"Night Shift" 1982

“Night Shift”

Michael Keaton had done some television but his first theatrical credit was Bill Blaze in “Night Shift” opposite the Fonz himself.

I was in love with the Fonz. Not Henry Winkler, but the Fonz. I remember my first day of kindergarten. My parents worked the night shift. I went to afternoon kindergarten. The first day my mother tried to talk me into wearing one of the dresses she’d picked out for me. But that wouldn’t do. I wanted to wear my Fonzie t-shirt. And I did.

The night shift is a hard one to work. My dad was a cop and worked from eleven at night to seven in the morning. He would get home about the time we were ready to head to school. Then he would sleep until noon or so, do what he needed to do for the day and then take an evening nap.

In the summer we weren’t allowed to make any noise before noon. If we were feeling loud we had to go outside and play. There were very finite rules under which we could wake my father.

“Don’t wake me up unless the house is on fire or God calls.”

God never called.

The closest we came to fire was an incident that ended with my brother on the floor.

We lived on a busy street. Traffic was constant and we lost countless cats to the road. One morning there was a wreck on the corner. The car suddenly started to burn. My brother in a state of extreme excitement ran to my parents’ room.

“FIRE!” Brother yelled.

Instantly my father was on his feet grabbing his pants and adrenalin pumping.

“Where?” Dad asked.

“At the corner, a car is on fire.”

I can’t really blame my dad for smacking him upside the head. It was the adrenalin.

My brother is lot like Bill Blaze.

Bill: I'm an idea man Chuck, I get ideas, sometimes I get so many ideas that I can't even fight them off!

Henry Winkler plays Chuck Lumley. This is about as far from the Fonz you can get. He likes the night shift at the morgue. No one bothers him. He has a fiancé.

Bill Blazejowski: [picking up photo from desk] Hey Chuck? Who is this? Your wife?
Chuck Lumley: Fiancée.
Bill Blazejowski: Nice frame!

When Bill cruises in things begin to change. Next thing you know the hearse is being used to take kids to prom and Bill is working out plans to feed mayonnaise to tuna fish to make tuna salad easier.

Chuck meets his new neighbor who happens to be a prostitute. Shelley Long plays Belinda. When Chuck finds her in the elevator after getting beat up, Bill convinces him to take over the business her dead pimp left behind.

Chuck doesn’t mind helping, but it doesn’t sit easily on his conscience. Bill lives in more of a gray area.

Chuck Lumley: As we sit here and idly chat, there are woman, female human beings, rolling around in strange beds with strange men, and we are making money from that.
Bill Blazejowski: Is this a great country, or what?

This is also an early collaboration of Ron Howard, Lowell Ganz, Babbaloo Mandel and Brian Grazer. This is the team that later brought us “Parenthood” among other good movies. The kid getting the ride to the prom is Ron’s brother Clint who has a cameo in almost everyone of his movies.

Michael Keaton went on to “Mr. Mom”, “Beetlejuice” and “Batman” among others. He has been a little lower profile since the early nineties. But this is a classic movie with rapid fire comedy and an underlying sweetness.