“The Experts” (1989)
Summary from IMDb:
When Travis and Wendell are kidnapped while on their way to opening a nightclub in rural Nebraska. The KGB spy Cameron Smith takes them to the U.S.S.R. instead with the intention of teaching KGB agents to be hip like Americans.
Near the eastern edge of the USSR is a village populated by Russians who speak and act American, where KGB trainees go to practice. The town is mired in the 50’s, and the new KGB hotshot fears his agents will fail to learn real US culture. He goes to New York and hires two young hipsters to come to “Nebraska” to open a nightclub. He drugs them en route to Russia, and they think they’ve awaken in the Midwest. There they turn a tiki lounge into a hip club, teach townies to dance, and introduce pop culture. Both flip for local chicks. Things get dangerous when the townsfolk taste freedom, a KGB faction tries to kill our heroes, but will the guys figure out they’re not in Nebraska?
That’s right, two American sho-lo hipsters are drugged and planted in a Russian town of Russian spies impersonating Americans. I remember this false-world inside a false-world with creepy fondness. This movie was “The Truman Show” and “Synecdoche, NY” before those stages were built. It’s where John Travolta met Kelly Preston and they fell in love (be still our hearts). Yet I can’t find the damn trailer on YouTube. How often does that happen?
Smells a bit like KGB-style information suppression. Now more than ever.
