Man Trouble
1992 film by Bob Rafelson
Man Trouble is a 1992 American romantic black comedy film starring Jack Nicholson and Ellen Barkin. It was directed by Bob Rafelson and written by Carole Eastman, who together had been responsible for 1970's Five Easy Pieces.
The film is the fifth collaboration between Nicholson and Rafelson. Beverly D'Angelo and Harry Dean Stanton co-star.
Plot
Harry Bliss runs a guard dog service and is going through counseling with his wife Adele. A serial killer is on the loose in Los Angeles, so when the apartment of classical singer Joan Spruance is ransacked and she starts receiving threatening phone messages, Joan moves into the Hollywood Hills home of her sister Andy Ellerman. Joan does not feel safe at Andy's home because she is harassed by Andy's ex-lovers. She hires a guard dog from Harry's company and Harry is soon providing more than protection for the beautiful singer.
Harry is a natural-born liar who, because of his profession, feels that he lives by a code of honor – even if he cannot quite explain it – as one thing after another spins out of his control. Joan is soft and vulnerable as she is badgered by her conductor husband Lewie Duart, harassed by unknown callers, menaced by men from Andy's past and "helped" by Harry.
“Man Trouble” enters the record as 1992 film by Bob Rafelson. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Trouble, film and Rafelson can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Man Trouble” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Trouble, film and Rafelson provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1888524. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Man Trouble” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.