108: this is where you live
TODAY: A Challengers line reading!
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As if I wasn’t annoying already: I am DELIGHTED THRILLED SICK TO MY STOMACH WITH EXCITEMENT to say that I will be performing (?) at Hung Up’s first ever, Quiz Show next week. I think it’s mostly open to Hung Up’s paid list and there’s only a few spots left so run to rsvp while you still can!
This is a paywalled dispatch of Consumption Report, a semi-regular newsletter on whatever a baffled, extremely online young woman (me!) needs to work through. Paid subscriptions help support me do the things that I love to get into these dispatches—overuse my data, see three movies a week, and have a no-ads Hulu subscription. Consider upgrading your subscription today! Today, I’m talking about Challengers and the moment Art Donaldson won. And I don’t mean tennis.
I’ve made it no secret how much I love Luca Guadagnino’s recent movie, Challengers, starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor. Having watched it *ahem* four times now, I am still surprised by its mix of heartbreak and humor, drama and the everyday. I tried to express this a few posts ago but what makes the drama and fantasy of this movie so compelling, and what allows it to be totally flashy and ridiculous (camera inside the tennis ball) without just being hot air, is the fact that it’s so grounded in the mundane, in the exceptionally normal. All the fights, all the fuss, all the kissing, happen on a terrain where people crave plastic looking Dunkin’ bagel sandwiches and get duped by scammy motels.
Challengers was written by Justin Kuritzkes, husband of Celine Song (of Past Lives fame) and a playwright.1 Kuritzkes has a way for a wordy scene. He has a verbal choreography that is so dynamic and dizzying that it makes two people talking in a hotel room feel like driving too fast after chugging prosecco. Once again, I don’t understand how anyone watches this movie and thinks, wow it’s all vibes, when there’s so many meaty scenes to dig into.
There’s a lot of lines and line readings that I love in this movie and that make me clap my hands like a little baby: Patrick leaning over the motel counter and conspiratorially whispering to the unmovable proprietor, “The racket alone is worth three hundred dollars,” sneaking a little e in there and chewing on his ‘r’. Tashi, all up in Patrick’s face, menacingly whispering “Aight.” Tashi telling Patrick that he’s 31, he’d be better off with a handgun in his mouth (ok ageist!).2 But there’s been one line that has been running through my head the most, the line that has changed how I hear every single word it contains.
It’s the day before the two face each other in the final and Patrick finds Art in the country club sauna.3 It’s obvious Patrick has hunted him down, his first words not being a surprised greeting but a cheeky request that Art take it easy on him the next day. It’s hard to pinpoint Patrick’s exact intentions in the scene. He’s obviously there for a bit of intimidation, a little bit of verbal foreplay (and if it gets physical he won’t mind!). But he also seems genuine in his desire to catch-up, to talk to the person who was once his best friend (his brother even, who he kissed every once in a while) and who he hasn’t spoken to in over a decade. But Patrick Zweig isn’t the kind of person to talk openly about anything real. So he tries to get Art to talk to him by getting under Art’s skin the best way he knows how—talking about Tashi. Art won’t bite, though. He’s tired, this isn’t a game he wants to play anymore. It’s not a game he NEEDS to play anymore. He refuses to be rattled. Patrick manages to get a significant prick in when he slyly suggests something happened between him and Tashi a few years before at the Atlanta Open. (A sexy flashback confirms that something did happen and Art knows about it.) The reminder is enough to make Art shift in his seat but he holds his ground. Clearly bothered, Patrick goes in for Art’s other weak spot: Art’s tennis career. Is he not embarrazzed, Patrick asks, an impish grin on his face,4 that after all those wins and sponsorships (let’s go, Uniqlo!), he’s playing against nobodies at a random country club?
And that’s when Art deploys it. The perfect line. He laughs. He scoffs. He shakes his head. He says, “I’m just stopping by, man. This is where you live.” It’s that “This is where you live” that gets me. The slow head shake! The relish! The reminder that, no matter what Patrick needs to think of himself to believe in his greatness, the reality is, Art is the real winner. Art is famously a winner, with an Aston Martin sponsorship and eager fans to prove it. Patrick is ranked 271st in the world and (voluntarily) semi-living in his car, because he’s still grasping for some imagined glory. He seems to believe that he just needs one great chance but Art reminds him otherwise. Patrick is not some underappreciated or wronged great patiently awaiting his comeback. He’s kind of a desperate loser.5 Patrick may hit flawless betweeners (that’s when he hits the ball between his leg), but when it comes to driving in a verbal knife in a sauna at a country club in New Rochelle, Art is Ted Bundy (or whatever serial killer feels appropriate).
This scene is SO GOOD. Faist and O’Connor are a delight to watch. It’s also an incredibly revealing scene, one that belies the suggestion that Art is the plaything of Tashi and Patrick, the weaker link. It’s easy to think that it’s always Patrick and Tashi who are in charge, because they’re the ones conspiring in alleys and sneaking kisses,6 and that Art is the helpless and ignorant one. But Art knows how much they both need him, whether it’s to play tennis or to bat around. Neither game would mean as much for either Patrick or Tashi without Art. Art might be playing percentage tennis (waiting for someone to fuck up) but he’s really fucking good at it. It worked to break Patrick and Tashi up when they were younger and it works in the sauna. With one, “This is where you live,” Patrick is silenced. Whatever will happen at the match the next day, Art has kind of already won.
He also makes a cameo in the movie as an earnest Art fan.
There’s really only one line that I don’t love, which is when Patrick says to Tashi, about the chances Art will lose the challenger, “It will break him,” and Tashi replies, “But it won’t make you.” Corny! Get back in the workshop Justin!
Is the country club called Phil’s Tire Town? Because what kind of country club is called Phil’s Tire Town?
If something is going to kill me, it’s Josh O’Connor smirking, MY LORD.
And, to evoke him, I’d still let him f*ck me with a racket!
I have a theory that these two have kept in touch a lot more than the movie shows us. That even if 2019 is the first time in a while that they’ve seen each other in person, it’s not the first time they’ve talked in how ever many years.