Riches and Squalor

EVEN THE NAME is perfect: Melvin Dummar, the quintessential American loser. He wandered out of obscurity because he gave a bum a ride in his pick-up. And 25 cents. Nine years later, Melvin claimed the bum left him $156 million.

Out of this sketchy, real-life story--really no more than two incidents--director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Bo Goldman have fashioned a movie of extraordinary warmth and affection. Melvin and Howard is a neon Vermeer, a sensitive and funny look at the absurdities of late 20th-century American life in the far west. Demme looks at this amiable lug chased by a pot of gold not with condescension, but with wondrous incomprehension.

Paul Le Mat's Melvin has a body too big for his skin. He stumbles through life swerving away from disaster, chasing wives, ex-wives and future wives with sincere apologies for misdeeds great and small. He spends too much, makes too little, never avoids the repossessors for long. Even though he appears in nearly every scene in the movie, Melvin is always filmed from a distance--no one would learn more from a close-up.

Melvin orders his life simply. He experiences and reacts, oblivious to his effect on others. Incapable of malice, Melvin lives as if he took the Declaration of Independence a little too literally; he pursues tomorrow's happiness with a blissful disinterest about next week's. Yet Goldman makes sure that the audience does not confuse Melvin's simplicity with simple-mindedness. Living in a world of milk trucks with plastic cows, game shows with applause signs and gas stations with undulating tire displays, Melvin merely serves as the prism through which we view these and other tragi-comic forces.

Demme's eye and ear for synthetic America make the film more than just the story of Melvin's life. Melvin is constantly overwhelmed by the cacaphony of horns blaring, toilets flushing and cars trying to start. He is always shouting to be heard, usually above something like a game-show audience. "Pick door number one! Number one!" That he never seems to be heard is sad; but though it may bother us that no one listens, Melvin doesn't seem to care. He perseveres.

THE MAN MELVIN PICKS UP in the desert doesn't. With a wild mane of white hair and a beard to match, he has obviously given up on society, checked out. Yet in their conversation in Melvin's truck--the first scene of the movie--the bum emerges as more than a derelict. Melvin wants to sing Christmas carols; his guest doesn't. He is ungracious, cold and strangely snide for a man of such decrepit circumstance.

In his portrayal of the recluse-millionaire Howard Hughes, Jason Robards exploits this dichotomy to great advantage. Bedraggled though he may be, he seems slightly offended by his uncouth driver. During their drive together, each takes turns looking at the other as if he were crazy. Goldman, who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, keeps Howard poised on the precipice of sanity. One moment he is bleeding. The next he takes on an odd dignity, refusing to sing Melvin's Christmas carol (Melvin sent in the lyrics to one of those companies that writes music to your words.) Eventually Howard relents; upon threat of eviction from the truck, he sings "Santa's Souped-Up Christmas Sleigh."

After Howard leaves and until his will mysteriously arrives, the movie becomes a series of vignettes about Melvin's life. His two wives, daughter and stepchildren develop as characters, but serve more as foils for Melvin's idiosyncracies. Some of the family adventures work well--the Dummar victory on a game show gives a wonderful picture of the event's manic nonsense as well as the Dummars' genuine exultation. Some do not--Melvin and his wife's service as professional witnesses in a Las Vegas marriage factory falls flat. Michael J. Pollard, the diminutive actor who played the sidekick in Bonnie and Clyde, returns to the screen after a long absence and turns in a terrific performance as one of Melvin's co-workers in a magnesium-packing plant.

Melvin and Howard concerns a polyester-age noble savage fighting to survive in an unfriendly world. Melvin battles for the title "Milkman of the Month," not so much for the first prize, a color television, but for the recognition. When confronted with a last-minute obstacle to his victory in the contest, he says in protest, "I'm a darn good driver." The moment has a peculiar poignancy; Melvin's hurt is genuine.

By the time Melvin receives the inheritance, he owns the audience's heart and absolutely no one suspects (as so many did at the time) that Melvin drew up the will himself. When the inevitable horde of lawyers, agents and other thieves descend to help themselves to Melvin's windfall, this ravioli of a man begins to seem like an embattled hero, staving off a greedy throng.

BUT GOLDMAN AND DEMME didn't make him a hero. They don't try to graft any Hero of the American West symbolism onto this resolutely unheroic man; Dummar is no Gilmore, and Goldman is no Mailer. Melvin never gets a cent because the courts rule his will invalid. He faces his defeat with a curious--yet by this time predictable--ambivalence. Melvin says and actually seems to believe that he never had anything, so he's not losing anything. Despite all the lousy hands he has been dealt, Melvin enjoys his life and doesn't see any reason to change it. Melvin and Howard succeeds because the filmmakers view Melvin the same way he sees the world: with an earnest and quizzical--though probably unjustified--optimism.