Image courtesy of impawards.com
The Film : The Tao of Steve
Notable Cast Members: Donal Logue
DVD available on Amazon.com here
Film Synopsis :
The Tao of Steve is an interesting film on two levels. On the one hand it’s a testament that the clichéd formula of the romantic comedy works when you have a strong story and good characters around it.
Steve focuses on Dex (Donal Logue), a part-time teacher who lives in a world of relative simplicity. He sleeps with anything that breathes, smokes pot on his off-days and gets to be the king of his domain with a plethora of roommates. Highly intellectual with a host of books that would put most philosophy majors to shame, Dex is the guy in college everyone thought was going to be something big and has wound up being the epitome of the phrase “wasted potential.”
Life is comfortable for Dex, as he moves from woman to woman by using the guide that serves as his gospel: be like Steve. All coolness, it’s supposed, stems from guys who are “Steves” like Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man) and Steve McQueen. James Bond would be a Steve as well; Steve is the name for those guys who personify the ideal man. He’s cool and collected; never pursuing the girl yet always manages to get her. Dex has lived his life by the rules of this game, but when a woman from his past (Greer Goodman) comes into his life again, Dex has to reevaluate everything about his life.
It’s an interesting film that works on several levels. On the one hand it’s full of existential philosophy for the intellectual set; it’s filled with a lot of great things to think about when it comes to life. It’s also a well-written romantic comedy, as we follow the usual clichés and plot twists but the characters are so well-defined that it becomes a matter of great story-telling.
The Story Behind It :
2001 was alternately one of the best years of my life and one of the worst as well. I graduated from college that year, joined the work force, bought a car and became close with a friend of mine I never expected to. Shoulder surgery, some ill-advised decisions and a whole lot of alcohol made a lot of things in my life much more complicated than they were supposed to be.
I had ripped apart several ligaments in my shoulder in the fall, which effectively prevented me from working out as well as placing me in the worst frame of mind. I was 21 and lived with a couple guys who brought out some of the baser instincts in me. I stumbled home to the greater Chicagoland area in May, nine months of drinking and skirt-chasing effectively closing a chapter on one part of my life. My grandmother had always said that God and a good woman was all I needed in life; I suppose that interpreting that to mean many pitchers of beer followed by playing the age old game of “I am drunk, you’ll do” to whichever highly intoxicated sorority girl had the most relaxed morals of the night was perhaps the wrong one.
So when I came home from what is now my Alma matter I was in a pretty bad place. Couple that with a pretty massive shoulder reconstruction, one that has left me a massive scar on my right shoulder to go with some limits on the range of motion that keep the shoulder socket in joint, and my year was a roller coaster. Once I was cleared by the doctor to go back to working out after the physical therapy in mid-July, I had nothing to do but look for work and find something besides working out to fill my day. So, being low of cash, I opted for the next best thing: renting movies at Blockbuster. Being a relative novice at to what was good and what wasn’t left me at odds; video store clerks are generally people whose opinions I still don’t trust, so I did what any sane rational human being would do. I scoured the aisles looking for something that looked cool.
One day I was cruising through the aisles, having exhausted the section devoted to action movies, and stumbled on a film whose title directly related to what I was reading at that point. I was reading the “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu. Plus the back cover sounded roughly interesting, so I plopped down some cash and walked back home. I watched it twice that day, and the next day shelled out the cash to buy it on VHS.
This is one of the few movies I own on VHS as well as DVD, as it combines some great philosophy with a well-acted plot. It’s a romantic comedy, and pretty paint by numbers I whole-heartedly admit, but the philosophy is sound and the message is good.
