In the movie the “40 Year Old Virgin,” Steve Carell’s character is advised to behave like David Caruso in “Jade.” I’ve never seen “Jade.” I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of it. Can someone give me just enough information for me to understand what the joke was?
David Caruso quit a hit show (the first season of NYPD Blue) to pursue a movie career – which involved Jade, which was generally agreed to be a bomb, making him the poster boy for bad career decisions.
Don’t bother.
The joke was he could have said, “Be like David Caruso in NYPD Blue”, or “Be like David Caruso in CSI:Miami” and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Have to admit, one doesn’t often see Caruso playing scared, rattled, or even just annoyed. With a few trivial exceptions (i.e. Kiss of Death), he’s always the laid-back-but-not-relaxed kinda guy who’d describe the horrific murder of his brother with the same emotional control as ordering toast and coffee.
I take it you haven’t seen First Blood, AKA Rambo I.
Well, yes, but that was early in Caruso’s career, along with his recurring role on Hill Street Blues. In more recent years, his shtick has been cool-to-the-point-of-dozing-off.
I haven’t seen 40 Year Old Virgin but I have seen Jade–unfortunately. It’s a wretched would-be erotic thriller that’s neither erotic nor a thriller but is definitely brainless (anybody with more than one brain cell would be able to guess who the killer is long before the last reel).
As to why it’s referenced in 40 Year Old Virgin, I have read of the scene you’re talking about in reviews and it’s my understanding that the person who’s “advising” Carell is supposed to be a rather pseudo-sceevy character who’s dumb enough to think Jade is both a landmark in erotic cinema and guidebook on how to be a smooth operator.
^^ This. ^^
Steve Carrell does a great job of doing a bad job of the Caruso schtick in that scene, although I doubt the character was meant to take the advice that literally. I haven’t seen Jade either, but Andy is definitely imitating Caruso’s smug/cute thing.
Watch the scene again and picture Horatio Kane in interrogation mode reading Andy’s lines. It’s totally the way he plays it, fixed look, a bit of squint to make him look “serious,” the exaggeratedly comfortable lean in, and responses fed back in the form of quasi-rhetorical questions:
“Are you looking for something?”
“Is there something I should be looking for?”
Class.
Plus, I believe the actual punchline of the joke is
[spoiler]that the woman falls deeply in lust with Andy-as-Caruso based on that one brief encounter. My friends believe that she was simply being portrayed as eager to have sex with anyone, anytime, but I disagree based on the scene where she and friends are checking Andy out. We later learn that she’s WILLING to have sex with at least two other men in the room, but it’s Andy that she COVETS. She goes to great lengths to percieve Andy’s flaws (from the audience POV) as attractive.
All due to the magical seductive powers of “Jade”.[/spoiler]
Jade may have sucked, but oh there was Angie Everhart. Yes, verily there was.
I think she covets him because she believes he’s really, really kinky.
“But, what?”
“We can do it…in the…”
:smack: