Desert Dream

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

MELVIN AND HOWARD Directed by Jonathan Demme Screenplay by Bo Goldman

There is, of course, a historical Melvin Dummar. He is the Utah gas station operator who claims that in 1968 he picked up an injured Howard Hughes in the desert, gave him a lift back to Las Vegas, and was rewarded by being named a beneficiary of Hughes' will--a document that the courts ruled invalid two years ago. Anyone looking for authentic information about that Melvin and that Howard is advised herewith that this movie will not help: the film makes no claims about Melvin's tale one way or the other. But anyone looking for the poetic truth about Dummar, and most especially about the sweetly dreaming life of the American underclass that produces characters like him, is advised to see this movie, which is just about as good as American films get: sly and funny and, in the end, terribly touching.

At the time he rescues Hughes, Melvin's hopes for success are focused on a lyric he has written and has had set to music for a $75 fee he cannot really afford. When Melvin insists on singing Santa's Souped-Up Sleigh to Hughes, the thing turns out to be as awful as the title. A little later Dummar's wife Lynda, fed up with the futility of her husband's vague schemes, takes their child and leaves him to find work as a go-go dancer in a topless joint. Outraged, Melvin turns up at the place one evening and commences to make a terrible scene just before Lynda sheds her top. When she protests heatedly, "But I love to dance," one sees that she is not kidding, that inside her head she is the star of an old Gene Kelly musical, no matter how tawdry the external realities.

Indeed, when Lynda and Melvin get back together, it is her terpsichorean gift that briefly rescues him from having to succeed in his ingenuous but feckless quest for the "Milkman of the Month" prize at the dairy where he takes a job. She picks up money to pay the bills by tap dancing off with the top prize on Easy Street, a parody of one of those game shows that are themselves a parody of the American dream. But she leaves Melvin again, this time for good, when he invests some of her winnings in a huge cabin cruiser; this he parks uselessly in their driveway, from which unlikely spot he radios the Coast Guard for marine weather reports.

"C'est la vie," Lynda says as she departs, adding that it has always been her dream to become a French translator. "But you don't speak French," says Melvin. "I told you, it was only a dream," she replies, and in the sudden rush of ferocity that comes into her tone the truth of this film lies.

Like Preston Sturges, the great American comedy director of 40 years ago whose work this film most resembles, Jonathan Demme understands that however flaky and naive a simple soul's dream may be, it is the thing that sustains him and gives him a reason to live; thus he cannot permit his dream to be trifled with. As there was in Demme's equally expert 1977 film Handle with Care, there is affection without patronization here, an unforced appreciation of eccentricity that, in the age of Animal House, is wonderful to behold.

Moreover, Demme's collaborators are caught up in his good, wise spirit. Bo Goldman's script refuses to force any situation and is rich enough in invention to throw away lines that other writers might use as the comic point of a scene. Paul Le Mat as Melvin is a patient counterpuncher, the kind of actor who wins on points rather than with kayo effects. Jason Robards as Hughes turns what might have been little more than a cameo into an affecting and rounded portrayal. There is a touching, wistful air about him. Whether or not Hughes actually left money to Dummar, there is little question from this performance that they were soul mates of a sort, fellow fantasists lost in the American wasteland.

But the picture belongs to Mary Steenburgen, who is the new Jean Arthur--and about time too. As Dummar's wife, she has Arthur's askew combination of practicality and romanticism, a decisiveness that is stated distractedly. She's lovely, and so is this film, so rich in internal rhymes and memorably syncopated rhythms. --By Richard Schickel

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