Movie Exchange of the Day (Midler and Slater Learn About Real “Ruthless People”)

Barbara Stone (played by Bette Midler): “So, when do I get out of here?”
Sandy Kessler (played by Helen Slater): “As soon as Mr. Stone pays the ransom.”
Barbara: “What's the problem? What is the ransom?”
Sandy: “Well, we asked for $500,000.”
Barbara: “That should be no problem.”
Sandy: “He wouldn't pay.”
Barbara: “He wouldn't pay?”
Sandy: “Then we asked him for $50,000.”
Barbara: “Yeah?”
Sandy: “He still wouldn't pay. So now we're lowering our price to $10,000.”
Barbara: “Do I understand this correctly? I'm being marked down?”
[Starts crying]
Barbara: “I've been kidnapped by K-Mart!”—Ruthless People (1986), directed by Jim Abraham, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, screenplay by Dale Launer

When Ruthless People premiered on this date 25 years ago today, Bette Midler and co-star Danny DeVito, playing her cutthroat-businessman husband (think Donald Trump, with even fewer warm and fuzzies, if you can), worried that the film would tank and with it, their careers. They needn’t have worried, as it went on to do dandy business at the box office and gave Midler, for about a half-dozen years, a career as a brassy film-comedy queen to go with her success on vinyl.

In retrospect, what seems surprising about the film’s success is that it came in the middle of the Reagan era’s celebration of unbridled capitalism. This was one full year before the Wall Street crash, remember, and just before the collective perp-walk spectacle of Boesky, Milken and their minions led many (as we now know, still nowhere near enough) to question the ethical underpinnings of The Street.

As the above exchange shows, the heart of this farce is a modern-day variation on O. Henry’s classic short story “The Ransom of Red Chief,” in which a 10-year-old brat makes his kidnappers sorry they ever thought of their scheme. (In this case, of course, the "brat" has been transformed into the adult hellion Barbara.)

But the movie doesn’t stop at this premise. The real “ruthless people” are not kidnappers Sandy Kessler and husband Ken (played by Judge Reinhold) but the man who cheated them, DeVito’s Sam Stone, and his mistress Carla (played by the late, lamented Anita Morris). (I’d also include among the "ruthless" Carla's boyfriend-on-the-sly, Earl—played by Bill Pullman, in his first film role—except that he’s too stupid.)

There’s another scene that has stuck in my mind about this film. At an electronics store, Ken is trying to persuade a guy in his late teens or early 20s to buy a piece of equipment. As their conversation continues, Ken, realizing he has an easy mark, hawks the most expensive sound system in the store. Just about to clinch the sale, he notices a pregnant woman--the customer’s girlfriend. No longer with the heart to take advantage of his easy mark, Ken instead shows him equipment that will be just as high quality, but nowhere near as expensive.

In less than two minutes, the scene speaks volumes about how unfit Ken is for the task he’s set himself in kidnapping Sam’s wife--how out of his league, in fact, he and the equally sweet Sandy will be in negotiating with the businessman dying to get his hands on his loud, nightmare-from-hell wife’s fortune.