Ryan O’Neal in Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987)
Vitals
Ryan O’Neal as Tim Madden, ex-convict and aspiring writer prone to blackouts
Cape Cod, Fall 1986
Film: Tough Guys Don’t Dance
Release Date: September 18, 1987
Director: Norman Mailer
Costume Designer: Michael Kaplan
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God…!
While some recognize Ryan O’Neal from 1970s classics like Love Story, Paper Moon, and Barry Lyndon and others know him for his supporting role on Bones, the above poetry has immortalized the actor’s performance from the baffling 1987 neo-noir Tough Guys Don’t Dance, adapted and directed by Norman Mailer from his own novel of the same name.
Today is the first anniversary of O’Neal’s April 20, 1941 birthday since his death in December 2023 at the age of 82. After appearing in more than 500 episodes of the 1960s soap opera Payton Place—and earning a place in the menswear pantheon for his character Rodney Harrington’s enduring association with the Baracuta G9-style golf jacket—O’Neal became one of the biggest stars of the ’70s following his Academy Award-nominated performance in Love Story opposite Ali MacGraw. His screen credits throughout the decade included the screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?, the ’30s-set road dramedy Paper Moon co-starring his own real-life Tatum O’Neal, Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed epic Barry Lyndon, the star-studded war film A Bridge Too Far, and Walter Hill’s sublime thriller The Driver.
As details of his volatile personal life dominated headlines more than reviews for his movies, O’Neal’s career followed a less desirable path in the ’80s as demonstrated by his appearance in Tough Guys Don’t Dance, Mailer’s attempt at a hardboiled neo-noir that received a well-deserved seven Golden Raspberry Award nominations, with Mailer cinching the Razzie Award for Worst Director.
In addition to its needlessly confusing composition of flashbacks-within-flashbacks, Tough Guys Don’t Dance became instantly notorious for the overwrought delivery of laughably scripted dialogue, particularly O’Neal’s own “oh God, oh man” moment that the actor himself pleaded with Mailer to remove, fearing it showcased his shortcomings as an actor… though audiences need look no further than the likes Barry Lyndon to see that O’Neal could truly shine under proper direction. Of course, Mailer was no Kubrick and overrode the actor’s objections by leaving the line in place, complete with its dizzying camerawork and Angelo Badalamenti’s melodramatic score.
While that’s the sort of decision that deserves Razzies, perhaps Mailer anticipated that this choice would become an ultimately pyrrhic victory as the scene propelled the movie to memefied immortality.
I will do my best to concisely describe the plot of Tough Guys Don’t Dance, but to do so in a way that isn’t confusing almost does the movie a disservice.
O’Neal plays Tim Madden, an aspiring writer who drinks more than he writes, resulting in frequent flashbacks to the poor decisions he made when he was a drug-dealing bartender running afoul of the law. Perhaps the poorest of these decisions was impulsively tanking his relationship with Madeleine (Isabella Rossellini) by proposing a night of wife-swapping with two swinging strangers—an evangelist known as “Big Stoop” (Penn Jillette!) and his dramatically Southern-accented wife Patty Lareine (Debra Sandlund)—which, as wife-swapping is wont to do, results in Tim crashing their car. It turns out that Madeleine was pregnant and loses her baby, so they do cocaine in the hospital. Sure!
After a stint in prison, Tim ends up in the picturesque Provincetown, Massachusetts, married to Patty Lareine, though that union is quickly doomed. Patty Lareine—that’s her full first name, don’t wear it out—leaves Tim, so he starts drinking for nearly a month. On the 24th day, he stops drinking at home and goes drinking at the Widow’s Walk tavern, where he meets the melodramatic ex-porn star Jessica Pond (Frances Fisher) and her stodgy husband Lonnie (R. Patrick Sullivan), who seems kinda eager but kinda angry about Tim and Jessica cuckolding him in the parking lot.
Oh God, oh man, this synopsis is growing longer than I anticipated. Anyway, the heads literally start rolling with P-town’s sneering new police chief, Alvin Luther Regency (Wings Hauser), pointing an accusatory finger at Tim… whose penchant for blackouts leaves him unable to defend himself. Matters are complicated when Tim reconnects with Madeleine, now married to the abusive Captain Regency whose primary marital value seems to be his ability to “make out[sic] five times a night… that’s why I call him Mr. Five!” as she insists to Tim before handing him the damning letter that leads to O’Neal’s even more damning response.
