Directed by Harald Zwart
Written by Stan Seidel

Liv Tyler .... Jewel Valentine
Matt Dillon .... Randy
John Goodman .... Detective Dehling
Paul Reiser .... Lawyer Carl
Michael Douglas .... Mr. Burmeister
Andrew Dice Clay .... Utah/Mormon
Brother Richard Jenkins .... Father Jimmy
Reba McEntire .... Carl's Psychiatrist

Produced by Michael Douglas (producer), Whitney Green (executive producer), Allison Lyon Segan (producer), Veslemoey Ruud Zwart (associate producer)
Original music by Marc Shaiman
Cinematography by Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Film Editing by Bruce Cannon

Rated R - for violence, sexuality and language

QuickTime
23.7 MB
12.6 MB
6.17 MB

RealVideo
Trailer

Soundtrack/Score
One Night at Mccool's
1. Love Is Alive - Joan Osborne 2. Whole Lot Of Things - Thomas Rusiak 3. Got 2 B Luv - Bottlefly 4. She Likes The Attention - Caleb 5. Velvet - A-Ha 6. Sexy Body - Jungle Brothers 7. So Hot - Touch And Go 8. Take Me Away - Ween 9. Y.M.C.A. - Village People 10. Love Is Rare - Morcheeba 11. Wanted Man - Johnny Cash 12. Score Suite

SYNOPSIS:
It all started one night at McCool's...three unsuspecting men and one woman with a dream are brought together by lust, mayhem, bingo, DVDs, and the finer points of home decorating.

McCool's bar was hopping that night. Randy (Matt Dillon) worked there, tending bar. Lawyer Carl (Paul Reiser) was there until past closing. Detective Dehling (John Goodman) got there once McCool's became a crime scene. Was it the dead body that tied those men together? Not as tightly as the live wire who was also there that night: the stunning young woman aptly named Jewel (Liv Tyler).

Before the night was over, she had become all the three men could think about: she moved in on/with one, made the other forget his (living) wife, and made the third forget his (dead) wife. As one of the men would point out in a rare moment of clarity, "The sex and the violence, all in one night -- it's a little much." With a woman like Jewel, there was more -- much more! -- to come. Jewel was more trouble than these three men were worth...and what she wanted was bigger than all of them put together.
© 2001 USA Films

HARD TRUTH EXPLORED
I really liked the idea in the film. Four men met the same woman and each forms a very different idea of who she is. Each man is influenced by his own grids, needs and fantasies. She is each man's jewel and each man's ultimate valentine. Here name, interestingly, is Jewel Valentine, and she is no dummy. She is smart and manipulates each man according to his perception of her.

Liv Tyler plays the woman Jewel Valentine who, at every moment, would contrast so sharply with her own real-life personality: "I try to be really honest in my life, so it's really funny to take the opposite approach to everything and be really obvious about your manipulations. Jewel's not subtle in any way at all..."

Even so, Tyler concedes, "Jewel is like most of us: she has the grass-is-always-greener drive inside of her. But she's always short term: every plan just holds up for a few days, and then she has to come up with a new excuse. She just wants to have somewhere to park her feelings and somewhere to call home. Of course, having the looks that she does, she's gotten used to using all that to achieve her goals. She has a dream of something that she wants desperately, that she'll do anything she can to get: a house, her dream house. Throughout the course of her life, she's trying to find ways to get that. She has many different tactics. She manipulates each and every one of the men by catering to their needs and knowing how to get from them what she needs. Ultimately, it's not really about them - it's about what they can give her so she can have what she wants."

3 DEFERENT INCARNATIONS OF RANDY
Matt Dillon plays Randy, the easygoing bartender with the one thing guaranteed to drive Jewel wild - his own house. Dillon notes, "What appealed to me about Randy was that he, like Jewel and others in the film, has three different incarnations as seen from different points of view. You have Randy's point of view, which is the closest to reality. Then you have Carl's point of view of Randy as well as Dehling's, and they each have a different take on who my character is: to Dehling, Randy is abusive and threatening to Jewel - Dehuing's rationalization for making a move on Jewel; and Carl sees me as somebody who's beneath him, this big-shot lawyer."

DEHLING HAS A "SUDDEN REVELATION"
The role of Dehling, the lonely widower who sees Jewel as a sudden revelation - an angel, his wife rediscovered, a beautiful innocent young woman - is played by John Goodman. "Dehling's really sour on life," Goodman notes. "He's on automatic, he's in a place where he's just desperate for a source of life. Then he sees Jewel, and he doesn't even know her, but she becomes this ideal woman for him. She's as pure as the driven snow, she's romance, she's young love, she's a Hostess Twinkie - she's everything to him."

HE SEES A WANTON WOMAN
Finally, the rather slimy Carl's relationship with his cousin Randy suddenly becomes warmer as he tries to get closer to Randy's new lover. In his eyes, Jewel is the most desirably wanton woman that he has ever seen.

Paul Reiser, who plays Carl, reflects, "I love the idea of people having their own truths when they tell their stories, even though the audience has already heard it differently. When Carl is telling my story, he's very innocent and everybody else is at fault. Then, when Randy is telling the story, Carl is of course this out-of-control crazy knucklehead. In fact, it'll take three viewings of the movie to see it fully: you have to see it through everybody's eyes, so that's, like, 27 bucks right there..."

SPIRITUAL CONNECTIONS

Examine the contents, not the bottle. TALMUD

Sir Thomas Browne correctly observed that, "No man can justly censure or condemn another because no man truly knows another." And it is so true. Can we fully know another person.

Scriptures teach that only God truly knows who we really are. As 1 Samuel 16:7 states, "As People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at a person's thoughts and intentions." And this is because, "from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all other sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander" (Matthew 15:19).

Scriptures speak of an ideal way to live:
Isaiah 11:3-5 (The ideal person) will delight in obeying the Lord. He will never judge by appearance, false evidence, or hearsay. He will defend the poor and the exploited... He will be clothed with fairness and truth."

Robert Browning delivers a great bottom line to life,
"Such was the rule of life!
I worked my best,
subject to ultimate judgment;
God's, not man's."