May 3, 1996

THE PALLBEARER is not a movie I was interested in in 1996, because it was, as far as I could tell, a romcom starring David Schwimmer. I didn’t even watch Friends, why would I branch into his cinematic efforts? But 30 years later I was curious because it turns out this is the directorial debut of one Matt Reeves, whose subsequent works have been the following: CLOVERFIELD, LET ME IN, DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, and THE BATMAN. Apparently he also created and directed 5 episodes of a television show called Felicity and it would be interesting to know if this kind of has a similar feel in many ways, including the way it integrates the score by Stewart Copeland (FRESH), but you’d have to asks someone else for that information. I only know that I liked all of those movies he directed, as well as his one credit prior to this – UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY, which he co-wrote with Richard Hatem.

Reeves’ debut here is produced by his pal J.J. Abrams (credited as Jeffrey Abrams) and written with Jason Katims, a story editor from My So-Called Life who later developed Roswell and worked on Friday Night Lights. With its ugly poster and DVD cover I always pictured THE PALLBEARER as some shitty, uncinematic comedy Reeves would be embarrassed of, but actually it’s a good looking indie type of movie, shot on location in New York by motherfuckin Robert Elswit, who had already done HARD EIGHT and would go on to not only shoot most of Paul Thomas Anderson’s other movies but also MICHAEL CLAYTON, REDBELT, THE TOWN, NIGHTCRAWLER and many other fine films. The guy seems to know camera stuff pretty good in my opinion, so it looks like a real movie.

And it’s an odd one. It kind of is a romantic comedy, but it leans more into dark and uncomfortable stuff. The hook is that this guy Tom Thompson (Schwimmer, WOLF) gets a call from the mother of a high school classmate who committed suicide, she wants him to be a pallbearer, and he doesn’t know how to say no even though he doesn’t remember the guy. His two long time best bros, Scott (Michael Vartan, COLOMBIANA) and Brad (Michael Rapaport, KISS OF DEATH), don’t remember the name either, and there’s no photo of him in the yearbook.

Meanwhile, Scott is having a party and his wife Cynthia (Toni Collette, xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE) tries to hook Tom up with his life long crush Julie DeMarco (Gwyneth Paltrow between HARD EIGHT and EMMA). Julie is very sweet and talks him down from self-deprecation, telling him all the girls had crushes on him, before it becomes clear that she’s thinking of a different guy they went to school with. It’s maybe an indictment of the script, but mostly of the characters, that it’s not until the very end of the movie that it occurs to any of them that the person Julie was confusing him with is also the friend of the dead guy the mom thought she was calling. Duh.

When the wrong Tom goes to tell the grieving mother Ruth Abernathy (Barbara Hershey, FALLING DOWN) that he can’t come to the funeral, he instead gets talked into doing the eulogy. His whole friend group, even Julie, decide to go with him, and most of them can’t help laughing (but they manage to disguise it as sobbing). Reeves is very successful at making me squirm through all this, and creating suspense over questions like will he recognize the guy in the casket, will Julie, will the family be mad that he gives a terrible eulogy just asking the question “Who is Bill Abernathy?” and coming to the conclusion that no one really knows, if you think about it, in a way?

Julie is the only one with enough conscience to be bothered by Tom doing this, but she agrees to a date with him afterwards, then turns it into a double date for her protection. You can’t blame her. The whole thing is painfully awkward and sad even before he tries to give her a goodbye kiss and accidentally headbutts her and then finds out she did not want to kiss him anyway.

Meanwhile, Ruth has him come to her house because she says Bill willed him his car (which Bill committed suicide in!). The next very uncomfortable scene involves Tom having to guess whether or not she is actually coming on to him like she seems to be. SPOILER I was relieved that she was, just because I didn’t need to witness any more humiliation.

Reeves does a good job of juggling a bunch of different things. Tom has the affair with Ruth, but also when he stops trying to hide from Julie that he lives with his mom (Carol Kane, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) and has some honest conversations with her they start to actually be a thing. But he’s hiding more from her than just having another lady friend – he was spying on her and saw Scott make a pass at her, then pretended not to know about it when she came to him for support. The holes this fucking guy digs for himself – jesus.

Though released by the marketing masters at Miramax, THE PALLBEARER did not make back its $8 million budget in theaters. It actually got a very nice 3-star review from Roger Ebert, but Janet Maslin called it a “sleepy, charmless romantic comedy.” Rotten Tomatoes is worthless now for finding reviews, but for whatever it’s worth they have its rating at 48% and summarize the consensus as, “Between a dark comedy and a romantic one, THE PALLBEARER confounds, and David Schwimmer’s puppy dog eyes can’t save the procession from going six feet under.”

I personally was not confounded by the odd mix of tones. I think they were trying something risky, and I like that. My problem is that this protagonist is way too obnoxious to be as relatable as he needs to be for this type of story to work for me. You can’t have him be a total fuck up loser and also have no personality and also betray everyone he cares about if he’s also a wet noodle sad sack the whole time.

His aspirations are boring yuppie shit: trying to get hired at an architecture firm, jealous of Scott having a Brooks Brothers suit, in love with a skinny blond girl for being pretty, unable to articulate any reasons why these things are meaningful to him. He supposedly has a good portfolio, but we never see him drawing. Obviously we’re not supposed to admire his decision to park outside the record store where Julie works and watch her through binoculars, but we’re probly supposed to forgive him more than I’m willing to. When he calls her on the phone he has “How are you?” written on paper and puts a checkmark next to it after he says it. A funny joke, but sadly emblematic of his whole deal. When he goes on the double date he can’t engage in actual conversation, he tries to have his friends give him prompts. He remembers every minute detail about sitting next to Julie in band but can’t talk to her about the music she loves because he’s never heard of it and doesn’t bother to ask about it. The guy just sucks.

And yet he’s punching way above his weight class, having sex with two different beautiful women of different generations who seem to be happy with what little he offers them. And he can’t just choose one and be honest with her, he has to lie to them and two time. Just a world class dipshit. To make him a character I didn’t hate he would’ve had to, like, have a sense of humor or something.

They’re probly trying to do a Woody Allen thing (it was a different time), but I believe a Woody Allen character would have funny and clever things to say about things. This guy’s not even a charming asshole. I wouldn’t call the whole movie charmless like Maslin did, but it definitely applies to this character. I don’t think Schwimmer is bad in it per se, the character just is no fun.

So there’s something fundamental about THE PALLBEARER that doesn’t work, but I do respect it more than I probly would’ve assumed in 1996. It looks good, it did make me yell at the screen at the appropriate moments and laugh in not-so-obvious ways, and the supporting cast is strong. Rapaport, as much of an asshole as we know him to be now, is very good playing the hothead friend, especially in the scene where he’s drunk at his bachelor party. Paltrow, who I’ve never thought much about one way or the other, is adorable in it. Hershey’s character is more of a stretch but she makes it work, I think. I don’t think it’s a good movie, but I do think it’s an interesting one. We just had to give this filmmaker some apes or some bats to see him shine.

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tie-ins: I can’t believe it but there’s a novelization by David Lipsky, the respected magazine writer whose memoir Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself was adapted into the movie THE END OF THE TOUR. I know about the novelization because Maslin says in her review that it’s “one of the rare movie tie-in books to have more depth and personality than the movie itself.” I’m genuinely impressed if she actually took the time to read it!