Jessica Harper Uncanceled

“I’m sorry, ma’am, your card has been refused.”

What? My credit card? Moi? There must be some mistake. Could you try again?”

“Sure.”

She tried again, with the same result. I had only brought out one credit card, the other being at home, and so I sheepishly passed the croissant in its little bag back to the assistant. Was this the first time in history that a pastry had been repossessed?

“It’s probably just your bank being cautious or it could be our machine playing up,” she said, to save face (my face). But the unspoken implication hung in the air: It could be your bank being cautious or it could be you’re a raging alcoholic-cum-gambling-addict who spends all day sweatily trying to defraud people. 

I avoided the probably smug and disapproving gaze of other customers, customers who would soon be munching Portuguese custard tarts and cinnamon whirls that had been purchased without the intervention of the US banking system.

Pah. This sort of thing happened, I told myself. Maybe I’d entered the wrong PIN. Yep, maybe I just had Alzheimer’s, hurrah.

I left the diner quickly and crossed the road. On the other side was Dottie Sawyer, one of my son’s old teachers. 

“I just saw Jackson with a woman, do you have a nanny?” she said.

My son Jackson with a woman? He was meant to be at school! And at 13 he’s too old for a nanny: he’s big enough to be in the Navy SEALS.

“I, er, no,” I said. “Are you sure it was him?”

But she didn’t reply, she just started laughing, laughing and pointing to where the playground lay, just out of sight. I began running and when I got here I was faced with a towering rollercoaster and Jackson was sitting in one of the cars, looking terrified and yelling “MOM!” And the woman next to him was Glenn Close. And she just laughed and the car was climbing to some part of the rollercoaster I couldn’t see and-.

And I woke up (just like normal people wake up btw, not sitting upright, gasping, like idiots in movies). 

Wow, scary. This was not the first yuppies in peril dream I’d had recently. 

You know the movie genre I’m talking about. Film critic Dominic Corry writes: “Glossy lifestyle thrillers in which beautiful people with nice kitchens and bright futures have their worlds torn asunder by an external force, often, but not exclusively, in the form of a vengeful former associate. Mostly released in 1992.”

He talks hilariously of what he calls “the Golden Grace period”: “The early section in every Yuppies In Peril film which sets up what is at stake by presenting the protagonists’ lives at their most idyllic. These intoxicating portrayals of materialistic splendour are great at lulling the viewer into a dozy and contented lifestyle bliss. The Golden Grace Period often includes a breakfast scene in which a character who is late for work will consume toast or bacon on the run while exchanging quips with a preternaturally sassy kid.”

Ha, so true! Stop eating toast on the run, people in movies. Leave more time.

Like Mr Corry, I love these parts of the film as much as I love the tense stuff (I also love the bits in James Bond films where he goes to meet the villain at their mansion at the start and there’s a party and he says enjoy the hospitality, and then Bond gets to sleep with some hot babe). I would happily switch off the movie then. I dream of splicing these Bond scenes together into an hour-long video of him waltzing around nice places before the noisy stuff begins).

So why all the dreams? Do I secretly want to be a yuppie in peril? 

No, of course not. All that finding receipts in your husband’s suit jacket and mysterious tyres squealing in multi-storey car parks and then seeing my husband talking animatedly to some intense woman at the mall and me having to say to him later: “Rick, is there something I should know?” And him saying: “My name’s not Rick” and me saying: “That’s true. I wonder where Rick came from.” And him saying: “Maybe you’re having an affair with someone called Rick.” And me saying: “Hmm maybe I am.” Because amnesia is a common plot device in yuppies in peril movies (see Before I Go To Sleep, (2014) starring Nicole Kidman, and Shattered (1991) with Tom Berenger).

No, I am happy to be a mere watcher of yuppies in peril movies. Talking of watchers, let’s give Dennis Quaid a mention. Because not only was he an intruder in, er, The Intruder (2019) but he went on to play the intruded upon as a character who buys a manor in a cold creek in, er, Cold Creek Manor (2003). Things got so bad – so freaking Quaidy – in the mid-noughties that anyone selling a house in New York State had to sign an affidavit to the effect that Dennis Quaid was not hiding on the property. 

These days all these property-related concerns would probably be written off as “First World problems”. Having a man hiding in your house is a First World problem? That could happen anywhere. Anywhere that Dennis Quaid lives anyway.

I’m waffling. This post is going somewhere, I’m sure of it. Do you get that feeling, too? Me neither.

Enough about Dennis Quaid as he is in fact a fringe player in the genre. The undisputed king of yuppies in peril is, of course, Michael Douglas (he was also king of the erotic thriller, a genre in which he adopted a “pants down first, questions later” approach). His first question to his agent in those days was not how much money do I get but much sex in elevators do I get? Elevator sex was big in 80s movies; you could barely take a ride from women’s fashion to electronics without getting a nipple in the face.

Douglas followed up the all-time greatest yuppies in peril movie Fatal Attraction with The Game (yuppie in literal, serious physical peril) and Disclosure (Demi Moore seduces him though I can’t remember if there was any sex in an elevator).

If Michael Douglas was king of the yuppies in peril actors, Adrian Lyne was the undisputed king of the directors (and still is, having made Deep Water as recently as 2022). The guy made so many yuppies in peril movies that he must be a paranoid wreck. I bet he can’t make a salami sandwich without checking under the meat. Well, you brought it upon yourself, pal.

Look at this track record: Fatal Attraction (1987); Indecent Proposal (1993) and Unfaithful (2002). He took a twenty-year career break then made a comeback with Under Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas. Which is an erotic thriller about Yuppies in Peril. Bam. Two genres in one. It’s like he was never away.

Right, I’m off to the deli.

And I’m secretly hoping my credtit card gets declined.

But not until I’ve eaten at least one croissant.