Outrageous Fortune (1987)
Although the subgenre had been around almost as long as talkies were, Outrageous Fortune is notable for being the first “buddy comedy” from Hollywood to boast two female actors as the stars. There are some possible exceptions to this some could bring up, most notably, Desperately Seeking Susan, though Madonna has much more of a supporting role and doesn’t share much screen time with the lead, Rosanna Arquette. Nevertheless, there have been other female buddy comedies, one being a big one from 1980 called 9 to 5. Still, this one isn’t about female empowerment so much as about female rivalries and friendships. In most respects, otherwise, it is a typical male buddy comedy that just so happens to star women, though it does represent the comeuppance of a dishonest and later abusive male paramour who truly deserves it. It does affirm female values and camaraderie in a very lighthearted way, primarily as it draws toward its vengeful conclusion.
Shelley Long plays prissy longtime acting student, Lauren Ames, who has never gotten an actual gig. Lauren finally finds some hope when she makes her way into a prestigious drama class led by an all-time great international acting coach. Bette Midler co-stars as Sandy Brozinsky, a mouthy, earthy waitress who also suddenly finds herself in the same class without any of the talent or desire to be there. The two have a personality clash immediately that only gets worse after discovering that they are both in a relationship with the same dreamboat of a man, Michael Santers (Peter Coyote). Santers ends up faking his death for reasons the ladies have to put aside their petty differences to discover, mostly to make him choose between them. Their collaborative adventure sees them go on a cross-country trip only to find that there is so much more to Michael they never knew. What they discover now has them on the run from KGB agents and the CIA to hopefully come out alive, with the MacGuffin being a toxin that can destroy all vegetation within miles with just a few drops.
Outrageous Fortune’s script is written by Leslie Dixon, her first to be made into a feature film, though her second to be written (after Overboard, which came out later the same year). Dixon came in to do revisions for another script and given a chance to develop a female buddy comedy idea that they had been trying to get off the ground for some time through several teams of male screenwriters, to little avail. Unlike those efforts, Dixon’s would prove fruitful and was put immediately into production without revisions, shot by director Arthur Hiller almost exactly to what she had on the page.
That verbatim part is interesting given that the film features a literal cliffhanger ending that echoes Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, something Hiller did in his 1976 hit buddy comedy, Silver Streak. It isn’t a Hitchcockian film in execution, per se, though it does have the MacGuffin as mentioned earlier. There are more allusions to Shakespeare, not only because the film features actresses trying out for roles. The title of the film itself is an allusion to the Bard’s “Hamlet” (which gets directly referenced several times in the movie), which contains the famous of all of his lines in Act III, Scene 1, “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Unlike Shakespeare’s actors, men don’t play the female roles, but there is a scene of gender reversal where the two women dress as men to enter a brothel only to be mistaken for young boys pretending to be older to sneak in.
Reportedly Shelley Long and Bette Midler had a bit of a clash of egos while on the set, although their different personalities were the primary reason they connect, so it works for the comedy we see on the screen. One of their clashes had to do with who would be getting top billing for the movie. Shelley Long did have the most screen time, but Bette Midler was the more prominent movie star. Shelley Long had signed her contract first, one that guaranteed her top-of-the-bill status. Still, it was renegotiated to a shared spotlight when Midler, who was hot after back-to-back hits with Ruthless People and Down and Out in Beverly Hills, became a viable option to co-star. A compromise was struck by their agents who suggested that they split the billing based on location, with prints of the film offering Midler as the star for showings east of the Mississippi, while Long would get the nod in the west. This rollout also held for video releases. They would also alternate their names for press releases used to promote the film, in trailers, posters, and lobby cards, and advertisements for the movie in newspapers would also alternately flip the names each day.
Midler had discovered she was pregnant shortly after signing on to the film and even considered declining the project afterward due to the physical nature of the performance, though she was under a three-picture contract with Disney/Touchstone. To maintain her compliance and to avoid delays, the studio negotiated with her so that she could perform minimal stunt work to make sure there were no issues. To hide the bump, Midler wore an old pair of roomy pants and an oversized sweater as part of her wardrobe. Meanwhile, she would suffer a setback with the loss of her father, but being the lifelong show business professional she is, she soldiered on through it all to deliver the light comedy. She would ger a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Shelley Long had left her stint on the wildly successful TV show “Cheers” to pursue an acting career in the movies
In the film, the two would-be actresses get more of a lesson on how to act than they would do in the acting class, as they have to don a variety of disguises and take on a plethora of different personalities and accents to either gain information or to make a slick getaway. The plot is often nonsensical (the duo hide inside tumbling industrial driers at a laundromat that there is no way they could close with both inside them), playing mostly for laughs above all else.
Outrageous Fortune is an amusing and often hilarious comedy that significantly benefits from two energetic and funny performances by two very talented leads. Long gets to riff plenty in a role not dissimilar to the snooty Diane Chambers on “Cheers,” but she gets plenty of moments to shine by taking on a variety of other comic characters in the course of the story. Midler is perfect as the raunchier and brasher of the two, making it plausible that they’d be at each other’s throats from the get-go, yet their eventual rubbing off on one another
There was some grumbling about the chosen date of release of January 30, 1987. January is traditionally a weak month to release new films, as Christmas release blockbusters usually dominate, while Oscar contenders are pushed back into theaters when they get nominated in the latter half of January. However, Touchstone Pictures had success just the year before with the January 31 release of another Bette Midler vehicle, Down and out in Beverly Hills. They were willing to roll the dice that the audience that the same audience would come out again during the same period, and generated word-of-mouth buzz with a soft rollout of preview screenings in 200 theaters the week before. The move proved successful, securing #2s spot at the U.S. box office for its first three weeks of release, behind the juggernaut that had been dominating for many weeks, Platoon, and remaining in the top 10 money earners for ten weeks.
Outrageous Fortune is a fun, madcap comedy featuring two comic actresses at their most appealing. Midler and Long are irresistibly attractive, and their odd-couple pairing works wonders, even if they could barely stand each other when the cameras stopped filming.
Qwipster’s rating: A-
MPAA Rated: R for sexuality, sexual humor, violence, and language
Running time: 101 min.
Cast: Shelley Long, Bette Midler, Peter Coyote, Robert Prosky, John Schuck, George Carlin, Anthony Heald
Small roles: Christopher McDonald, Robert Pastorelli
Director: Arthur Hiller
Screenplay: Leslie Dixon