Handle with Care (1977)

Director:

Jonathan Demme

Writer:

Paul Brickman (writer)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Everybody is somebody else

Plot:

This movie interlaces the stories of several characters in a small town united by their use of CB (citizen's band) radio...

Plot Keywords:

Citizens Band Radio | Truck Driver | Father Son Relationship | Bigamy | Prostitute

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Paul Le Mat	...	Spider
Candy Clark	...	Electra
Bruce McGill	...	Blood
Roberts Blossom	...	Papa Thermodyne
Charles Napier	...	Chrome Angel
Ann Wedgeworth	...	Dallas Angel
Marcia Rodd	...	Portland Angel
Alix Elias	...	Hot Coffee
Richard Bright	...	Smilin' Jack
Ed Begley Jr.	...	The Priest
Michael Rothman	...	Cochise
Michael Mahler	...	The Hustler
Harry Northup	...	The Red Baron
Will Seltzer	...	Warlock
Leila Smith	...	Grandma Breaker

Also Known As:

Citizen's Band
The Great American Citizens Band

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:14A (Ontario) | Australia:M | USA:PG

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Bruce McGill's first movie.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Spider's directional antenna is not connected to a co-ax cable and spins loosely in the roof, making it impossible for his radio to pick up a signal, also his car radio does no have an RF meter, making detecting the signal impossible.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Jonathan Demme & Jodie Foster: The Beginning (2005) (V)

Bigamist truckers and knee length gym socks meet CB radio pirates in Johnathan Demme's slice of Americana

This quite funny but nevertheless deep film, along with the great 'Melvin and Howard' can be viewed as part of the ongoing saga of Paul Le Mat, the guy who played the hotrodding eternal teenager, John Milner, in 'American Graffiti.' Le Mat is perfect for these films because he embodies a uniquely American mixture of down to earth hipness, non-cynicism and hard edged goodwill. He is somewhere between Audie Murphy and Steve McQueen with some touches of Elvis and Jerry Lewis thrown in. Demme uses him as the springboard for his explorations of what's authentic and non-cynical in ordinary American life.

All the events in 'Citizen's Band' are connected by the CB radios all the characters use. This allows for events that happen to characters far apart from each other (such as the bigamist trucker and Le Mat), to become connected into the snapshot or slice of life that becomes the film. The characters don't have to necessarily all run into each other, even though some of them do. Oliver Stone's supercynical and ridiculous 'Talk Radio' features a similar set-up. In fact, there, we never actually have to meet any of the on-air personalities.

Demme uses an Altman type setup to show how vast an area of 'craziness' the term 'normal people' covers and how all this can be non-cynical in nature at least as often as it is cynical.