Soapdish is a 1991 comedy film which parodies the workings of an American Soap Opera. The real-life problems of the cast are so over the top that the Show Within a Show, The Sun Also Sets, would probably have a better story line if they covered the lives of the cast.Sally Field plays Celeste Talbert, the neurotic star of the show, who believes her life is meaningless after playing a soap-opera character who suffers all sorts of problems over the more than 20 years she's been on the show (a kind of Shout Out to All My Children's Susan Lucci who has played the same type of character) while her live-in boyfriend has gone back to his wife in Pittsburgh. She is also loathed by her castmates, most notably Ariel Maloney (Teri Hatcher) and Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty), the latter of whom is scheming to have Celeste fired so she can take her place as the female lead. Celeste does, however, have an ally in Rose Schwartz (Whoopi Goldberg), the head writer of the series.Montana enlists the help of the producer of The Sun Also Sets, David Seton Barnes (Robert Downey, Jr.), promising to sleep with him if he gets rid of Celeste. The captivated David creates a new story line in which Celeste kills a homeless mute in self-defense to make the audience hate her. During this new story line, a very aggressive starlet (Elisabeth Shue) uses every trick she can think of to get on the show, and through an accidental viewing of rushes, she is chosen to be the homeless mute who stabs Celeste. But when Celeste sees the starlet, she recognizes her as her niece, Lori, and she becomes a regular cast member.Montana and David's next ploy is to find a former castmember, Jeffrey Anderson (Kevin Kline), who was dating Celeste until he was fired 20 years ago when their relationship went sour. He's doing dinner theater in Florida, and David offers him some enticements to come back as his original character (even though said character was decapitated); he leaps at the chance to get revenge on Celeste for his ruined career. Celeste is horrified that Jeffrey is back, and even more horrified that he and Lori seem to be attracted to each other (Jeffrey writes this off as jealousy, Lori as overprotectiveness, but the realreason shocks them both).Hilarity Ensues as the cast and crew backstab each other in a plot filled with more Soap Opera tropes than most actual soap operas.
Celeste: So was Hitler! No, wait, not Hitler, the other guy...
Rose: Himmler.
Celeste: No, no, no...
David: Hess.
Rose: Eichmann.
David: Eichmann!
Celeste: Yes! Eichmann. That's you!
Animated Credits Opening: The names of the producers, director, and primary cast members all appear in a cartoon sequence highlighting the characters' roles in the film.
Armor-Piercing Question: Jeffrey knows Celeste too well - apparently her "incognito" trips to shopping malls in New Jersey to be recognized by her fans are nothing new.
Jeffrey: What's your hurry anyway? Gotta get to the mall?
(Celeste freezes, and has no response to his question except to slowly walk up to Jeffrey and slap him across the face.)
Jeffrey:(unfazed) Give them my best in Paramus.
As Himself: Leeza Gibbons and John Tesh are shown reporting on the goings-on at The Sun Also Sets in their capacities as presenters on Entertainment Tonight. They are listed in the credits as "Special Guest Stars".
The Atoner: During the closing credits, it seems that David has become this. Having spent the main part of the film joining Montana in scheming to remove Celeste from The Sun Also Sets, the following year he receives daytime television's top humanitarian award.
The guy was killed in an auto accident! I looked it up! He was driving in the Yukon, in a pink convertible, to visit his brother who's an ex-con named Francis, when a tractor trailer comes along and decapitates him! You know what that means!? It means he doesn't have a head! How am I suppose to write for a guy who doesn't have a head?! He's got no lips, no vocal cords! What do you want me to do!?
Big "NO!": Celeste when Lori and Jeffrey are about to kiss on set.
Montana when it's revealed she used to be Milton.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: A subversion of Montana. She thinks she's one. Everyone just sees her as a bitch, plain and simple.
David: She's got a lot of spirit.
Lori: She's a deranged bitch.
David: True.
Lori Craven, however, is a straight example, as Montana learns.
Blind Without 'Em: Jeffrey needs thick glasses to read, but refuses to wear them on camera. This causes problems in the climactic scene when he has to read his lines off a teleprompter.
Jeffrey: At the current rate of inflation, her brain will laterally explore the- Celeste: "Literally explode". Jeffrey: Exactly, within the next three houses- Celeste: "Hours". Jeffrey: Yes, will literally explode within the next three hours. I would suggest leaving the restraint. Celeste: "The restaurant". Jeffrey: Restaurant, yes. Celeste: Her brain will actually explode? Jeffrey: Yes, I've, uh... (looks over his fingers at teleprompter) I've seen it happen. It's a dreadful... it's a dreadful, dreadful thug... thing.
Blondes are Evil: The only blonde in the primary cast is manipulative, backstabbing vamp Montana Moorehead.
Book Ends: The film opens with the main characters' arrival at the Daytime Television Awards - except for Jeffrey, who is wasting away in dinner theatre in Florida. The other characters glare at Celeste with thinly disguised hatred as she receives her award. At the end of the film, the main characters are once again shown at the Daytime Television Awards - except for Montana, who is now the one wasting away in dinner theatre in Florida (and has gone back to being called Milton). Now, Celeste and Jeffrey beam with pride as Lori receives her award.
