Word: staeblers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Rafelson's hero is David Staebler (Jack Nicholson), a late night radio monologuist who broadcasts private traumas packaged for cultural consumption. He leaves the sordid bachelor digs he shares with his grandfather in Philadelphia when summoned to Atlantic City by his brother Jason's telegram, "Get your ass down here. The Kingdom is come." The "Kingdom" turns out to be but a revived version of a boyhood fantasy: to take over Tiki island, one of the Hawaiian archipelago, build a casino and amass a fast fortune. The Staebler brothers spend the rest of the film trying to subsidize the dream...
...ever notice how it's all Monopoly out there?" Jason Staebler asks his brother David from behind the bars of an Atlantic City jail. Now, nearly deserted in winter, long past its honky-tonk glory, Atlantic City survives like a huge, standing game board, residents and random vacationers wandering from Boardwalk to Park Place to Marvin Gardens like tokens moved at an idle throw of dice. It is simple enough, as the Staeblers will discover, to get out of jail. There is no way, though, out of the game...
...scam artist with a line of patter that makes him sound like one of Eugene O'Neill's drummers. David, ever skeptical, eventually lets himself be suckered in, more to demonstrate a kind of desperate solidarity with his brother than anything else. The scheme is an old Staebler fantasy: take over an island called Tiki in the Hawaiian archipelago, build a casino, rake in the bucks...