Brilliant Management, Brother Rabbitte--Will They Be Wearing Black?

Some time back, I came up with the idea of The Commitments as the "official" Knight Agency movie. An old favorite of Deidre's and mine--we saw it brand-new in the theatre in 1991, and many times thereafter--it's the story of a group of young people who, as one ad put it, "had absolutely nothing, but they were willing to risk it all." Except for Colm Meaney, who plays the father of protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte, few of the performers ever went on to become substantial screen actors, and a number of them had no professional acting experience before director Alan Parker chose them for the film. What they did have was musical talent and the ability to realistically portray characters very much like themselves: working-class kids from the depressed north side of Dublin. ("We'd be working class if there was any work," one of them says.) Led by Jimmy, a manager and promoter with a strongly entrepreneurial sensibility--a dreamer, moreover, who continually conducts pretend interviews with a big-time reporter asking about the secrets behind his success--they form a ten-piece soul band and begin booking local gigs.

Because of its setting, the dialogue in The Commitments is more than a little salty. (Skip this part if you're easily offended, though it's not likely anyone who fits that description would read my blog.) Every third word, it seems, is "foke," "shoit," or some more local form of obscenity: bollocks, bleedin', tosser, and so forth. Yet the effect is not like that of a Martin Scorcese gangster movie, in which the poverty in the characters' vocabularies reflects the emptiness of their spiritual landscape. These kids are all heart, all fire and excitement: thus Jimmy Rabbitt, for instance, when explaining to the others the true significance of soul music, says that "It grabs you by the balls and lifts you above the shite."

The film is full of memorable lines, primarily about the importance of striving to transcend one's past and become something greater: for example, "It feels a lot better being an unemployed musician than an unemployed pipe-fitter." Deidre and I quote it all the time. Some lines fit a varietey of purposes, an example being Jimmy's excuse for his inability to find a job after two years on the dole: "We're a Third-World country--what can you do?" And when one of us wants to praise the other for thinking creatively in a business situation, we'll say, "Brilliant management, Brother Rabbitte." That's what Joey "The Lips" Fagan says to Jimmy when he realizes that the latter, in a clever bid to attract young men to the group, has recruited three young female singers. But what's really interesting is the second part of that quote, when Joey says, "Will they be wearing black?" From the look in Jimmy's eyes--he has piercing light-blue ones that add greatly to his charm--you can tell that he hadn't even thought of this idea, which, when put into action, greatly heightens the group's presence on stage.

Along with Jerry Maguire, Jimmy Rabbitte is one of the film protagonists with whom we, as literary agents, most identify. He gets his queries, in the form of kids coming to his parents' house to audition for the band, and not surprisingly, he ends up rejecting most of these candidates. He has to negotiate the vicissitudes of handling talented but sometimes unpredictable individuals, smoothe over interpersonal conflict, and soothe tender egos while leaving his own ego completely out of consideration. Throughout, he maintains his good humor by continually touching on his dream of achieving musical greatness.

Deidre, by the way, doesn't think The Commitments should be THE official Knight Agency movie. Just last night, we happened to catch the second half of The Muse on TV, and she pointed out that it could just as easily hold the "official" title. And there's no question that it's a great story, one that almost made me weep the first time I saw it because it helped me to appreciate the fact that "you don't shortchange the muse." And there are other good candidates as well, but I have a soft spot for The Commitments. To see those kids come from nothing, and each in their own way make something of the opportunity set before them, is as compelling for me on the twelfth (at least!) viewing as it was on the first--more, in fact, because I could hardly understand a word they were saying the first two or three times.

[In a felicitous confluence of events, it so happens that I also recently put together an "official" Knight Agency soundtrack in honor of Nephele's visit earlier this week. Each person in the company got a copy of the CD, and today I sent out a note explaining the significance of each song choice. Look for a further discussion of that topic next week.]