Here’s a scene I’ll always remember, from a movie I’ve otherwise forgotten totally.
DISORGANIZED CRIME (1989).
I remembered that it was a heist film. I barely remembered who was in it, other than Fred Gwynne. After some mental digging I was able to put together its clever basic premise: a bunch of professional criminals, previously unknown to each other, are summoned to a small town by a heist planner, who is taken out of commission before they get there. (I falsely remembered that he was an old dude and that he died; on checking, I see that he was played by Corbin Bernsen and that he was taken into custody before speaking to any of them.) So these guys, arriving later, have to figure out what he planned to rob and how he planned to do it.
Clever.
I would not be able to tell you one detail of the big job, even at gunpoint. Not who does what. Not what interpersonal dynamics there are. Nothing.
I remember it was a mildly amusing but not very substantial film.
But this is what will stick in my head forever.
Fred Gwynne plays the oldest member of the gang. He is sullen and all-business. He makes no friends. He has no patience for bullshit. I remember the sense, from his performance alone, that this was a guy who had nothing but a job, and who had been curdled by it.
And this is the scene I recall vividly.
They are discussing details around the table. Gwynne is talking. He falls into a coughing fit. It becomes worse than a coughing fit. It becomes a choking fit. It lasts for almost a minute. The other guys make eye contact with one another. They become worried, then horrified. None of them have any particular affection for this old guy, but in this instant they are human; they care about him being okay.
Then he stops coughing and gets right back to business.
Nobody makes anything of it.
I remember, watching the movie way back then, confidently predicting that this would become an important plot point. Gwynne’s character would die at the end. Or he would become incapacitated in some way, when he was most needed to pull off his part of his job. Or he would explain that he had only six months to live, in some emotional payoff. Something like that. Right?
What I remember is that the movie made absolutely nothing about it. He shows no other signs of infirmity, he doesn’t talk about what happened, nobody asks him, it doesn’t affect the outcome, it doesn’t become a bonding moment between him and the other members of the gang. It’s just there, a grace note, never repeated. And it tells us everything.
I really do wish it was in a more memorable movie. That was good enough to teach me things I needed to know about dropping in character details and then let them do the heavy lifting.
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