There are endless ways to confront the pedestrian stressors and ennui many of us face as we hurtle toward middle age. Sports cars and extramarital affairs are usually the self-treatments of choice for forty-something family men in TV movies (rarer breeds make dirty phone calls), but Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction entices us with a hit of something different. In this 1983 offering that plays like an Afterschool Special for quadragenarians, Dennis Weaver escapes his professional and familial pressures by sniffin’ the devil’s dandruff.
His Eddie Gant is a 47-year-old whose real estate career in “meat and potatoes” single-family homes is on the downswing. At home, his dreams of being a Stanford dad dissipate when son Buddy (James Spader) sours on the prospect of college. He’s at a low point when colleague Robin (Dynasty‘s Pamela Bellwood) offers him a toot. “Stop looking at me like I’m some kind of axe murderer,” she says when he declines. “Really, it’s OK. Everybody’s doing it.”
It’ll take a few more metaphorical kicks to the Jimmy before Eddie relents—and some persuasion from Bruce Neumann (David Ackroyd), Robin’s boyfriend. A practiced sleaze who works in the banking industry, Bruce assures him “This won’t make you feel anything but on top of things and in control. What do you think makes Tad work 16 hours a day?” Tad’s a younger coworker who eclipsed Eddie atop the sales leaderboard.
Robin joins in, telling Eddie he can regain his mojo: “All you gotta do is get with the energy flow. Those people can smell desperation a mile off.” Cocaine, he comes to realize, is ubiquitous not only among buyers and sellers of high-end real estate, but at his own poker table. Friend Morty (Jeffrey Tambor), a dentist, makes frequent trips to the bathroom and returns disruptive and high as a kite.
Eddie’s wife Barbara (Karen Grassle) is a slower study. “Must’ve had a good day,” she observes when he arrives home in a manic state. By the time he shows up with a Cadillac and a leather jacket, procured without consulting her, she’s understandably peeved. His all-nighters spent poring over potential real estate deals trouble her, and his sleeplessness isn’t their only problem in the bedroom. “Eddie, I’m worried about you,” she finally tells him. “Maybe it’s hypertension.”
Robin is the first to notice Eddie’s problem. “He’s not a casual tooter,” she admonishes Bruce. “He’s into it too heavily, he’s doing too much and it’s costing him a fortune with you.” (Bellwood is personable, if not quite effective, as a party girl in over her head.) Bruce, who considers himself a businessman, not a pusher, doesn’t want to hear it.
Once Eddie’s hooked, he names his price: $2,800 per ounce. “Don’t make it the national debt!” his client complains. Bruce deflects his concerns: “Sure, I know, but you gotta treat it like paper towels. It goes on sale, you buy in quantity.” And really, he has a point. Who among us hasn’t made that Costco list before: milk, eggs, dishwasher detergent, an ounce of cocaine?
It isn’t long, of course, before the house of cards comes crashing down. Both Buddy and Morty try to confront Eddie, but he swears he has things under control. “You’re buzzin’ so loud I can hear you,” Mort says by way of intervention. His spiel is even more TV movie than Buddy’s warning about the dangers of encountering a bad batch. “Eddie, it gives so much, but it takes and it takes and it takes!”
Some lessons you have to learn the hard way, which is the case here for our realtor friend. Weaver, who toiled on the opposite side of the law in McCloud, gives an edgy performance that was worthy of better material. The supporting cast generally matches him, particularly Spader and Grassle. And the screenplay, credited to David Goldsmith and Barry Schneider, gives us one memorable line (no pun intended): “He’s a banker, he can’t be arrested!”
Streaming and DVD availability
Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction is available on DVD; you can also rent or purchase a download on Amazon.
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… But wait, there’s more!
In surveying the screenwriters’ filmographies, I stumbled across something intriguing. Barry Schneider was the more productive of the pair, with credits including Harper Valley P.T.A. and Roller Boogie. (Not to mention Deadly Force, starring Wings Hauser, whose work we’ll need to get around to here eventually.) But it’s a David Goldsmith credit that struck gold.
He’s listed as a supervising producer for several episodes of She’s the Sheriff, a late ’80s syndicated sitcom starring Suzanne Somers. Unfortunately, it hasn’t made it to DVD and isn’t streaming anywhere, but get a load of the opening credits. From the time capsule music to the shameless mugging (including that of Jeffrey Tambor lookalike George Wyner), it’ll tickle your nostalgia. What a potent 36 seconds that was, particularly Nicky Rose’s mane and Guich Koock’s name.
I hope a kindly YouTuber with OCD and a Suzanne Somers archive uploads his grainy VHS copies of this series one day. For bonus chuckles only of interest to Three’s Company fans, Priscilla Barnes was originally cast as the sheriff and replaced after filming the pilot. This was where I was going to make a perfunctory Jenilee Harrison joke, but she appeared in an episode of Sheriff, bringing it all full circle.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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