A DECENT DISPOSAL

INDECENT PROPOSAL (1993)
dir: Adrian Lyne

A DECENT DISPOSAL
MAD #332, October 1993
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres

This was a drama where John Gage (Robert Redford) is a billionaire who offers David and Diana Murphy (Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore) 1 million dollars to spend one night with her, no strings attached, while they are vacationing in Las Vegas. Honeymoon in Vegas had a similar plot. Sister Act with Whoopi Goldberg did not take place in Las Vegas but in the smaller casino town of Reno. Seymour Cassel was Mr. Shackleford, John Gage's butler.

The Murphys lose their jobs and their dreams, have to borrow money from his father, but try to win it back in Vegas. They're very much a loving couple. They're up and then down again gambling. On their last night, they see John Gage play with the VIPs, he sees them and takes a liking to her, buying her the dress she wanted and makes the proposition.

Woody Harrelson's biggest movie up to that point was White Men Can't Jump, the label they pun on in some of the panels.

Jeremy (Oliver Platt), David's childhood friend and lawyer, negotiates a deal before Diana and John consummate their affair. On that night, John flies her to his private boat. When David and Diana get back home, they argue about whether it meant more than just a one night stand, and John continues to pursue her, even after buying their dream property out from under them.

The suit she's wearing on the boat is a reference to a cover Demi Moore did for Vanity Fair where she posed naked with a suit painted on her body.

She eventually leaves her husband after they continue to fight, she ends up teaching a citizenship class (One of the immigrants in the class is MAD artist Sergio Aragones), which John Gage crashes and they end up seeing each other. At a charity auction for endangered species, John bids on a hippo, previously established as a symbol of David and Diane's love for each other, and David shows up from the back outbidding him with the one million dollars they were given. They get back together after John realizes what they have is true love. In this, they actually have the hippo in their home.

Missing is Rip Taylor in a dramatic role without his wig or his gay clown persona.

Years later, Woody Harrelson did a self-parody of the movie in Kingpin.

From Bart Goes to the Movies in Cracked #284, October 1993