Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall is a 1987 short film (23 minutes) directed by Bryan Gordon.
Sam is a young urban professional type—a yuppie, basically—who at the start of the short is out of a job, his company having merged with another. As the film opens he is sitting on a park bench, waiting out the time for a job interview, when he's greeted by his friend Cal (David Rasche). Sam shares his frustrations and Cal says that it's not talent or drive that gets one ahead in the world, it's who you know. And in the big city in 1987, there's only one place to meet the right people.
Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall, of course, is the place. Cal takes a shocked Sam to said dance hall, actually a tony bar/club with oak paneling and, of course, a dance floor. As big band music and show tunes play on the stereo system, businessmen in smart three-piece suits talk business and make job offers. While dancing together.
Robert Wuhl and Fred Willard both appear as businessmen hanging out at the dance hall.
Tropes:
- Chromosome Casting: An all-male cast, which is appropriate considering both the theme (a parody of male bonding in the white collar world) and the setting (the executive world in the 1980s, which would be heavily male).
- Downer Beginning: Opens with Sam, sitting on a park bench, looking at some office buildings and grousing about how he used to have a job with a future there but was fired after a merger.
- Dramatic Spotlight: The most powerful businessmen in the club get spotlights trained on them as they dance. At one point a waiter tells unemployed Sam to stay out of the spotlight even though Sam's a good ten feet away from it. When Sam gets his slow dance with high-powered executive Dick Tratten at the end, it's a sign of his happy ending.
- Narrator: Sam's narration tells his story throughout.
- Smoky Gentlemen's Club: All the hallmarks of one, being secret, exclusive, populated by rich professionals downing fancy drinks. But also, a dance hall where men dance with each other.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: It's a heterosexual dance hall. Don't get the wrong idea.
- Testosterone Poisoning: The entire film is a parody of male bonding rituals, specifically those in the corporate world. The set is a fancy club where men in suits buy each other drinks and yak about business and sports and engage in subtle shows of dominance—but all the while dancing together.
- Title Drop: Sam is astonished when Cal tells him that the place to be seen and make contacts is Ray's Male Heterosexual Dance Hall.
- Token Minority Couple: The only two black men in the bar dance with each other.
- White Collar Worker: A bar filled with businessmen in suits who all work office jobs.
- Yuppie: Sam, a young white-collar office guy looking for a position. Several other young men can be seen in the dance hall looking for jobs.
