Excuse Me, Tim Walz Took His Wife to See Which Movie on Their ...

In August, the New York Times ran a profile of Gwen Walz, the wife of Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, that featured a tidbit I haven’t been able to stop thinking about ever since. On the couple’s first date, which took place when the two were both teachers at a Nebraska high school, they went to see the movie Falling Down, which the Times described as “the 1993 Michael Douglas movie about an aggrieved white man having a nervous breakdown in Los Angeles.”

I love a good first-date detail, something that adds texture to the origin story of a future power couple. The Obamas famously went to see the movie Do the Right Thing on their first date together, a fitting, maybe even fateful choice for the historic couple they’d become. (Indeed, they are among probably only a handful of people on the planet who can brag that their first movie date inspired a movie of its own.) Other political couples have started out perhaps less auspiciously. Listeners of Slow Burn Season 8 may recall that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took his future wife Ginni to see 1986’s Short Circuit, a comedy about a robot that comes to life, on one of their early dates.

And then there are the Walzes and … Falling Down? How did Tim Walz, who’s been rolled out to America as a football coach with a heart of gold, end up choosing, if we’re right to assume that he planned the date, this particular movie as a romantic mood-setter? I confess I was not familiar with the film before the mention in the Times, even though I consider myself a fan and perhaps even an apologist for the work of its director, Joel Schumacher—important to me because of St. Elmo’s Fire, important to many for his appealingly demented work on a couple of Batman movies. Even the Times’ brief description is rough: an “aggrieved white male” in Los Angeles, of all places? How is it that we are in a timeline when J.D. Vance has professed his admiration for Garden State but Tim Walz went to see Falling Down on his first date with his wife? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

If you had to pick a movie from 1993 that embodies the Walzes, there’s an obvious choice, and it ain’t Falling Down: It’s Rudy, the one about a Midwestern college football player that reliably makes grown men cry. Alas, Rudy came out in October of that year, and the Walzes’ love apparently couldn’t wait. Falling Down was a February release. Late February at least—a Falling Down Valentine’s Day date would have been that much more egregious.

I’ve come to learn the movie concerns a former defense worker (Douglas) who’s stuck in traffic and abandons his car to make his way across Los Angeles by foot to see his estranged wife and daughter, even though his wife has a restraining order against him. He acquires some weapons and goes on a bit of a violence spree. Robert Duvall is the almost-retired cop in hot pursuit. It contains a very famous scene of Douglas taking out a gun in a fast-food restaurant because he’s mad they stopped serving breakfast. (That used to be considered satire.) Not to criticize Tim Walz’s game or anything, but come on, man, I’m not sure this was the way to any woman’s heart. And indeed, consider another detail that Times piece mentioned: “Ms. Walz said she rebuffed a kiss afterward, to which Mr. Walz responded, ‘That’s fine, but you should know I’m going to marry you.’ ” Clearly, it worked out fine for them, but yeesh.

Thanks to some sleuthing by colleagues at Slate, I think I’ve at least solved the mystery of why they would see this movie when they did. Other movies in theaters at the time included the arguably more date-appropriate Groundhog Day, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, Aladdin, and The Crying Game, but really, they probably didn’t have much of a choice. Newspaper archives online suggest the Alliance Theatre in Alliance, Nebraska, where they taught, probably made the decision for them: The theater seemingly only had two screens, so depending on exactly which weekend they had their date, it was probably either Falling Down or Army of Darkness, the Evil Dead sequel. I suppose Michael Douglas waving a gun around is a little more romantic than that, at least for some people.

People still talk about the politics of Falling Down to this day; recent anniversaries have prompted assessments of whether it’s a proto-MAGA movie or a misunderstood masterpiece. For me, the only thing left to do was watch it. I finally did, and I’m here to report … not bad! When movies in 1993 had weird politics, it wasn’t like when movies now have bad politics, like Sound of Freedom, where every scene is a thinly veiled allegory hinged on right-wing-coded conspiracies. A movie used to be able to have some lingering weirdness but all in all provide an entertaining way to spend an evening. I feel sure that’s about where Tim and Gwen’s assessment of Falling Down ended up landing: They probably had a very thoughtful, civil discussion. In a way, it further burnishes Walz’s reputation as a new breed of sensitive guy’s guy. You have to hand it to him—being able to see this movie on a first date and come back from would take some pretty serious rizz.