This is starting to make me mad, so I’ll wrap it up. Another of Patty Lareine’s ex-husbands—and Tim’s effete boyhood buddy—Wardley Meeks III (John Bedford Lloyd) also involves himself, and Tim finds help from his gruff father Dougy (Lawrence Tierney), who foregoes his cancer treatments to drink with his son. Lonnie’s closeted homosexuality and Wardley’s effete mannerisms reaffirm Will Menaker’s Letterboxd review that Mailer was essentially making “a film about what it means to be a man: knowing that everyone but you and your dad are gay.”
Indeed, from vocalizing the film’s title when recounting a dream to offering Tim aberrant degrees of paternal assistance (“I just deep-sixed two heads”), only the true noir veteran Tierney seems game to deliver Mailer’s dialogue on any degree short of laughable, though that just may be because even Mailer was too intimidated by the famously frightening actor to saddle him with his own “oh God, oh man” travesty.
What’d He Wear?
Tough Guys Don’t Dance is neither Ryan O’Neal’s best nor his most stylish movie, but I’ve already written extensively about Love Story, Paper Moon, and The Driver, so—in the spirit of Mailer’s cast—let’s just go all-out on embracing what we have to work with.
Costume designer Michael Kaplan dresses O’Neal in a few interesting sport jackets and sweaters over the course of Tough Guys Don’t Dance, but Tim Madden’s most frequent outfit through his deadly bender consists of a blue denim trucker jacket, black jeans, Nike sneakers, and a rotation of plain crew-neck shirts.
Tim’s blue medium-wash denim trucker jacket appears to be as distressed as he is, indicated by the abundance of tears and frays along the edges. (Indeed, the jacket is a brief casualty of the film’s chaotic violence as Tim finds it doused in blood in the front seat of his Jeep, though he’s able to wash it out well enough to continue wearing it through the rest of the movie.)
The jacket resembles the late model Levi’s “Type III” trucker jackets, right down to the side pockets that were added to the Type III in 1984, though the cut, buttons, and lack of a red tab signify that this is definitely not a Levi’s product. The jacket fastens up the front with six crested nickel rivet buttons, matching those on the cuffs, the two-button waist tabs on each side of the hem, and closing the chest pocket flaps. The jacket follows the classic Levi’s design with the “V”-shaped stitching that begin at the horizontal chest yoke and taper down over each front panel to the waistband, with the hand pocket openings set-in behind each “V”.
When he goes drinking at the Widow’s Walk, Tim layers two long-sleeved crew-neck pullover shirts under his jean jacket that he would also each wear on their own at various points in Tough Guys Don’t Dance. The outer shirt is a dark-gray mid-weight cotton sweatshirt with a narrowly ribbed and reinforced crew-neck. Under that, he wears a lighter-weight plain white cotton long-sleeved T-shirt.
Tim later wears a light heather-gray cotton or cotton/polyester crew-neck sweatshirt with the raglan sleeves cut off high on the forearms to convert it to a very short-sleeved shirt.
Tim’s slightly faded black denim jeans are a staple of his wardrobe, worn with everything from his tweed sports coat to a zip-up hoodie, as well as this trucker jacket. The jeans follow the traditional five-pocket design with two patch-style back pockets and two curved front pockets with the watch/coin pocket inset on the right, though they lack any of the clear branded signifiers of the “big three” (Lee, Levi’s, Wrangler) or any other ’80s outfitter.
Tim works his drunken charm while meeting Jessica and Lonnie in the Widow’s Walk.
Like his jeans, Tim almost always wears his beige Nike Equinox sneakers, a running shoe model introduced in 1984 and designed for comfortable stability with Air-Wedge
midsoles, black rubber “center-of-pressure” Waffle outsoles, and external heel counter support. The beige suede-like synthetic uppers have a Duramesh-covered toe section and are laced through eight alternately staggered sets of eyelets. The brick-red leather “swoosh” logos along each side run continuously up to the “Nike Air”-branded upper heel counters, matching the brick-red and gray stacked support system along the heels of the white wedge midsoles.
