Perfect
Alright y’all…this installment of VHS of the Week comes courtesy of my good friends Dan and Leslie, who were so gobsmacked after viewing the 1985 aerobics disaster film Perfect that they hunted down a VHS copy of said film for me to view and review. My own personal recollections of this movie are nil. I know that my mother often pushed me to rent it back around ‘86-’87…and that I turned her down every single time. I did know that Perfect was supposed to function as a 119 minute infomercial for Rolling Stone magazine…and that RS founder and man who has been thrice accused of sexual assault yet remains uncancelled Jann Wenner plays himself in the film. In his 2022 autobiography Like a Rolling Stone: A memoir, Wenner spends approximately 1.5 of the book’s 550 pages talking about Perfect. Wenner seems thoroughly bemused by the very existence of the film, claiming to have had little creative input in the entire process. His only memories of the shoot involve getting shitfaced with cunnilingual cancer survivor Michael Douglas and laying a forcefully unscripted rape kiss on Jamie Lee Curtis. I quote: “When the cameras started to roll, I pulled (Curtis) into my arms and kissed her passionately while dipping her as if she were Rita Hayworth. This was taking a chance, but the set broke out in cheers, and the director (a man) loved it. And when you’re famous they let you do it.” Ok…I added that last part.
What happens is this: we open in the offices of the Jersey City Times, where we meet lowly obituary reporter Adam Lawrence (lunatic Scientologist and fellow accused sexual harasser John Travolta). Adam is stuck on the deadbeat beat, calling bereaved relatives and browbeating them into revealing intimate details about their dearly departed. “How’d ya mother die?? Well I ain’t running the obit unless you tell me!!” Here I stop and ask myself if I remember who wrote my father’s obituary….and I do: it was me! I wrote what appeared in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. And when my grandma died? The funeral home wrote the obituary. I’m not 100% positive on this but I’m gonna tentatively call bullshit on newspapers employing a full time obit writer…even in the 80’s. But Ho! We jump 5 years into the future, where our man Adam is suddenly a hard hitting features reporter for Rolling Stone. How this came to be we do not know as it is not…and will not be explained. We know he’s a serious journo ‘cuz he’s wearing a snazzy blazer and scarf combo and has the beginningings of a mullet coming in up top. Adam is at a fancy cocktail lounge trying to land an interview with this cat McKenzie, a big business something or other currently on trial for drug smuggling. As Adam negotiates with McKenzie’s flunky, he can’t help but be distracted by the bevy of bodies steaming out of the gym that’s…also in this cocktail lounge?? Huh?? Suddenly a light goes off in this Xenu loving motherfucker’s huge head. He rushes back to RS headquarters to pitch his editor-in-chief Mark (real life RS EIC Jann Wenner). The first thing I notice is that Wenner can’t act. Like…at all. Sure, he was fine as Scully, the man who exchanges one line with Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire…but he can’t even muster a serviceable impersonation of himself. They shoulda gotten Jimmy Robards. And second: Wenner looks like a cross between Jay Leno and former NY governor Chris Christie. Now…I realize it’s never OK to fat shame someone. In my defense I’ll say that A—Wenner is a notoriously noxious piece of shit and B—this movie is called Perfect and is about FITNESS!!! He couldn’t have played a couple of rounds of racquetball before shooting? Jesus. Anyway, Adam runs up in there all “I got a pitch: Gyms are the singles bars of the 80’s!” Wenner is like “hot tubs and alfalfa sprouts…I LOVE IT!”. So it’s a movie then….ish. Later, they go out for cocktails and the actual Carly Simon throws a drink in Adam’s face because he douched her in an article. Fine with me, man. Why won’t you tell us who You’re So Vain is about, wicked lady!? JK I don’t really care.
Adam has to fly to Los Angeles to research his gym story because ok I guess so. They didn’t have enough sports clubs in Manhattan in 1985?? He hits up a complex called, erm, The Sports Complex that’s bigger than the goddamn Mall of America. Hot calisthenic action going down in all rooms at all times. Marilu Henner is there sweating it up…as is Hacks star Hannah Einbender’sssssss mom Larraine Newman. While some random dude gives him the lay of the land, Adam says shit like “ahh….I bet a lot of lustful matinees start here” like the pretentious drip that he is. It appears that people pump iron and then flirt face at the gym’s smoothie bar. Adam is like “what…no cocktails??” The dude assures him that beer is served. Nothing hits the spot like an ice cold Michelob Lite after an hour of intense cardio, amirite?? Adam asks if people ever couple off at the gym and the dude says “all the time, bro” and Adam is like “cool…give me their names and phone numbers” and the dude is like “ummmmm….that’s creepy as shit…NO!” Adam is all…I don’t think you heard me…I work for Rolling Stone. With an “R”. (“Try Axel Foley…Rolling Stone magazine”—Axel Foley, BHC 1). The dude says…still no. I don’t deny the once mighty RS name opened doors over the years…but it ain’t the friggin’ FBI. Find your own phone numbers, Vince Vega. Finally, Adam is led to the club’s aerobics class, led by primo instructor Jessie (star of Halloween’s 1, 2, H20, Resurrection, Halloween 2018, Kills, and Ends Jamie Lee Curtis), and it’s just a soaking sea of gyrating bodies. Class uniform: skin tight lycra that barely even covers arseholes. Nipple slips and errant testicles all over the damn place. Adam immediately decides that Jessie is the key to his nonsensical bullshit not-a-story so he starts stalking her mercilessly. Jessie isn’t easily swayed by those baby blues and that dimpled chin. She tells Adam that she’s reluctant to go on the record because she’s been burned by the press before. Bah hah hah…by who?? Aerobics Weekly!? She says “I’m one of 90 instructors at the club…maybe interview someone else?” Touché.
So right…Adam is up Jessie’s ass like an extra small leotard…but he occasionally participates in scenes written to string along the movie’s B Plot. The one where he’s chasing down an interview with that drug smuggling computer salesman. When these scenes pop up, the movie downshifts from boring to fucking kill me. Both stories are completely unappetizing and bereft of reasons to exist. Jessie finally agrees to have lunch with Adam and he lays this rap on her about how his piece is really going to focus on Ralph Waldo Emerson and the history of spiritual revolutions. She tells him that this actually sounds interesting. His response: GOD, you are so HOT! I don’t know if I already done told y’all this…but one day back in 1999 I was waking up Broadway in Santa Monica and Jamie Lee Curtis walked by me, prompting the kid next to me to yell “Holy shit! It’s Demi Moore!” True story. Anyway, Jessie says she won’t go on the record unless Adam takes her aerobics course. He says he’ll commit but instead just keeps hanging around the the gym staring at ass. Here’s where I notice a few things. 1. There’s a good 20 minutes worth of exercise scenes in this flick and they are all filmed with the camera just mounted in a stationary position. Not so much as a pan or focus pull! It’s like the director (James Bridges…no relation) just planted the camera and went to Dan Tana’s for a steak.It’s the 80’s, man–flash it up! 2. The cinematographer on this film is Gordon Willis, who also shot The Godfather. I wonder what he’s more proud of–the scene where Michael Corleone kills Sollozzo or filming people’s asses jiggling in Perfect. 3. The soundtrack is shockingly lousy for a film produced by the world’s premier music rag. They couldn’t have gotten the latest Duran Duran bangers on the cheap?? Instead there’s a five minute rowing machine montage set to a song called Hot Hips that was so terrible that I had to Shazam it and HOLY SHIT it’s one Lewis Allen Reed!!! As in Lou Reed. As in the guy from Velvet Underground. Him. He’s got an 80’s pop song called Hot Hips. Who knew!?
ANYWAY…even though Adam has done little more than harass Jessie she somehow develops the googly eyes for him. He takes her back to his hotel room and whips out his computer and she’s like crrrreeeaaaammm!! Not just a computer….a motherfucking laptop!! In the 80’s! He tells her it’s nifty because he can hop out of bed and jot down his thoughts on it any…time…he…wants!! Jessie’s like “lemme see if I can work it.” She types “let’s fuck.” Adam is all humina humina it isn’t ethical for me to sleep with a source just kiddin’ take yer slacks off! Before they can get missionary they’re cruelly interrupted by the telephone. It’s New York calling. McKinley wants to sit for an interview. Adam has to leave ASAP. No time for an over the pants handy or nothin’! Adam flies back to NYC and interviews McKinley but the FBI are suddenly after him trying to seize the interview tapes and zzzzzz. This movie desperately wants to be All the President’s Men. Imagine if that movie was 10% Watergate and 90% Hoffman and Redford just watching people do leg curls at a gym? Probably no Best Picture nom, then. Adam returns to LA and he and Jessie pick up exactly where they left off. They ball, right, but they filmed the action from outside of the room and down a hallway. Not even a side boob to spice up this shit movie?? We’re all adults here who have seen Trading Places many, many times. Those two heads moving around under the covers could be Mortimer and Randolph Duke for all I can tell!
Ok so after they do the thing, Adam finally relents and shows up to one of Jessie’s classes. If this movie has a saving grace it’s this scene (note: you should still avoid watching this film at any and all cost. Maybe search “John Travolta Perfect Thrusting” on YouTube). Adam is in class with about 150 other people…wearing the shortest pair of Magnum PI nut huggers on the market…and they’re working on this move where you just grip the air with both hands and repeatedly ram your junk into it (the air). I believe they called it the Pelvic Thrust in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It really drives you insane. So Adam’s pumping away…and Jessie is pumping away…and they’ve locked eyes as if to say “ahh yes…we are quite familiar with this motion from a short time ago when we did it naked and with penetration.” (Note: they might be looking at each other…or maybe they filmed their scenes on different days. They aren’t even in the same shot. Travolta could be air fucking the cameraman for all we know). And this scene? It goes on….FOR….EVER!!! I know I say that a lot…usually in jest…but this scene really does go on for like five full minutes. Five minutes of crotches thrusting at your FACE! I honestly think I could hear the sound of John Travolta’s nutsack bouncing off of his taint all the way from 1985. And when they’re done air thrusting they lie on their backs and do another five minutes of ass lifts. Although Jamie Lee Curtis is filmed in such a way where it looks like she’s furiously masturbating with both hands. I need to shower just writing about it!
At this point you could probably go ahead and shut the movie off and spend the next 40 minutes of your life being grateful that you are not still watching this movie. But for those of y’all brave enough to soldier on…here’s what happens: Adam and Jessie go skiing together in Aspen or wherever and she tells him that she bombed out of the Olympics after being accused of sleeping with her coach. On the ride home he asks her if she was really sleeping with the coach while secretly tape recording the conversation. Jessie discovers the recorder, calls Adam a sphincter muscle, and throws him out of the car in the middle of the desert. Sorry lady…but sphincter muscles are useful…unlike this prick. When he returns to his hotel room he finds it mildly ransacked and I honestly can’t think of a movie where I have been more disinterested in the outcome. There is zero suspense of any kind…at any point. Adam could be beaten to death by one of the Boy George impersonators in his hotel lobby (this is a real thing) and I wouldn’t shed a shit.
