ASSIGNMENT 1

Business Communication
I choose Restaurant"-1998 to be shown to company. It is the kind of movie that deftly registers
the self-conscious gawkiness people exhibit at weddings, especially when they're dancing. It's a
movie that attends to the tones and rhythms of a stoned late-night conversation between old
friends, to the hectic clatter of a restaurant kitchen on a busy weekend night and to the edgy,
exhausted buzz of an impromptu after-hours party in a crowded apartment. It pauses to record,
with admirable tact and affection, the pillow talk of young lovers after their first night together,
and it does not flinch from the tears and accusations that ensue when things begin to go wrong
between them.
Because Eric Bross, who directed "Restaurant," and Tom Cudworth, who wrote the screenplay,
pay such close attention to the details of their story, they manage, more often than not, to get
the big themes right. This is a movie with a lot to say about class, about friendship, about
ambition and about race, but it does its talking, for the most part, through the experiences of its
characters and the particularities of its northern North Jersey setting.
"Restaurant" tracks the hectic interactions of a group of friends who work at a swank Hoboken
bar and grill called J.T. McClure's. Their haphazard community is thick with emotional
complications, and the movie sometimes feels burdened with too many story lines. But then
again, so does life, especially if you're Chris Calloway (Adrien Brody), an aspiring playwright
whose moral struggles constitute the film's narrative core.
At the beginning of the movie, Chris, a recovering alcoholic, has fallen off the wagon and placed
a desperate late-night phone call to his former girlfriend, Leslie (Lauryn Hill -- yes, that Lauryn
Hill), who broke his heart when she slept with one of his friends, a rakish actor named Kenny
(Simon Baker-Denny). Chris' relationship with Leslie is the subject of his latest play, and to his
chagrin Kenny is cast in the lead role. But soon Chris is distracted by the arrival of Jeanine
(Elise Neal), a newly hired waitress who wants to be a singer and who is plenty complicated in
her own right. Meanwhile, a hostess is about to be married, the other bartender is looking for a
new roommate and Reggae (David Moscow), Chris' childhood friend from the old neighborhood
(the Ironbound section of Newark, a mostly white working-class enclave), is exhibiting
worrisome self-destructive tendencies.
Like Leslie, Jeanine is black. Chris and Reggae are white. Nobody in the movie makes a big
deal out of this, although Chris likes to imagine his bigoted father rolling over in his grave. For its

ASSIGNMENT 2
Business Communication
first third, "Restaurant" feels like a well-made romantic comedy, or an especially naturalistic pilot
for a new young-adult melodrama on the WB network, in part because it features a number of
actors whose faces have appeared on shows like "Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane,"
Television, of course, rarely allows its fresh young black faces to share screen time -- to say
nothing of pillow talk -- with its fresh young white faces. But "Restaurant" especially in its fluid,
fast-moving early sequences, matter-of-factly presents a milieu in which a number of taboos -against smoking marijuana in public, against using certain racially inflammatory words, against
interracial love -- seem to have disappeared. Not that race is not an issue in the film, but it's not,
in the usual Hollywood sense, an Issue.
"Restaurant" allows its racial themes to emerge slowly. It depicts a world in which race doesn't
seem to matter at all, except when, for reasons no one quite
understands and with consequences no one can control, it
matters a lot. The three line cooks at McClure's exchange playful banter and hang out together
after work.
But eventually we learn that Reggae, the head line cook, makes more money than his friends. In
spite of this, Marcus and Quincy feel a greater bond with Reggae than with Chris, the
conscientious liberal, or with Steven (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), a black law student who works as
a waiter and whom they sneeringly call "white boy."
But Steven is not white enough to be promoted to bartender, despite his enthusiasm and his
qualifications; when he is, it's only after Chris confronts the manager (John Carroll Lynch). But
this intervention, while it is an occasion for honest gratitude on Steven's part and selfcongratulation on Chris', also resonates with undertones of paternalism, resentment and shame.
It takes very good actors to convey this kind of nuance, and the cast of "Restaurant" does
consistently splendid work. Bross' camera moves as efficiently and smoothly as Cudworth's
understated script. Unfortunately, as the movie nears its end, the filmmakers lose touch with
their better storytelling instincts, and it falls to the actors to prevent the movie from swerving into
melodrama.
Its climax seems to come out of nowhere, or rather out of too many viewings of "Mean Streets"
and "Do the Right Thing," and its desperate turn to random violence and emotional extremity

ASSIGNMENT 3
Business Communication
nearly spoils the careful sense of proportion that had been the film's greatest strength. But at its
best, this is a movie of unusual integrity and insight.