Checking Out (1988) on Netflix
Ray Macklin's best friend Pat Hagen dies of a heart attack at a family barbecue. Convinced his aches and pains signal the same fate, Ray, an airline executive, spirals into hypochondria.
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- Netflix1.7/5
- IMDb4.8/10559 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ray Macklin is an airline executive in his thirties with a wife, Jenny, children and a career he loves. At a family barbecue his oldest friend, Pat Hagen, dies suddenly of cardiac arrest. His coworkers worry about the company, and Pat's wife blames Pat for the death; Ray is one of the few devastated by it. Learning that Pat may have ignored warning signs, Ray begins reading every ache as evidence of his own approaching end. His firm promotes him into Pat's vacant vice presidency and moves him into Pat's office, where Diana, Pat's former secretary, is reassigned to him and Barbara, his own secretary, is told she is being laid off. Ray's cardiologist refers him to a psychologist, Dr. Duffin.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Checking Out (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Writer Joe Eszterhas said he loathed director David Leland's changes to his script, including new subplots and characters with Jewish names he called repellent and horrible, so he wrote to Warner Bros. threatening to take his name off. After Warners pressured HandMade, Leland cut most of what Eszterhas objected to and the writer put his name back on.
- Joe Eszterhas's screenplay drew on the period in his life when he made $400,000 from selling the novelisation rights to F.I.S.T., was wealthy for the first time, and suffered a massive panic attack that he thought was a heart attack.
