George Carlin was once asked what it felt like when he did cocaine. His response was simple, “It makes you feel like having more cocaine.” In Bright Lights, Big City, Jamie Conway (Michael J. Fox) knows that feeling. He’s a 20-something wannabe writer from Pennsylvania who moved to New York City with his wife, Amanda (Phoebe Cates), in hopes of being the next rising hotshot writer.
Unforturnately, his dreams have been crashed by the realization he has to take a job as a fact-checker at a major NYC magazine, where his youth is obviously a crutch the older co-workers push on him not to take him seriously. Even though it’s been almost a year, Jamie is still grieving the loss of his mother (Dianne Wiest) to cancer. He’s also confused and sadden by the abrupt end of his marriage. Amanda became a model, went to Paris for a job and didn’t come back saying she wants a divorce.
He spends his nights in clubs getting drunk and doing cocaine which his friend, Tad Allagash (Keifer Sutherland), who’s more successful and thinks all problems can be solved by a night on the town. At work, his boss, Clara Tillinghast (Frances Sternhagen), is one of those types who would lose it over a comma being in the wrong place. There’s a conversation they have where she more or less lets the writers who submit their works off the hook because it’s Jamie’s responsibility to double-check everything. I’m think it’s because she’s so worried they’ll go to another magazine publication, her and the other supervisors, Mr. Vogel (John Houseman) and Mr. Hardy (Jason Robards), let them submit whatever they want. Hardy, himself is a functioning alcoholic who seems to wander the offices unsure of what he’s doing.
The only co-worker at the magazine that is sympathetic and caring is Megan (Swoosie Kurtz), who seems to function more as a maternal figure. During a dinner at her apartment where she lives alone, either single or divorced like Jamie, he is kisses her and tries to make out. The shocking part is that she briefly goes along with it before stopping him. Not much is mentioned of Megan but I think she’s seen a lot of young professionals come and go in Jamie’s position. She obvioisly knows that if they have sex, they’ll both regret it.
At the same time, Jamie’s younger brother, Michael (Charlie Schlatter), keeps calling his home and office, but Jamie avoids him because he hasn’t told his family that Amanda left him. As he goes through the nightclubs at night, Jamie seems to find a woman for a one-night stand only to blow it or to lose interest. Tad hooks him up with his cousin, Vicky (Tracy Pollan), so he can have a fling with a Penthouse Pet. During this dinner, Jamie and Vicky get along well but is Jamie going to blow this as well as he still wants answers from Amanda.
The ironic part is that Jamie probably knows the answer. His apartment is small that you can talk to someone in the kitchen while you’re in the bedroom without having to yell. It might be enough for a single young professional. But it’s not enough for a couple and definitely not enough for Amanda who wants more. She wanted to be married to a writer living in NYC, not a fact-checker who spends his days making phone calls and checking words through dictionaries.
The ironic part is that Jamie doesn’t want to be in NYC. Because writers are expected to live in big cities, that’s why he’s there. And like Mr. Hardy, he’s a functioning alcoholic. He spends his nights in bars getting drunk and whenever he needs to be alert, he goes to the bathroom to snort cocaine. At the same time, Jamie becomes interesting in a story in the New York Post he discovers on the subway about a pregnant woman in a coma.
At the time Bright Lights, Big City came out, Fox was trying to shed his persona from Back to the Future and Family Ties. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Fox playing Marty McFly or Alex P. Keating. But in the late 1980s, Fox took on more serious roles in this movie, directed by James Bridges, and Light of Day in 1987 directed by Paul Schrader, and the 1989 Vietnam War drama Casualties of War with Brian DePalma at the helm. DePalma said it was Fox who helped get the movie going.
But mostly the actor was known for making more comedic (and family friendly roles) like Teen Wolf and The Secret of My Success (which Bright Lights is the antithesis). His only prior role in a drama was a smaller role in Class of 1984. Fox would give a great performance in The American President in 1995 before returning to TV to do Spin City, leaving in 2000 because of his struggles with Parkinson’s Disease.
From 2000 to 2021, he mostly did cameos and voice work, before finally retiring admitting publicly he has having difficulties remembering his lines. But movies like this show how he was capable of doing more than making us laugh. Whereas Alex P. Keating saw the 1980s as a time of capitialist achievement, Jamie Conway knows that’s a myth that was fed to a lot of 20-somethings in the decade. Even his marriage to Amanda was in part because his mother liked her.
But the struggles of trying to maintain your first professional job as an adult while starting up a family can be difficult. There’s still a sense that Jamie wants to hold on to his youth. When a bartender offers him a drink at last call, he agrees, even though the sun is coming up outside and he’s going to spend all Sunday crashed in the bed. Who doesn’t miss those early days in our 20s where we could spend Sunday in bed only to start the grind again come Monday morning?
If there is one good thing that came out of this movie, it was the marriage of Fox and Pollan during the summer of 1988 shortly after the release of this movie. They had met on the set of Family Ties but started dating following the production of this movie. Fox himself battled his own alcoholism after he was diagnosed and went into depression. But he got sober by 1992.
Fox turns 62 on Friday, June 9. For some of us who watched him through the 1980s and 1990s, that doesn’t seem possible. While the movie may not be as remembered as Teen Wolf or the Back to the Future trilogy, it still stands out as one of his best roles, if not a forgotten gem for a decade in which a lot of young men felt they would live forever.
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Zane Says 