Needs More Goldblum: Incident at Loch Ness

Jeff Goldblum arrives to Werner Herzog's dinner party like a gay couple with Ricky Jay. He recognizes the camera man. Later, at dinner, he sits next to a statuesque beauty and relates a Carl Sagan 'ism' on belief. Jeff Goldblum as himself.

Needs More Goldblum: The Big Chill

Jeff Goldblum plays a tall, awkward Jew (L'chaim!). He is a journalist, a real journalist for People, whose average article length correlates to the length of time it takes to take a crap. He is supposed to be on flight to write about a blind baton twirler, but he postpones it to stay the weekend. But what he really wants to do is open a club. Fuck that shit. He's going to go back to his novel.

Back in college, when everyone was still idealistic (like the friends' plan to buy all that land) was to "go to Harlem and teach those ghetto kids." I guess this is like his girlfriend Annie who still sustains those ideals. But we never see her. Are they still together. He tries unendlessly to fuck around on her. He's after Chloe, Alex's girlfriend, before dead friend Alex (suicide) is even cold in the ground. Of course, his ethos seems to be "everyone does everything just to get laid." So it would appear he's still true to his ideals. Plus we see him unpack a shitload of condoms from his luggage.

Needs More Goldblum: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

Jeff Goldblum is a neurosurgeon/some kind of cowboy.


As Dr. Sidney Zweibel, he is a colleague of Buckaroo Banzai, noted physicist, neurosurgeon, Samurai, rock musician, Jet Car driver, and comic book hero (and played by the awesome Peter Weller, best known for playing Robocop and William S. Burroughs, but not at the same time). When Buckaroo asks him if he'd like to join him and the Hong Kong Cavaliers and asks him if he sings:

A little. Yeah. I can dance...

Later, when after a concert Buckaroo comes to pick him up, Goldblum is decked out in this campy cowboy outfit. Apparently, Zweibel's grandfather was a cowboy star of silent cinema and he wears his old costumes out of respect/nostalgia. This is not mentioned in the film at all.

Goldblum is given the nickname of New Jersey, because he like Cavalier Reno Nevada, hails from such a place. All Cavaliers must have nicknames. Such as Rawhide or Perfect Tommy (because he's perfect, see).

Later, Goldblum runs around with a gun and acts like an everyman 'eyes of the audience' character:

Why is there a watermelon there?

Needs More Goldblum: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Goldblum's Ian Malcolm, "scientist" (he's apparently referred to as more than once), returns for this sequel, this time as a headliner. The first time we seem, a jump cut presents him standing, still the man in black, in front of a tropical setting. Overlapping his image is a mother's scream from the prior scene of a dinosaur attack. Goldblum stoically yawns as the tropical setting is just a billboard in a subway station. And it's revealed that those clothes aren't all black, but rather dark brown tones. And even more colour will be introduced to his wardrobe later.

Goldblum is more than action man here, having ditched the glasses and sporting a perma-five o'clock shadow. When he gets to Dinosaur Island, he even sports action jeans. Clearly, he is a changed man. Luckily, he still sports some of his trademark wry wit, although not as much when he was the part-time comic relief character of the first film:

So you went from capitalist to naturalist in just 4 years. That's something.

Malcolm in this film is sort of defined by relationships with two characters. First off, he has a sassy black daughter. If we remember correctly from the first film, there was a throwaway line about Malcolm collecting wives. And here his sassy black daughter says,

You like to have kids but you don't want to be with them, do you?

The second character is a girlfriend paleontologist played by Julianne Moore. This makes The Lost World: Jurassic Park succeed just by making me imagine Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore having sex. It justs feels so right (I'll be having sweet dreams tonight).

Don't want to slight the Malcolm character too much as the film does make out to be a bit of a badass. First off, he survives a velociraptor attack (along with Julianne Moore and sassy black daughter*); velociraptors being the baddest motherfuckers ever. Secondly, after a tyrannosaurus rex has chased and trapped a bunch of humans into a waterfall cave, eaten one guy, and seemingly backed off, someone yells, "It's coming back." But instead of the T-rex, it's Jeff Goldblum. Who's king of the dinosaurs now, bitch? Yeah, Goldblum, that's who.

*Now that I think about, and without rewatching the third Jurassic Park film, the only velociraptor deaths that occur are caused by the tyrannosaurus in the first film and the gymnastics-wielding sassy black daughter in the second film.

Needs More Goldblum: Jurassic Park

Here Goldblum is a rock star mathematician-- sorry, chaotician-- and he owns the part. Doffed all in black, pants and button down, and topped with a leather jacket is the rock star. And for the intellectual (and shades of nascent hipster) are a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Brought to the island as one of three subject matter experts that the InGen board of executives wants to sign off on the viability of its adventure theme park dinosaur island, Goldblum's Ian Malcolm drops the knowledge on chaos theory and unpredictability:

Life, uh, finds a way.

Ian Malcolm is too a brash young punk. When not making quips about massive piles of triceratops shit and hitting on Laura Dern's paleobotanist character, he's losing his leather jacket as he sits in an automated Ford Explorer in the rain, showing off his short sleeves and his thoughts on water ripples. Then when Sam Neill's paleontologist protagonist decides to use a flair to get the tyrannosaurus rex's attention away from the kids, Malcolm has got to do it too, to lesser, more foolish and more impulsive effect.


After the dinosaur has thrown Malcolm into a thatched hut, collapsing it in the process, he spends the remainder of the film injured. But he's still rock star enough to have tourniquetted his own leg when his injured body is first found. He also spends the remainder of the film with his shirt ripped open, his chiseled body spilling out his shirt like a pulp hero, his rugged handsomeness that of an Edgar Rice Burroughs character. Yet this clashes with his injured status, which leaves him in a prone state, his damsel in distress sitting aside like the ravished, scantily clad exotic girl of a pulp cover or like Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hut.

If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously.

Needs More Goldblum

Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more Goldblum!

Those crazy eyes, that nervous energy, the manic chattering, his tall, lanky frame, the slick black-brown hair, the classical tall, dark, and handsome figure underwritten by a certain, unmistakable Jeweyness. A sort of wry, knowing humour. The eyes darting, overthinking the delivery. You just have to be honest with yourself, and admit, that yes, the Goldblum easily makes any film he appears 300, 400% better.