Just the Ticket

In the sweet, tender, funny world of the movies, love usually wins. The hero finds his mark and the light is perfect. Hurt and disappointment are no match for magic, a leap of faith, or the deus ex machina. A rundown building is transformed into a bustling restaurant, the embodiment of a dream. The steady, dependable guy loses out to the charming rogue, who goes legit with all his roguish charm intact. Nobody yearns for the roguish past. It's still there, along with a little extra cash in the till every night.

It was lovely to watch Andy Garcia play Gary Starke in Just the Ticket, a streetwise ticket scalper who's been orphaned since he was 13, and never had a real job or even a social security card. His only phone is a clunky thing he probably bought from Fat Max or a corrupt or recently fired telephone linemen. It patches a pirated signal direct from the fiberoptics. He's made a family of his own out of his crew of quirky chums, San Diego Vinnie and Cyclops and Harry the Head, occasionally scoring well enough for a party and occasionally cooling his heels in a cell in the bowels of a stadium. They let you go when the concert starts but they take your money and your tickets, unless you have the savvy to bounce them out of sight before you get collared.

Gary has style. He's unreliable and irresponsible but he can fashion a night out out of a thrift store dinner jacket and a two dollar bunch of flowers, taking the cleats out of his white golf shoes to complete the outfit. Gary loves Linda Palinski (Andie MacDowell) but he's disappointed her twenty times too often, and after waiting for him far too long she's had enough of his schemes, all of which have never quite panned out. She's met a kind guy with a good job, and a registered letter comes in the mail that may contain the ticket to her dreams, dreams the might make Gary a distant bittersweet memory. All he has in the world is a tennis ball of cash, a one-room flat and Blinker, his mangy but remarkably calm dog, who takes in everything with an endearing and quiet loyalty.

Gary dreams of two things: Linda, and making the big score that gets him Linda, gets him to a life beyond scratching and clawing for the next busload of Japanese tourists. He's running out of time. Linda is about to open that portentious envelope and a smooth, cool customer from Miami, with cellphones and beepers and a carload of muscled thugs, is outbidding him for his old sources and beating him to the corners he used to own. Gary's crew doesn't seem up to the task. His guardian angel Benny is punch drunk and slowing, not able to pick out the cops half a block away. Cyclops has a baby coming and can't stay off the junk.

But the Pope is coming to town and if Gary can pull this off, the score of his dreams, it just might set up the redeeming left hook that wins him Linda once and for all.

The magic is still there, that's certain. Despite all the logic pulling her in the other direction Gary's charm is the one drug Linda can't resist. That smile and puppy dog eyes pull her in every time. But when he lives her waiting one more time, after a big loss and a beating and a losing battle with a bottle of rum, it doesn't seem like anything can save the day. All the charm and street smarts in the world won't get him out from under this one.

Ah, but this is the movies. Any doubt that it works out the way it's supposed to? I can't help it; I'm a sucker, I cried. It was sweet and charming and funny, delightful and hopeful. Everything I like in a movie. It even had a terrific soundtrack, put together by Garcia himself, who's a musician on the side. Apparently he has street smarts of his own. A Joe Frazier story he tells in the jail cell is a thing of wonder. The tennis ball in his hands becomes the cornerman's sponge and Joe Frazier's heart pumping out of his chest in the twelfth round, and you are buying every duck and jab.

I heartily recommend Just the Ticket. It's an antidote for the blues and a lift to the spirit, but I can't recommend it as a roadmap for life. I just don't have this kind of charm or magic anymore, and I've lost hope that exists here in the world where I live. The great thing about movies is, they can skip the past, or allude to it and overwhelm it with music and light and stars. We can't. For us the past isn't even past. There's no magic antidote to hurt, not when the credits end. We wake up to a world where all our secrets and secret fears and unspoken sorrows are as present as they ever were. Healing is elusive. Pain and sorrow are stubborn. Fear, the paralyzing and negating and corrosive poison of evil, erodes and corrupts and decays everything we try to do. In real life we seldom get to the magic. We surrender it day after day until we reach a point that we deny its existence and roll our eyes and sneer at anyone who appeals to faith or hope.

If the love you have has become disguised chiefly as bitterness and disappointment, maybe it isn't love at all. It might be obsession or codependence or hanging on or fear of being alone, but it isn't love. Love is rewarding. Love fosters confidence and hope and strength. Love isn't easy, but it has an underlying endurance and tender purpose that nothing can shake. Love doesn't threaten or bully or leave you feeling angry and alone, at least not over and over. If the love you have makes you feel this way, perhaps its time to find a mark of your own where the light reaches your starving soul.

The hopeful part is, we still have the heart to buy a ticket and dream, which proves our hearts aren't dead. Anger has misplaced our hopes but it hasn't destroyed them. We can love again. We can even learn to love each other, but that will take more courage than anything else in the world. Starting over is always easier, though it's a poor substitute for a dream and a leap of faith.