white man with impeccable coiffure. Which brings me to the DVD release. The disc makes one wonder why MGM even bothered. Sure, for the first time since the original theatrical run, we finally get to see the film in its original theatrical aspect ratio, as Michael Gottlieb intended it, rather than the bastard cropped version that runs three times a week on Comedy Central. But where is the 5.1 channel remix? Are we supposed to experience the epiphany of Starship's Oscar-nominated "We Built This City" in mere stereo? Where is the legendary original ending, with its explicit homosexual bondage sex acts, all 22 minutes of it? Where are the cut scenes of Kim Cattrall's character Emmy, spurned by McCarthy when he discovers she is no longer a wooden object that he can molest and abandon as he pleases, as she turns to barbituates and prostitution? What of the lost scenes that resolved Rambo the dog's flatulence arc? And why no director's commentary from Gottlieb? Future generations will have to live without his filmmaking wisdom, and Mannequin fans without the insight into why, for example, he chose Starship over, say, A-Ha or Loverboy. Ask yourself: do you really want to live in a world where we don't know? Do you? That's what I thought. Patrick Keller is a sad, sad little man. Special thanks to Christopher Barfield Sebela: genius, auteur, wage slave. Dance, monkey, dance! Email Patrick Keller comments about this column, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.