Since Jessie has stopped returning his calls, Adam decides he needs to felch his story out of the rest of the poorly developed cast members. He goes to a party with Larraine Newman, Marilu Henner, and some dude who looks like Bob Geldof and they all open Sesame for him. Geldof says the ladies are the most used piece of equipment in the gym. Barf. The ladies talk about their tits and about how they’re at the gym “Looking for Mr Goodbody.” Adam digs that title, a play on Looking for Mr Goodbar, a novel about a single woman who is brutally murdered during a botched one night stand, and decides he’ll use it as the title of his piece. He also dispenses a photographer to take a few snaps of Newman spread eagle on a thigh machine. Before Adam can split town, Jessie comes to see him and reads the finished article on his laptop while he’s in the shitter…and it’s AWFUL! Screamingly sexist and misogynistic. It’s like “Linda loves banging out reps with free weights..but not as much as she loves banging out Chip, her aerobics instructor!” Jessie is so upset she DELETES THE ARTICLE! Fuck man…I hope he had it saved in the cloud! No worries though–Adam decides to immediately rewrite the article as a think piece on Ralph W Emerson’s influence on physical fitness in the 1980’s. Wenner gets a copy of the article and is like “fuck is THIS!? We got a magazine cover with exercise boobies all ready to go!” He huddles with his team and decides to publish Adam’s original deleted article (how they have this we do not know) after it’s extensively rewritten by David Paymer from City Slickers with information about Jessie’s alleged affair with her Olympics coach. Like…CAN THEY DO THAT!? Bring David Paymer into the movie with 20 minutes left to go. Who the fuck is HE!? Seriously though–they’re just going to let someone else write this Adam’s article and leave his name on it?? If they intended this movie to be an expose on how journalism really works, they did not succeed.
The article comes out and it’s a cover story. The camera lustily gazes at stacks upon stacks of the newest issue of Rolling Stone as they roll off the presses. When the folks back in LA get ahold of it they’re absolutely ripshit. And Adam? He has NO IDEA any of this is going on ‘cuz Wenner sent him to Morocco to get the scoop on the big Kajagoogoo breakup. He’s lounging in a part of Morocco that is totally downtown Los Angeles when he decides to give Jessie a jingle to see how she liked the article. Her answer: click. He calls the offices at RS and hectors a secretary into reading him the entire article over the phone. When he realizes what went down he drops everything and catches the first flight back to the states. This renegade journalist is gonna fly across the world because they mangled his puff piece and because someone he had intercourse with between 1 and 3 times is mad at him?? Whatever. He stops by the gym first, which is shit packed thanks to his article. But everyone there wants to kick his ass and Jessie refuses to speak to him, even after he chases her through the ladies’ shower room. Then it’s back to RS headquarters, where he destroys Wenner’s office with a baseball bat before tendering his resignation. Back to writing obits, eh homie? I hear folks are dying for ‘em!
That should be that, right, …but we still haven’t resolved Plot B. Remember that…from earlier? Drug smuggling…interview tapes? No?? Suddenly we’re watching a courtroom drama where a judge is trying to compel Adam to release the tapes of the McKinley interview and i’m so fucking confused/already asleep. Didn’t they publish a transcript of the interview in RS!? Adam refuses to hand over the tapes so the judge holds him in contempt and sentences him to an infinite stretch of jail time and is that seriously Jessie sitting in the courtroom!? Oh come AHHNNNNN!!!! So she’s there to support a guy who she’s known for about 4 days and who slut shamed her in the most popular entertainment magazine in the country besides TV Guide!? It gets worse: after they remove him from the courthouse and place him in the police van, Jessie hops in her Benz and follows the van in what has to be the lowest stakes car chase in movie history. It goes on for a while too. And when they get to the jail? She can’t talk to Adam or even make eye contact with him. HE’S IN JAIL! What was the point of this scene!? DID THEY NOT THINK THIS MOVIE WAS LONG ENOUGH ALREADY??
How will it all be resolved?? What will happen now?? Answer: nothing. McKinley is found not guilty at his own trial, thus nullifying the FBI’s request for the Adam tapes. Adam is released from prison and wouldn’t ya fuckin’ know there’s Jessie waiting for him with a shit eating grin. They hop in her Benz and start necking and THAT’S THE END! Ho-lee shit. Like Charlie Manson used to say…that doesn’t even make crazy sense. The nerve of these bastards calling this steaming pile of kitten vomit “Perfect.” You’d think you’re probably safe now since the movie has ended and all, right? WRONG! There’s still a picture credits sequence featuring Jann Wenner…in his workout clothes…thrusting his (probably…hopefully) flaccid pecker at the screen. Shudder. The end.