Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, in which writers share a poem or a paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. This week, Spencer Klavan, host of the delightful Classics podcast Young Heretics, recalls the wisdom of his favorite “good bad” movie: Road House.
Some of the greatest writers in the English language, from George Orwell to G.K. Chesterton, were known to have a certain fondness for “good bad books” and “good bad poems.” These are texts so accessible and satisfying that a spoilsport would call them trashy, but everyone else loves them anyway. Stephen King, whose latest novel arrived this week, comes to mind, but Orwell’s example was the Victorian Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book—routinely named Britain’s favorite poet while sophisticates purse their lips.
There is also such a thing as a “good bad” movie. Everyone has a favorite, whether it’s A Walk to Remember or Rambo. Mine is the 1989 action classic Road House. It’s a great bad movie, a purehearted and neon-tinted distillate of the 1980s. Skip the self-serious Jake Gyllenhaal version from last year: The original, starring Patrick Swayze, is a picture that never needed to be remade. Swayze plays James Dalton, who comes to work as the “cooler”—or head of security—at a ramshackle roadside bar. He whips the bouncers there into an elite fighting corps. Then they fall afoul of a local crime lord. Kung fu ensues.
What makes the movie work is its laconic tough-guy screenplay, which is more effective than it has any right to be. “Pain don’t hurt,” Swayze tells Dr. Elizabeth Clay as she stitches him up after a bad brawl, and her heart flutters to see how this (shirtless, muscled) man values his honor over his comfort. It’s a ridiculous line, and also, it’s weirdly motivational. The whole two-hour joyride is like that. Its most iconic monologue—in which Dalton lays down three golden rules for his team of bouncers—contains a piece of actual, honest-to-goodness wisdom. The first two rules are decent enough: “Never underestimate your opponent” and “Never start anything inside the bar.” But it’s rule number three that belongs on a plaque:
