A Tom Arnold Thread: Can Anything Be Justified?

[captveg]

I remember him being mildly funny as High Grant's best pal in Nine Months. I can't recall if I've seen him anything other than that, True Lies, and random Roseanne episodes.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Except Touch (1997), a Paul Schrader Movie from an Elmore Leonard Book, starring Skeet Ulrich and scored by Dave Grohl. I have seen this movie and recollect nothing about it.

I just caught that on TV a few weeks ago. Arnold plays an ultra-gung ho Knights of Columbus-esque Catholic, and while the character
is ridiculous, he doesn't play it overly broad, much to his credit. It's not a major work in Scharder's canon, but it's worth a rental.
Bridget Fonda is pretty great, and with her appearance in Jackie Brown, this surely makes her and Michael Keaton the epicenters
of the 1990's Elmore Leonard cinematic resurgence.

Grohl's surf rock score is pleasant, but I can understand why he didn't continue to produce music for films. The closing credits has a
really nice duet with him and Louise Post of Veruca Salt.

Agree about your assessment of Touch. I saw it for the first time about two months ago. Both Arnold and Fonda were the highlights, though I wish they cast a stronger actor in the Ulrich role.

[domino harvey]

At least the current generation’s Skeet Ulrich, Scoot McNairy, is a good actor

I saw Touch many years ago and remember next to nothing about it except for being disappointed that it didn’t really do much with its premise

[Jack Kubrick]

Last I recall seeing Arnold was on The Best Damn Sports Show Period, which was about 15 years ago and just remember it as just a late night show centering around sports.

Re: Fonda, I was reading the Whatever Happen to blog post about her awhile back, as I wonder about the severity of her car accident that likely caused her to exit the industry. One user chatted with her at a social gathering and she said though wasn't planning to return at the moment she would never rule out a chance to come back to acting. From doing research I see her kid is currently in high school and would be graduating in three years. Her Aunt Jane came back to acting after a hiatus from the big screen and being married to a successfully wealthy man, maybe she's trying to find the right script that would prompt the urge to come back on the screen.

[Swift]

My cable company has a neat feature where I can voice search for an actor or director and it comes up with a list of films or TV shows available to me on the box. So with a couple hours to kill and with this thread in mind I searched for Tom Arnold. Outside of True Lies (the only thing I've seen him in), there wasn't a lot of much interest. Mostly DTV type stuff from the 2000s, Animal Factory (an interesting looking prison movie with Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong which I see was mentioned earlier in the thread) and Backfield in Motion, a 1991 Roseanne Barr vehicle where moms take on their sons in a football game. I watched the latter.

This apparently aired on ABC and certainly has the look, feel and directorial touch of a TV movie. Barr and her son (Johnny Galecki) move to a football mad small town, where instead of staging the annual father/son football game, Barr convinces them to put on a mother/son game instead. Cue montage scenes of recruiting and training moms. Arnold plays the high school vice principal who coaches them and falls for Barr. The film is kinda dull generic underdog sports stuff with unfunny comedy but there's a certain charm Roseanne has as a somewhat boorish outsider in a picket fence community and the relationship between her and her son is actually pretty sweet. Arnold is full of goofy schmaltz but looks like he's just coasting through. It's on Amazon Prime but it's not worth going out of your way for. I imagine Disney would've handled this kind of thing better.

Just to turn this into a Roseanne and Tom Arnold thread... I've never seen her show but obviously she had some comedic gifts. Did she ever transition from TV to movies? I don't think I've ever seen her in anything. Obviously I know about her mouth getting her in trouble a couple years ago.

[domino harvey]

She starred opposite Meryl Streep, if you can believe it, in I believe her only major film role, She-Devil

[therewillbeblus]

Her mouth didn't get her in trouble- Everybody knows Ambien should never be taken on Memorial Day weekend.

[domino harvey]

Also, her recent idiocy aside, Roseanne was a great and very funny show. Pitch perfect cast and a real fearlessness when it came to actual working class problems and issues.

[therewillbeblus]

She was also apparently in the Van Sant adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which I've never seen because it's one of Tom Robbins' worst novels and generally seems like an awful idea to adapt his work.

[zedz]

Now that’s a film I don’t think anybody’s thought about for a very long time.

[therewillbeblus]

It's a book I haven't thought about in a very long time either, and I think about Robbins' work relatively often.

[domino harvey]

Somehow Tom Arnold’s 2012 masterpiece Fred 3 ended up in my recommended YouTube movies. For those who don’t know who Fred is, quit while you’re ahead

[therewillbeblus]

Well now I feel like I need to see what it's like to have Siobhan Fallon Hogan and John Cena banter as parents.

[domino harvey]

Which one did he inherit that voice from though