Befitting the athletic association with these trainers, Tim wears plain white ribbed cotton-blend crew socks.
Tim removes one of his Nikes and socks to bathe his foot while his father Dougy was out deep-sixing some heads.
As the narrative progresses later into November and the weather grows chillier on the Cape, Tim pulls a voluminous dark-gray nylon puffer coat over his denim jacket as a more insulated outer layer. This blouson-style jacket is elasticized around the waist hem and cuffs with a horizontal yoke straight across the upper back.
The straight-zip extends up the front through the funnel-neck, which lays flat like a collar when unzipped. The front zip is covered up to the neck by an extended storm fly that closes with a single silver-toned snap at the top and a pair of silver-toned snaps at the waist. This jacket has two patch-style hand pockets, each with a vertical opening.
What to Imbibe
Tough guys may not dance in Norman Mailer’s P-town, but they certainly drink, with “bourbon, neat” being Tim’s preference—though he hardly discriminates, slugging back beer and brandy on occasion as well. During one particularly memorable exchange, Provincetown’s sinister new police chief Captain Regency produces a bottle of Wild Turkey 101-proof bourbon for he and Tim… before also shocking Tim by burning a joint.
Happy 4/20 from Provincetown Police Department Captain Regency.
The Gun
Tim ends up with the small silenced .22-caliber pistol that started in possession of Lonnie Pangborn (R. Patrick Sullivan), before it was used by Jessica Pond (Frances Fisher) to kill him… then by Patty Lareine (Debra Sandlund) to kill her… and finally used by Wardley Meeks III (John Bedford Lloyd) to hold Tim captive before turning the piece on himself.
The pistol appears to be a Beretta 950, ornately detailed with gold inlay, gold controls, and a gold hammer contrasting against the blued frame and white plastic grips. Beretta launched this reliable series of micro-compact pocket pistols in 1952, available in both .25 ACP (“Jetfire”) and .22 Short (“Minx”); given the dialogue describing this as “a .22,” we can assume it’s meant to be the 950 Minx.
Tim shows his father the silenced Beretta .22 he took from Wardley.
Beretta crafted the blowback-operated, single-action 950 series with a carbon steel slide and barrel, and the aluminum alloy frame reduces the weight to approximately 280 grams (or 9.9 ounces) when unloaded. Of course, the firearms technology of the era meant sacrificing power for this level of concealment as .25 ACP and .22 Short are hardly considered man-stoppers; the Minx fed from six-round magazines of .22 Short while the Jetfire took magazines with eight rounds of .25 ACP.
Measuring 4.7 inches long overall, with a barrel length just over two inches, these “mouse guns” were Beretta’s first pistols to feature a tip-up barrel, meaning the barrel could be pivoted upward for a user to load a round directly into the breech rather than racking the slide. The first series of 950 and 950B pistols lacked any external safeties, while the 950SB series produced after 1968 feature an external thumb-operated safety lever on the left side of the frame.
How to Get the Look
Ryan O’Neal in Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987)
Oh God, oh man, Tim’s wardrobe may be the most unimpeachable aspect of Tough Guys Don’t Dance (alongside the stunning views of Cape Cod), with pieces like his denim jacket, plain crew-neck tees, black jeans, and Nike trainers transcending the ’80s setting as hardy casual gear that can still be effectively layered today.
- Blue distressed denim trucker jacket with six crested nickel rivet buttons, two chest pockets (with button-down flaps), straight side pockets, single-button cuffs, and two-button waist tabs
- Dark-gray nylon blouson-style puffer coat with straight front-zip and snap-closed storm fly, funnel-neck, patch-style hand pockets with vertical openings, and elasticized cuffs and hem
- Gray crew-neck sweatshirt
- White cotton crew-neck long-sleeve T-shirt
- Black denim jeans
- Beige sueded synthetic Nike Equinox sneakers with brick-red “swoosh” logos and heel counters, white Air-Wedge
![™]()
midsoles with brick-red and gray heel counter supports, and black Waffle![™]()
rubber outsoles - White ribbed cotton-blend athletic crew socks
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie, I guess.
The Quote
Your knife… is in… my dog.
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