Thunder Road, An Emotional Police Officer Performs an Awkward Dance Routine at His Mother’s Funeral

In Thunder Road, writer, actor and producer Jim Cummings brilliantly portrays Officer Arnaud, a grieving son mourning the loss of his mother from the back row of the chapel until he is called up to perform his mother’s favorite song “Thunder Road“. Prior to doing so, however, the tearful officer eulogizes his mother and suddenly apologizes to her over and again, as if he’d just remembered a terrible wrong he’d done to her. Commencing with the performance, Officer Arnaud then performed a really awkward and inappropriate dance routine, much to the embarrassment to all in the room, including his young daughter. Being that his siblings didn’t come to the funeral and his daughter won’t talk to him, Officer Arnault is left to sit sadly alone with his grief. Cummings spoke with Short of the Week to explain how he came up with the character.

My buddy PJ McCabe told me about a friend of his who had eulogized his mother with a song and I thought, jesus, what did that look like? Did somebody film it? And then I was drunk and heard Thunder Road on the radio and thought that that would be the song that I would eulogize my mom with and then I thought about how horribly funny it would be if I fucked everything up. And then I created a character who couldn’t afford to fuck it all up, this cop with a daughter in front of his co-workers and that had me laughing and crying. So I said yeah let’s do it.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips