Act III: David Smells the Leather
At night, David and Linda see a sign for the upcoming town of Safford, Arizona. "My feet are tired," David yawns. "Let's live here." They pull the Winnie into an older folks' mobile community for the night.
The next day, Linda is playing homemaker in the Winnie when David awakens. Alluding to their re-sparking, Linda tells him, "Last night was amazing," and David responds with an Oliver Hardy-like on-the-nose gesture.
Linda says she's been up for hours and starts to detail the virtues of the mobile-home park while David listens to two old geezers outside intoning (twice), "Doctor says I'm losing sight in my right eye." - "Can't hear ya." Reality knocks on David's skull, and he tells Linda they must get jobs that very day.
David goes to a local pharmacy that has a sign in the window requesting a delivery boy. David inquires about the position, but the pharmacy's owner, an elderly man, says he couldn't even pay for the Winnie's gas with his planned salary. He helpfully directs David to the local employment office.
The third great verbal encounter of this movie takes place when David tells the employment officer (Art Frankel, who gives as good as he gets here) of his previous job history and quietly informs the officer of his previous salary. The officer responds, "You couldn't find yourself on a hundred thousand dollars a year?" and continuously needles David about the amount. David asserts that "I made a statement...Did you ever see Easy Rider?" "No," the officer replies, "but I saw Easy Money. That Rodney Dangerfield, what a card..."
David takes the only available job: crossing guard at a grade school. Some mouthy kids on bikes eventually get the best of David and cause him to implore local motorists to run over the kids for sport.
David returns to his post and happens to look over his shoulder. Arising out of the sunburned desert as if carried by gods--angelic music plays on the soundtrack--is David's dream Mercedes-Benz, driven by a motorist who has lost his way. He asks David for directions, and as the man reiterates the directions for memory's sake, David sniffs the car's interior and asks the man if he likes the Mercedes. "What's not to like?" asks the man as he tootles off, leaving David's fantasies behind.
David returns home to find Linda talking to her new manager--a teenaged boy named Skippy who has hired Linda to work at his branch of Der Wienerschnitzel. Skippy happily recounts how Linda prevented him from selling a batch of French fries that were still half-frozen. David tells Skippy he needs to talk to Linda for a moment, and Skippy sits down at their TV to watch "The Flintstones."
David tells Linda how pleased he is that their marriage has been put to the test and has passed. However, he notes, with their current jobs and salaries, "We won't see another nest egg for...ever." Therefore, David starts to propose a plan, as Linda does the same.
Linda: "I thought we should drive to New York as fast as we could..."
David: "And I eat shit?"
Linda: "Uh-huh."
David: "My plan, too!" The couple ejects Skippy and heads for the open road.
The movie's final scene is a montage of David and Linda's counter-cross-country journey, set to Frank Sinatra's rendition of "New York, New York." Finally, David arrives at his old firm's New York office and miraculously fits the Winnebago into the lone parking spot in front of the office. As if that weren't miraculous enough, David kisses Linda good-bye and heads off to eat his expected meal of dung-heap when who should he run into but..."Brad! Remember me?"
Brad hurriedly runs away as David repeatedly tells Brad he was just kidding. A final title informs us that David received his old job back with a 31% pay cut "but better medical." Linda has acquired a manager's job at Bloomingdale's and is expecting their first child. The final line warns us, "To those few who have the courage to drop out and find themselves, may God be with you and take you through Utah, avoiding Nevada entirely."
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