Happy New Year

Susie Diamond: So, make any resolutions?

Jack Baker: No, you?

Susie: Nah, I figure all that stuff’s a bunch of crap, anyway. You do what you do, right?

Just as Christmas Eve stirred memories of Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) and The Fabulous Baker Boys, so does New Year’s Eve. That’s because the film’s most famous moment takes place on this holiday eve.

Often described by critics as one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history, it features Michelle Pfeiffer’s slinky, sultry, sexy-beyond-belief performance of “Makin’ Whoopee” atop a piano, while Jeff Bridge’s Jack Baker tickles the ivories—and falls more in love, and lust, with Susie. As do we all.

There aren’t enough adjectives in the English language, or any language for that matter, to describe how HOT the piano scene is, and that’s all owed to Michelle’s stunning, jaw-dropping performance. She sings the song as both a tease and a promise of things to come later that evening, when she and Jack are all alone in the ballroom after the gig and things get HEATED. The entire New Year’s sequence of scenes is as hot as cinema gets. It’s the sort of heat you rarely see onscreen today. It feels palpably real.

On that hot note, I’ll sign off for 2022. I wish you all a Happy New Year! Before you go though, enjoy a little gallery of Susie, Jack, and some New Year’s Eve sizzle.