Brain Fever: One of the spoofed soap opera tropes. When the decision is made that Lori will be the one to get the axe, her character is revealed to have an acute case of brain fever.
Brick Joke: In an early scene, casting director Betsy Faye Sharon (Carrie Fisher) casts a young actor named Mark as a waiter with the single line "Will you be having wine with dinner?" on the "strength" of his performance without a shirt. In the climactic Live Episode, Mark finally appears as the waiter and gives a stiff, awkward rendition of the line "Will you be having wine with dinner?"
The headdress that Celeste refused to wear gets passed to Lory.
Canon Discontinuity: In-universe, as Rose's complaint about having to bring back a character who was decapitated.
Casting Couch: Betsy Faye Sharon is seen tugging her skirt down when Lori bursts into her office as the latest young, handsome actor leaves it while re-fastening his trousers.
Cigarette Of Anxiety: After her live-in boyfriend goes back to his wife and kids and her latest costumes on The Sun Also Sets are making her feel her age as never before, Celeste takes up smoking to deal with the stress.
Costume Porn: Fancy outfits are worn both on and off the show.
Description Cut: Celeste's acceptance speech in the opening award ceremony features one.
Celeste: I have so many people to thank. First of all, my fabulous supporting cast, who gives a new meaning to the word "support". (cut to the Sun Also Sets table; Ariel, David, and Montana are all sporting fake smiles) Ariel: Bitch. David: Hag. Montana: I hate her so much...
Dinner Theatre: In the first act of the film, the washed-up Jeffrey is playing Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman at a rundown Florida dinner theatre. It's something he later describes as hell. Half the audience are too hard of hearing to know what he's saying, the other half are too distracted to care.
Fainting: Celeste's eyes roll up into her head and she collapses when she learns that Jeffrey will be reprising his role as the Back from the Dead Rod Randall.
Fallen on Hard Times Job: Jeffrey's dinner theater gig, the nadir of his career after being fired from The Sun Also Sets.
Family Relationship Switcheroo: Lori has grown up believing that her mother was Celeste's twin sister Simone, and that her parents died in an accident when she was a baby. When Celeste reveals that Simone never existed and Lori is actually her daughter, and that Jeffrey is Lori's father, Lori and Jeffrey are both outraged at Celeste for lying to them for twenty years and horrified that they had been romantically attracted to each other.
Fanservice: courtesy of Ariel and Bolt (Paul Johansson).
Jeffrey's bad eyesight is hinted at when he accidentally walks into David's office, believing it to be his dressing room, then squints at the name on the door; he is also clearly trying to hide his glasses during his first conversation with Lori. His bad eyesight and vanity regarding his glasses cause the climactic Live Episode to derail when he cannot read the teleprompter.
Clues to Montana's identity are sprinkled throughout the film. For example, her dressing room is full of gay iconography, like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.
Greek Tragedy: Invoked by Jeffrey to Lori, after they learn their true relationship, and how Lori was ready to sleep with her own father.
Groin Attack: Celeste delivers one to Jeffrey when he deliberately ruins several takes of a kissing scene to get him to behave. Although he gets through the take, he doubles over in pain when the cameras stop rolling.
Heroic BSOD: Celeste has a massive one when Lori reveals that she has been on a date with Jeffrey. Rose drily remarks that someone who doesn't know her well might interpret her reaction as intense jealousy, but even she is unaware of the real reason for Celeste's horror - Lori is the daughter Jeffrey doesn't know he has.
Hitler Ate Sugar: Celeste compared David to Hitler but realised that was too harsh so she compares him to Adolf Eichmann.
I Am Not Spock: In-universe. As if dinner theatre isn't bad enough, no-one can remember that Jeffrey is not called Willy Loman.
Theatre Employee: Five minutes, Mr. Loman! Jeffrey: Don't - call me - Mr. - Loman! My name is Anderson! Anderson! ANDERSON!
Theatre Employee: Someone to see you, Mr. Loman! Jeffrey:(steadily getting louder) Stop calling me Mr. LOMAN!
Killed Off for Real: Jeffrey's character, Rod Randall, was killed in a grisly fashion twenty years earlier.
Live Episode: Executive Edmund Edwards (Garry Marshall) decides to resolve the three-way standoff between Celeste, Jeffrey, and Lori with a live episode in which one of their characters will be written out; even they will not know which it will be until they read the teleprompter. Lori is the one being written out, but Celeste goes off script and offers to leave instead, despite Jeffrey's attempts to talk her out of it. Seeing what her mother is willing to give up for her, Lori breaks character and reconciles with both Celeste and Jeffrey. Finally, Montana's claim to be pregnant with Jeffrey's baby is disproved by Ariel and Rose's revelation that she is really a man called Milton. All broadcast live over the airwaves to what David claims is "the biggest audience in daytime television history".
Celeste: No, you can't! You can't kiss her! Jeffrey: Why, because she's your niece? Celeste: No, you nitwit, because she's my daughter! And your daughter!
Magic Plastic Surgery: One of the spoofed soap opera tropes; used to explain how Rod Randall somehow survived being decapitated.
