FITE: Eric Roberts vs. Mickey Rourke

I rest my case

Eric Roberts wins

- has at least seven tatoos including a tiger head with Chinese symbols on his left shoulder, a bulls skull on his right biceps, and a shamrock on his left forearm
- is a motorcycle enthusiast
- got arrested by the LAPD and charged with spousal abuse
- owns a gym in West Hollywood called Shapiro
- became a professional boxer in 1991 but retired in 1995
- and boxed an exhibition with former middleweight great, Carlos Monzon, who knocked him out cold with his first punch

...solely because his birth name is Philip Andre Rourke Jr.

(He is rather easy on the eyes in that film, which is intriguing particularly because I know how he looks like at present. Talk about your falls from [physical] grace. But still, he rocks my personal casbah.)

1. Best of the Best (with or without its sequels, as the case need be)
2. Any direct-to-video/HBO movie stuff from 1994-1999, roughly.
3. Consider that he emerged from the same household that produced Julia Roberts.

Pope of Greenwich Village is on Prime (RIP Burt Young)

Is it just me, or did Rourke & Roberts have way more romantic chemistry going on-screen than Rourke did with Daryl Hannah?

Didn't like this at the time, I'll take another look.

(I remember it as a slavish Mean Streets imitation.)

have a couple cognacs, like gentlemen

I remember it as a slavish Mean Streets imitation.

You remember correctly...and now you'll probably see a lotta Sopranos forecasting, with Young, Frank Vincent, and Tony Lip in the cast.

Pope unlocks one of the mysteries of Mickey Rourke in one of the argument scenes with Hannah: his hair isn't slicked back and suddenly he's 50% less handsome.

Is it just me, or did Rourke & Roberts have way more romantic chemistry going on-screen than Rourke did with Daryl Hannah?

It's definitely not just you.

Rourke had more wasted potential by far.

Thinking more on Pope, it really feels like they were doing a Buddy Film Mixtape: Mean Streets is the foundation, but there's a good bit of Midnight Cowboy (they're trying to escape to Florida!) and even a little California Split in the last race track scene.

They took his thumbs!

Geraldine Page kills it in her, what, six-minute appearance?

otm

Weirdly, just the other day I was trying to remember in which film she delivered the line, "My Walter was like a bar of iron."

I guess the line is "My Walter was as tough as a bar of iron, and he didn't get that from his father."