The American Dream: All Tuckered Out?

In the general banality and greed of our culture, both in and out of the church, it is nice to be reminded of what humanity can be, of how fine and wondrous are its hopes and deeds. A happy reminder last summer was Francis Ford Coppola’s roaring tale of automotive nobody Preston Tucker, an innovator whose new kind of car took on Detroit and almost won. (Though the movie has mostly departed first-run theaters, check for availability of the video release sometime in the early months of 1989.)

Tucker is an invigorating film, full of high spirits and hope, an anthem to the enormous creativity, stretch, and drive of the human imagination. The film exudes a robust love of the great American dream that things can and should be better.

In the person of Preston Tucker that passion was both consuming and renewing. While Tucker’s enterprise did not approach “utopia,” his grand passion for dreaming and making says something about what lingers still, however shrunken and distorted, of the image of God. And for that we may be glad and take heart.

In Tucker, Coppola tills the fertile soil of American success mythology, of which his hero is the larger-than-life incarnation for which every American is a sucker. Coppola summons the myth, and a lot of period atmospherics, by mixing the style and perspective of the forties newsreel and “This Is Your Life.” As such, to match and even ennoble the myth, Tucker built his car less for profit than for challenge, fun, helping out—and, probably, to prove something.

Coppola’s Tucker (Jeff Bridges) embodies the brighter side of most every strand of twentieth-century American success ideology: natural ingenuity, democratic opportunity, hard work, home as inspiration, corporation as family, and business as service. And we believe it all as well—or we wish we could. Living in our own jaded time, and seeing what evil befell Tucker, we are not sure whether his protean gullibility makes him a dreamer, saint, fool, or victim—or maybe all four.

Of Machines And Dreams

In Tucker, Coppola seems again to have found a subject that fully warms his skills. His movie is the mostly true account of Preston Tucker, who, as a postwar designer-entrepreneur, set out to supply America with a very different and improved automobile. Possessed of a wild and loving effervescence, an enormous relish for life and challenge, Tucker tinkered with machines and dreamed of how they could help people. In short, his wish was to do Henry Ford all over again—supplying war veterans and factory workers with a car technologically advanced (disc brakes, rear engine, fuel injection), safe (seat belts, pop-out windshields, and shatter-proof glass), and cheap ($1,000). Starting in the garage out back, helped by his buddies and inspired by his family, it looked for a long time as if Tucker really would make it—all the way. That is, until the Big Three also thought he was going to make it, and the monopolistic demons of Washington and Detroit loosed their strength against him.

Whether a hero or the dupe of his own dream, Tucker’s mettle was sorely tested. Audience sympathy increases when they see the Detroit automakers start to play hardball with his upstart venture. They colluded first to inflate the price Tucker had to pay for steel. Then their ire was further roused when he suggested their neglect of seat belts amounted to criminal negligence. Moreover, the car Tucker finally produced was just plain “too good,” threatening to cost the competition millions in redesign. Tucker’s weak spot would come in his seat-of-the-pants financing, helped by friend Karatz (Martin Landau), a down-and-out investment banker. Just when he actually came close to marketing the auto he promised, Tucker was indicted on enough securities fraud to put him in jail for 20 years.

As a movie, Tucker runs like the man Tucker and the car he built: fast, sleek, fresh, and daring. For those who simply like to watch movie magic, Tucker dazzles. In nearly every frame, director Coppola shows ingenuity and mastery. Not since the midseventies (The Godfather saga, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now) has he shown such bravura and control. Tucker may be the flip side of those early dark films, but it is no less serious or taut. Most of all, Tucker works because it is a good story that, in good American fashion, celebrates and inspires hope, integrity, and vision.

The Rock Of Human Malice

In the end, it seems, dreams, grit, and tenacity could only carry so far, and then the dream smashes on the rock, not of technological limitation, but human malice. The dark underside of the rags-to-riches mythology—shrinking opportunity, monopoly, and greed—stands implacable and devouring. Once again, in the refrain of our century, moral progress has not been commensurate with technological advance. In the end, Tucker wins—sort of—a battle, if not the war. He built a better car that no one then would make, though most of his innovations are now standard. He is disappointed, but not discouraged; singing still, ever hopeful; and he dreams of new projects.

In the holy story in which we live, we should do as well.

By Roy M. Anker, currently a research fellow at Calvin College’s Research and Study Center (on leave from Northwestern College, Orange City, Iowa).

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