Perfect(1985)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

One day, while Adam (John Travolta) is having a sexual encounter with Jessie (Jamie Lee Curtis) in his hotel room, he gets a phone call from the Associated Press about another story he is doing on multi-millionaire Joseph McKenzie (Kenneth Welsh), who is on trial standing accused of trying to secretly negotiate a sale of his company’s computers to communist Czechoslovakia in order to save his company (which he did; he revealed that to Adam in a private interview they had that Adam had taped, and Adam has refused to let the prosecutors or the American government have a copy of the tapes because he promised McKenzie that he would not do that to him). While he is distracted with the call, Jessie goes into the living room and sees a couple of notes pertaining to the article he is writing about the Sports Connection gym she works at, but she finds out that he has lied to her about what he said the article was going to be about when she sees that one of the notes states that he feels that the Sports Connection (and other co-ed health clubs in general) has become the new singles bar of the 1980s. She then goes on his nearby computer and finds and reads the article itself, and when she sees that he has written some unflattering things about her friends and club regulars Linda (Laraine Newman) and Sally (Marilu Henner) (more so the former), she deletes the entire article.

Adam catches her as she is finishing up with the erasure, and she chastises him for lying to her about the article’s contents. He tells her that everything he wrote in the story was true, but she replies that everything that that reporter wrote about her sleeping with her married 41-year-old competitive swimming coach back when she was 18 was true, too, but it still hurt. She then says to him that it isn’t the truth that she is worried about, but the tone and hurting people and using them. She then questions how he can be nice to someone like McKenzie and then dump on Linda when she has done nothing wrong to him, and she asks him what is so wrong about wanting to be the best that you can be, wanting to be perfect, and wanting to be loved. Before she hurries out the door, she warns Adam that he will ruin Linda’s life if he gets that article published. Adam chases after her, but she gets to her car before he can reach her and drives away.

Later that day, Adam calls up Rolling Stone’s editor-in-chief, Mark (Jann Wenner, the real co-founder of Rolling Stone Magazine), and tells him that he is going to need some more time to write his Sports Connection story, but Mark informs him that he doesn’t have any more time because the deadline is tomorrow morning. Adam decides to abide by Mark’s decision, but instead of rewriting the juicy version of his article, he instead writes the more fair-minded and balanced version that Jessie wanted to see him write. He submits his story to Mark before heading off to Morocco on another assignment, but Mark is displeased with it because it isn’t the juicy one that he was promised. He initially decides to trash it, but the managing editor (David Paymer) informs him that he can’t do that because he has already committed to putting it in the next issue of the magazine. Mark thus instructs him to rewrite it and get a hold of Adam’s notes and research on his original article, and he also instructs the photographer, Frankie (Anne De Salvo), to assist him with this since she was the one who took all of the pictures for said article. The managing editor warns Mark that this will upset Adam, but Mark doesn’t care, given that Adam is in Morocco now and won’t even get to see what will be published anyway. As the managing editor and Frankie redo the article to make it juicy again, Frankie digs up the news story from Jessie’s past about her affair with her swim coach, and she and the managing editor decide to put that in the article as well. When they finish, Adam gets credited as the sole writer.

When the magazine is released, Linda and Sally check out Adam’s altered article first, and they later show it to Jessie. Heartbroken and enraged, Jessie calls Adam in Morocco, and after Adam asks her if she read the article, she insults him and hangs up. Puzzled, he calls up his co-worker, Dita (Murphy Cross), at Rolling Stone’s offices and asks her if his story is still in the magazine, and after she answers “yes,” he asks her to read it to him. After finding out about the changes that were made to it, he immediately flies to California, and after getting a hold of an issue of the magazine at an airport newsstand and seeing the article and pictures, he hurries over to Sports Connection to see Jessie in the hope of explaining to her that that article was not the one that he submitted. However, one of her co-workers informs him that she is not here, but at the club’s Beverly Hills location participating in a charity benefit. He goes over there and finds her, and though he tries to explain what happened, she utterly refuses to listen to him and slaps him, and he soon gets thrown out by her co-workers.

Adam catches the next plane to New York City, and upon his arrival, he heads straight for the Rolling Stone offices armed with a baseball bat. He furiously marches right into Mark’s office, and after he both chastises Mark for messing with his article and smashes up everything in his office with the bat, he quits his job at the magazine. Just after leaving the office and reaching the elevator, he is approached by the mysterious man who has been following him around lately, and he reveals himself to be an FBI agent before handing him a government subpoena stating that he must testify at McKenzie’s trial. The subpoena also states that he must surrender the tapes of his interview with McKenzie to the court, and should he fail or refuse to do so, he will be charged with contempt of court and sent to prison.

On the day that Adam testifies, Jessie shows up in the audience both out of concern for him and to see what he will do on the witness stand, and Mark shows up as well. When he gets called up to the stand and the prosecutor asks him if he brought the tapes with him, Adam answers that he did not bring them here and that he has no intention of ever turning them over, having given his word to McKenzie that he would not let anyone hear those tapes. The judge thus charges him with contempt of court and orders him incarcerated until he complies with the subpoena and surrenders the tapes to the U.S. Attorney’s office. After a recess is declared and Adam is escorted out of the courtroom by the bailiffs to be taken to prison, Jessie starts to leave the courtroom herself, but she gets intercepted by Mark at the doors. Off-screen, Mark comes clean with her about Adam’s article and admits that Adam did not actually write it before telling her to go to him. She thus pursues Adam all the way to the prison, but she is only able to call out his name once from outside the main gates before he gets taken inside.

At the end of the trial, the jury finds McKenzie not guilty on all charges. Because of this verdict, Adam is released from prison, since his tapes are now no longer needed. As a bunch of reporters try to interview Adam outside the prison gates following his release, he spots Jessie close by standing next to her car, and she smiles and waves at him. He immediately gets into her car with her and shares a passionate kiss with her before they drive away.