Word: melvins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Melvin and Howard. An American dreamer, Melvin Dummar, goes for the big score, insisting he is the heir of Howard Hughes. Jonathan Demme directed the screwiest and most original movie of 1980, and deserves a better commercial fate than he has so far received...
...coal mines, but when the coal business fizzled, Madrid faded away. In 1975 an enterprising group of outsiders began buying the hillsides and the abandoned, ramshackle miners' cottages. Today the sound of power saws and drills echoes through the valley as the new pioneers rebuild their ghost town. Melvin Johnson, 45, a former instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, owns 15 acres and runs a clothing store. He cherishes "the peace, the sunshine and fresh air," and adds, "I'm living twice as well on half the money." Says Quinn Fortune, 32, a Los Angeles refugee...
...procedures, like changing a name, are simple enough for people to handle on their own. But when it comes to more complicated matters, their views are still summed up in an old proverb: "He that pleads his own cause has a fool for his client." Says San Francisco Attorney Melvin Belli: "If you can take out your own tonsils and deliver your own child, then you shouldn't be concerned about going to court without the aid of a lawyer...
...time Melvin receives the inheritance, he owns the audience's heart and absolutely no one suspects (as so many did at the time) that Melvin drew up the will himself. When the inevitable horde of lawyers, agents and other thieves descend to help themselves to Melvin's windfall, this ravioli of a man begins to seem like an embattled hero, staving off a greedy throng...
...GOLDMAN AND DEMME didn't make him a hero. They don't try to graft any Hero of the American West symbolism onto this resolutely unheroic man; Dummar is no Gilmore, and Goldman is no Mailer. Melvin never gets a cent because the courts rule his will invalid. He faces his defeat with a curious--yet by this time predictable--ambivalence. Melvin says and actually seems to believe that he never had anything, so he's not losing anything. Despite all the lousy hands he has been dealt, Melvin enjoys his life and doesn't see any reason to change...