Mr. Fanservice: Maggie's much younger husband Bolt, as played by Blair Brennan (former Canadian basketball player Paul Johansson), who appears in one scene wearing nothing but a towel (to Celeste's disgust). Also Mark (former Australian soccer player Costas Mandylor), the waiter who delivers the line "Will you be having wine with dinner?" in the Live Episode.
My Breasts are Down Here: And Ariel knows it (see Absolute Cleavage). Before shooting one scene for The Sun Also Sets, she is seen adjusting her chest to show it off to maximum effect.
My Secret Pregnancy: When Celeste became pregnant with Lori by Jeffrey, she was temporarily written out of The Sun Also Sets and had Jeffrey fired without telling him about her pregnancy, then returned to her childhood home in Iowa until the birth, giving Lori to her mother to raise. She would later tell Lori that her mother was Celeste's "twin sister" Simone, and that Simone and her husband had died in an accident when Lori was a baby.
Oh Crap: Several examples, usually immediately before a Big "NO!"
Celeste gets this look on her face when she discovers that the latest script includes a kiss between Jeffrey as Dr. Randall and Lori as Angelique.
Montana gets this look on her face when Ariel and Rose appear in the live episode with a high school yearbook which contains pictorial proof that she is actually Milton Moorehead of Syosset, Long Island.
In The Sun Also Sets, there are parody versions of the following tropes, the absurd and/or cliched nature of each of which is lampshaded by the characters:
Live Episode: The climax in which we find out which of Celeste, Jeffrey, and Lori will be fired; thanks to Jeffrey's inability to read the teleprompter and the actors' personal crises boiling over, it very quickly goes off script.
Characters in comas and murder trials are also mentioned as warhorses of soap opera plots.
Meanwhile, the actors' personal lives feature the following tropes, the soap operatic nature of which is once again lampshaded by the characters.
The Bus Came Back: Jeffrey's return after twenty years in dinner theatre wilderness.
Love Triangle: An unwittingly incestuous one between Celeste, Jeffrey, and Lori. Celeste has (repressed) unresolved feelings for Jeffrey, who admits to Lori that he initially asked her out to make Celeste jealous but found himself genuinely drawn to her.
Big "NO!": Celeste upon discovering that Jeffrey and Lori have a scripted kiss, Montana when Rose reveals that she is really a man named Milton.
Precision F-Strike: Sally Field, considered the poster child for sweetness and light character, shocks the audience when she complains about having a turban included in her wardrobe. "I don't feel quite right in a turban. What I feel like is Gloria Fucking Swanson!"
Call Back: Like mother, like daughter - Lori complains that her bright yellow hat makes her "look like a Goddamn Tweety Bird!"
In the scripted portion, Dr. Randall and Maggie's distressed reactions to the news that Angelique has Brain Fever are clearly doubling as Jeffrey and Celeste's regret that their personal rancor has led to the demise of their daughter's dreams as an actress; Angelique's quiet resignation to her fate doubles as Lori's sad acceptance of being fired.
In the ad-libbed portion, Maggie "translating" Angelique's question about possible treatment doubles as Celeste trying to save Lori from being axed. When Nurse Nan suggests a brain transplant and Maggie volunteers herself as a donor, the subtext is Celeste volunteering to leave The Sun Also Sets instead of Lori; when Dr. Randall goes through a series of objections before relenting, Jeffrey is also trying to talk Celeste out of ending her long career before finally accepting her decision as something she has wanted to do for some time.
Real Life Writes the Plot: In-universe. All of the arguing between Celeste and Jeffrey over Lori becomes inextricably intertwined with the The Sun Also Sets plot.
Room Full of Crazy: Jeffrey's dressing room at the dinner theatre is starting to turn into this by the time David tracks him down; he has written "AGONY" and "more pain" on the mirror alongside a tally of how many performances he has endured so far.
Rule of Three: Played with when Celeste, Lori, and Jeffrey complain to the network about their situation.
Shoot the Money: In-Universe spoof. The ocean backdrop cost $100,000 to make, so it's used in almost every part of the show.
During the closing credits, David is identified as the winner of the "John E. Hockridge Humanitarian Award". John E. Hockridge was the film's first assistant director (in fact, his credit appears seconds before Leeza Gibbons lines David up for his post-award interview).
Soap Within a Show: The Sun Also Sets, a parody of long-running daytime soap operas, the stories in which are decidedly less interesting than those in the actors' personal lives.
Unsettling Gender Reveal: David begins gagging when it is revealed that Montana is actually a man named Milton.
Unusual Euphemism: Montana tells David that if he gets rid of Celeste, "Mr. Fuzzy" is his.
The Vamp: Montana. She has David dancing to her tune by promising to sleep with him if he gets rid of Celeste. After each scheme fails, she reminds him what lies in wait for him if he can make good on his promise, and in one case acts as though they have already slept together ("We were both naked and you promised! Naked!" "Hey! We were never naked!" "Well we could have been!").
Vertigo Effect: Used for Celeste's reaction shot just before interrupting Jeffrey and Lori's scripted kiss.
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