Rubin and Ed

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"My cat can eat a whole watermelon!"

Rubin and Ed is a 1991 Independent film starring Crispin Glover and Howard Hesseman, directed by Trent Harris. An offbeat and often-trippy comedy, it tells the story of self-imposed hermit Rubin (Glover) and middle-aged pyramid scheme recruiter Ed (Hesseman). Ed is desperate to find someone that he can drag to his group's upcoming seminar. Meanwhile, Rubin's mother is nagging him to make a friend and bring said friend over to dinner. While on their respecive missions, the two men meet. Hilarity Ensues. Weirdness Ensues too. The plot winds up going in an unexpected direction, and our heroes spend most of the movie lost in an arid Utah desert.

It's a character study, a road comedy, and (ultimately) a story about two lost souls trying to make their way in the world.

Fun Fact: Although the movie came out in 1991, Crispin Glover created the Rubin character years before. In his Andy Kaufman-esque stunt on Letterman's show, he appeared in-character as Rubin (well, we think it was a stunt; it's just as possible that Glover is just plain weird).

This Film contains examples of:

• Adult Child: Rubin
• Audience Surrogate: Ed
• Cloudcuckoolander: Rubin
• Dark and Troubled Past
• Deadpan Snarker: Ed
• Dream Sequence
• Fat and Skinny
• Heterosexual Life Partners
• Hidden Depths:
  • Rubin is initially portrayed as a withdrawn weirdo who solely existed to make the audience laugh and then we learn about what happened to his cat...
  • Ed is an opportunist, sure, but he's also very lonely and still partially in love with his ex-wife.
• Humiliation Conga: Ed's boss.
• Intergenerational Friendship
• Jerkass:
  • Ed's Ex
  • Ed's boss
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Might end up like this when Trent Harris (the director) runs out of DVDs to sell off his site.
• Odd Couple
• The Power of Friendship
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up
• Take That: The Power of Positive Real Estate. Really, it kills two birds with one stone.
• You Are Not Alone