1982@40: NIGHT SHIFT

Chuck is so intimidated by life that he quit his whitecollar job in investment broking to work in a morgue among the silent dead. His timidity has developed so far that he is bullied by everyone he encounters. That is until, bullied off the day shift so the boss's nephew can take the job, he meets his new assistant Bill. Bill is constantly engaged with the life (and non-life) around him to such a degree that when he's not talking or riffing he's dictating new ideas into a Walkman. And then, through a series of domino effect events from the crime movie prologue to a victim identification scene in the morgue, he meets Belinda, a sex worker whose pimp is on the slab. She's also his neighbour in the apartment down the hall from him. She's also in straits now that the management has gone, turning up one night injured by an aggressive client.

Putting two and three together, the trio come up with a scheme to organise the sex workers more corporately with job tracing, much better percentages and maybe even dental plans. You know how plots like this go and so does this movie. The point is in the people. Of course the relationships between them will turn inside out, break and be mended, this is a comedy, the fun is in how. And that is supplied by casting.

And what casting! Ponder this: Fonzie as a nebbish, Diane form Cheers as a worldly sex worker, and Micheal Keaton as a proto Beetlejuice (he was about to have a busy decade on screen). Against type, development of type and type in progress all in one movie. And it is in the writing and performances here that we get a comedy significantly against type for its time.

Henry Winkler is beaten by life, accepting the ugliness that acts on recognising his vulnerability. Intelligent and sober he is yet not written as a straight man of foil for Keaton's mania. The times would typically have him an exaggeration, a walking anxiety machine. Winkler, though, gives us something far more real, a person on the verge of implosion. In a way this is exaggeration, though: if the public wanted another Fonzie they didn't get the one who selected songs in the drugstore by punching the jukebox, they got the one who broke his hand trying. The tension between Bill and Chuck is not the clown vs the jumpy guy but a hyperactive toddler whose japes and turns are absorbed by an unimpressed void. What happens when it fills and pushes back? It robs the film of easy comedy but gives it durability. Also, it allows us time to suspect the sadness beneath Bill's mania, the terror that if he isn't making noise that there will only be the silence of space. Between these two comes Shelly Long's sobriety. Breaking the unironic privilege she brought so effectively to Diane, she gives us someone aware of the ugliness of her profession and respect for it. Like Winklers, her performance's power lies in its restraint.

The trailer for this movie at the time (not the one on IMDB) played up the comedic tells, Chuck getting bullied, Bill being crazy and Belinda being sassy. It looked like an m-rated sex romp like Porkies. The only reason I went to see it at the cinema was the recommendation of a fellow student who said the trailer was completely misleading. It is. There is sex in this film but it is shown by aspects. It's Chuck's ritualised coupling with his self-obsessed fiance as well as a service for sale on a shifting scale from exploitation to a more protected systematisation, a function of  consumerism either way. The only leering here is diegetic, of Johns and authority figures, the film itself refuses to snigger.

This is down to the hand of Ron Howard (Winkler's cast mate in Happy Days). This is not his cinematic feature debut but it's a very early one and already shows his willingness to go against type within the bounds of industry standards. The opening pastiche of Taxi Driver is not a send up but a use of an iconic streetscape. It's not meant to be clever, just effective. The interplay of the central trio  is kept delicate until it can finally break into broader comedy by which time it's much more than slapstick. How intentional this was I don't know but the same quality led Howard from this through things like Splash, Cocoon and Backdraft from comedy through to a highly respected and oscar winning allrounder status. Perhaps it was just something that happened from job to job but the refusual of Night Shift to play to the norm and dish up a saucy satire and concentrate instead on its characters and their complexity gives it a lasting strength. Maybe fewer laughs than Bachelor Party but it still feels good after the credits.