LONE STAR
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I think one of the reasons I was so concerned about the floor was that McLure doesn’t give us much of anything else to be concerned about. Lone Star is another one of those jug-head comedies in which somebody says “Boy, are you dumb!” to somebody else every five minutes. The big dramatic question is how Little Brother Jughead Ray is going to break the news to Mean Drunk Jughead Roy (Ray and Roy–ain’t that cute?) that his precious 1959 pink Thunderbird convertible has been wrecked by Prissy Sissy Jughead Cletis. This news is expected to so devastate Roy that Ray works up to it by first confessing that he’d slept with Roy’s wife when Roy was away in the Army (Roy’s a Vietnam veteran–ain’t that touching?).
If the R & R brothers’ priorities seem a little skewed, it must be understood that this vehicle is no ordinary car. “I have had some of the best times of my life in that car!” declares Roy. These good times include a fight-and-fuck spree across the state line with his buddy Wayne and his first look at a “v’jiner” (shit-kicker accents–ain’t that funny?). “You used to let me smell the seats,” recalls Ray nostalgically. “You’d say, ‘Ray, that’s the smell of a woman!’” Cletis says he too wanted to be just like Roy. “And I could have–but you had just one thing I didn’t.” That one thing was the Thunderbird, possession of which determines men’s destinies. This is what moves Cletis to take advantage of the keys being left unwatched on the bar and to grab for one short moment of glory–a moment that proves fatal to the icon and to those who worship it.
