cocaine money to buy Tim and herself a multimillion-dollar home. Title The title comes from an anecdote told to Mailer by prizefighter Roger Donahue: Frank Costello, the Murder, Inc. honcho, and his girlfriend greet three champion boxers in the Stork Club. Costello demands that each, in turn, dance with the woman, and each nervously complies. The last, Willie Pep, suggests that Mr. Costello dance. Costello replies, "Tough guys don't dance." Cast Ryan O'Neal as Tim Madden Isabella Rossellini as Madeleine Regency Lawrence Tierney as Dougy Madden Wings Hauser as Luther Regency Debra Sandlund as Patty Lareine Penn Jillette as Big Stoop John Bedford Lloyd as Wardley Meeks III Frances Fisher as Jessica Pond R. Patrick Sullivan as Lonnie Pangborn Production The script had revisions done by scribe/script doctor Robert Towne. Reception Box office The film was a box office bomb, making only , less than a fifth of its $5 million (equivalent to $ million in ) budget. Critical reception Tough Guys Don't Dance received negative reviews. It holds a 39% rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post said that the film was "hard to classify; at times you laugh raucously at what's up on the screen; at others you stare dumbly, in stunned amazement". Roger Ebert, in a star review in the Chicago Sun-Times praised the cinematography, the Provincetown setting, and said that the relationship between Tim and Dougy was the best aspect of the film, but also had to say that "what is strange is that Tough Guys Don't Dance leaves me with such vivid memories of its times and places, its feelings and weathers, and yet leaves me so completely indifferent to its plot. Watching the film, I laughed a good deal." However, the film had at least two supporters. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader, said "Norman Mailer's best film, adapted from his worst novel, shows a surprising amount of cinematic savvy and style." Also, "He translates his high rhetoric and macho preoccupations (existential tests of bravado, good orgasms, murderous women, metaphysical cops) into an odd, campy, raunchy comedy-thriller that remains consistently watchable and unpredictable—as goofy in a way as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Where Russ Meyer featured women with oversize breasts, Mailer features male characters with oversize egos, and thanks to the juicy writing, hallucinatory lines such as 'Your knife is in my dog' and 'I