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“I’ll be all right,” father-husband Alex Novak (Will Arnett) says to his wife Tess (Laura Dern) through the window of a subway train as she slowly pulls away from the station in the opening moments of writer-director Bradley Cooper’s latest film Is This Thing On? As the movie begins, the two have spent the evening at a low-key gathering, keeping it a secret from their closest friends that their marriage has slowly been falling apart for quite a while, that they’ll likely get a divorce soon. And now, they’ve just ingested a magic cookie and are going their separate ways for the night, giggly but still very much apart: Tess to the house that she’s built with her husband & for her family, Alex to a lonely apartment where packing boxes could serve just as well for furniture. Instead of couches, easy chairs, coffee tables, and ottomans, his temporary home appears furnished by a self-storage unit company or College Hunks Hauling Junk.
Even where unconventional romantic comedies about a married couple learning to rediscover themselves go, this is not what “all right” looks like. But as the motion picture begins, the audience is just as hopeful as Alex that things are going to be okay, even with all the evidence that speaks otherwise, and the film follows Alex, who inadvertently turns to stand-up comedy as a means to process his separation from his wife, the mother of his two children. And as Alex’s indie comedic career takes off, as Tess grapples with being a single mom, as both of them contend with being away from one another – their paths will cross again, when Tess stumbles upon one of Alex’s late-night stand-up performances, seeing her former life on display in front of a laughing crowd, seeing her former husband entertain a laughing crowd with the memories of his former life.
The rest is going to require a punchline.
“Man, I wish I had a punchline,” Alex confesses to the audience at his first open mic, having just opened his heart to the crowd. He has never been so honest with himself. He has never allowed himself to be so vulnerable, even if his anecdotes sound like the lead-in to a real knee-slapper that will bring down the house, when — in reality — Alex stands to lose the house in the divorce.
But as I watched Is This Thing On?, I wasn’t consumed or even overwhelmed by the complexities of its plot & its characters. While I can’t have sympathy for a married man or a father of two — I’m starting to figure things out, too.
I’ve also never wandered onto a darkly-lit stage and into the intimidating glare of a spotlight in hopes of starting an impromptu career in stand-up comedy.
But that’s some of the magic that movies provide, the metaphors they employ in order to inform the lives of the audience.
Because I’ve also never been a farm boy on a distant planet – a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away – dreaming of agency & making a difference in the world, but I can still take something from a movie like that. I, too, have stared at the horizon and thought to myself that there must be something more for me other than the life that I’m living.
And perhaps, once or twice, I’ve melodramatically wished in my lowest moments that I’d never been born, but I’ve never been granted the chance to see what life would have been like had I never existed, thanks to the assistance of my guardian angel. And yet, I can still take something from a movie like that because I’ve reflected on the good I’ve put into the world. I know the value of friends & family.
And I’ve never been married & never raised kids & never taken an impromptu swing at stand-up comedy. And – if I’m being frank here – I have no intention of doing any one of those things. Those things look difficult, as demonstrated by Is This Thing On? They’re challenging & often imperfect & likely frequently frustrating & sometimes even demoralizing & perhaps too often open-ended and messy. In fact, they can be quite messy, from what I gathered from this motion picture. Struggling Alex is no overnight success — on- or offstage, as a lover or a father or comedian — but the awkward humor of the film is a nice counterbalance to the fragile discomfort of his marriage to Tess, who’s battling stage fright of her own, navigating the landscape of adult dating.
But I can still take something from this movie too, because I’m a writer, though I haven’t been a writer for long – and I once did it for the first time, and it wasn’t perfect at all, so I kept working at it, trying to get it right, even thinking I would one day be great at it, even immeasurably great at it, and once I really swung for the fences, and I was met with what I would call some pretty wild success, and so I thought the worst of it was behind me, not realizing that I am constantly changing and what I write about is constantly changing, so the next time I swung for the fences, maybe not so much wild success, but I kept trying, because giving up was never really an option, and the metaphor of a rollercoaster is quaint & pedestrian & overused, but here I am – illustrating my understanding of a worn-out metaphor – many wives & many children & many stand-up sets later, because I’ve learned something about it all, and I learned it before I even saw the film Is This Thing On? – which I recommend you see too. You might learn a thing or two.
And if you’re still reading this, it’s safe for me to write that you’ve made it this far. If you’re a spouse hoping to save your marriage — you’ve made it this far. And if you’re a parent workshopping different techniques to ensure that your children grow up to be good people — you’ve made it this far. And if you’re a stand-up comic or a cartoonist or a painter or a ballerina or a musician or a video game designer or a chef or any other manner of creative, hoping to simply put yourself out there — you’ve made it this far.
Now, keep going.
I imagine that I’ll learn something new at my next screening – whatever that is – when I next sit down to put into words what I’m thinking & feeling, whatever that is, about what I saw.
And that’s all right.
“I’ll be all right,” Alex says to Tess through a pane of subway train glass, standing alone on the boarding platform.
And we’ll all be all right, even if it appears that the train might be leaving the station for the last time.
Another train will arrive in about seven to 12 minutes.
***
This essay is written in remembrance of Jamie Blanks, Nicholas Brendon, Sam Kieth, and Chuck Norris.
Thank you for your art.
You will be missed.
Chris Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.
Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In 
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