Nice Guys Sleep Alone
by Catherine Lee

Fly-overs. That's the disdainful term coastal media moguls and their minion use to refer to those of us who live landlocked between the Atlantic and Pacific. Lack of interest in anything that happens in the heartland is so pervasive that studios develop very few movies that have any true regional flavor. The Coen brothers can find a studio for Fargo, and David Lynch can finagle a few million to make The Straight Story, but for newcomers with a down-home tale to tell, it's not so easy.

Screenwriter/ director Stu Pollard didn't approach any studios to bring his delightfully funny, charming and occasionally raunchy feature debut, Nice Guys Sleep Alone, to the screen. He might have found a studio willing to help. Nice Guys boasts two very saleable qualities: it deals with the perils of today's dating scene ã which is certainly relevant from sea to shining sea ã and the story is based on a book by Bruce Feirstein, a name recognizable in Hollywood since he has written the last three James Bond scripts and is also the author of Real Men Don't Eat Quiche.

But Pollard wanted to make the film his way. That meant shooting where he grew up, in Louisville, Kentucky. So he raised the money himself and has produced a comedy full of beautiful scenery and resonance for the rest of us. Nice Guys Sleep Alone has a gentle pace and lots of local color and humor. An example? Maggie, our sweet and savvy heroine, a veterinarian who has moved to Kentucky from New York notices all the Kentucky pennants in her office. Just to make conversation she asks a colleague, "So, you're a big Kentucky fan?" His response, delivered with a mostly straight face, "Only 146 days until basketball season."

Like Dorothy in reverse, Maggie knows she's not in New York anymore. (Sybil Temchen, who plays Maggie, also starred this year in Body Shots, a truly repulsive excuse of a film about the modern dating scene set in L.A.) One reason she left New York is to forget a man who done her wrong. The exigencies of dating Southern style baffle her. She is hotly pursued by a guy so far from being Mr. Right she refers to him as "Mr. Remote Possibility."

Dating baffles Carter, too. (Carter is played by the quite adorable Sean O'Bryan.) Carter is a Kentucky native, a high school English teacher who keeps meeting women who just want to be friends. He's so nice and such a gentleman he isn't getting any action. He meets Maggie while his students are on a field trip to the horse farm where she works (and where the students witness a breeding, a funny and frightening scene).

Carter is fed up with just being friends, and more out of desperation than anything else, he turns to his friend Pat for advice. Actually, Pat is full of advice and keeps pushing it on Carter. Pat is played with terrific comic flair by Blake Steury, an IPFW theater grad from Bluffton. He isn't the nicest guy. When Carter expresses queasiness at the possibility of dating his stepsister, cause it would feel incestuous, even though they are no longer even related by marriage, Pat retorts, "This is Kentucky. They'll bust you for playing rap music before they'll bust you for incest."

Since he's from Kentucky, Pollard is especially sharp at sending up Southern stereotypes. Country music is hilariously parodied, but with genuine affection.

Pollard finds the humor in every situation, but the heart of the film is romance and using humor to keep romance alive . Carter and Maggie are a good match. They truly are nice people. They deserve a chance, and we always know they will get one. Nice Guys Sleep Alone doesn't end with the happy couple at the altar. It's more subtle than that. It ends at the beginning of their romance, and they have struggled to even have a chance. Few Hollywood romances achieve such a pleasurable balance between hope and cynicism.

Even a skirt chaser like Pat understands the fine line between the two. He begs Carter to take Maggie out for the best cheeseburger in the Eastern time zone on their first date explaining, "On your ideal first date you'd rather fall in love than get laid. Trust me, you do not want to fall in love with somebody who doesn't appreciate a good cheeseburger."

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