As you will remember Cocktail contains a 'tacked-on' montage of job interview bits - where Brian (Cruise) had already started filming Rain Man - a movie about a bloke who's scared of flying, is shit-hot at cards, and farts in phone boxes. Anyway - bad jazz, bad continuity (Tom's hair goes semi-mullet to quasi-quiff intermittently throughout), bad art and badness in general aside - it goes some way to expressing the Catch 22 of needing experience to get a job, yet needing a job to get experience. 
Brian Flanagan is pictured here actually trying to dance in a swaying way in order to attract a prospective employer. It looks kind of like Bri Chi, doesn't it? Rocky II also contains a scene that portrays the horrors of the job market.Rocky's main problem in finding a job 'sitting down', as he calls it, is that he is as thick as pig shit. He can't even read a book or misreads 'smell manly' as 'smeel mainly' during a screen test for an advert. Here he is reading a French erotic novella to his wife Adrian -
who, despite being bright enough to read, wear spectacles, and everything, can only get a job in a pet shop herself. Rocky does have a nice vest on though, and the bed scenes are improved upon in subsequent Rocky movies - with the singing of 'Take You Back Do-Do-Do-Do-Do' in III and the giving of the snake watch and boxing cake in IV. These scenes were Sly's way of never having to show Rocky "on the job" with his missus.
Rocky's tactics for his job search, although naive, show a startling similarity to those of Brian Flanagan. As you can see in this picture, he shows up at an office in a dashing sky blue suit and again seems to begin to dance for the interviewer. It seems to one of those arm-swinging manoeuvres, with his flared trousers flapping to his supernatural sense of rhythm. Could this be when Sly had the idea for the ill fated yet genius sequel to Saturday Night Fever - Stayin' Alive?Here we see the moment where
Rocky fails where Brian, er, fails; the moment Rocky virtually says, 'fucked if I know,' and his chances are ruined, despite that dashing sky blue suit. But who can blame him? You know how it is when they start asking stupid fucking questions - like 'Why did you apply for this post?' - 'What do you think you have to offer this company?' - 'Where do you see yourself in five years time?' - 'Have you got a criminal record?' - 'Why don't you fight? I hear you're a very good fighter.'This would be, in real life, when Rocky, like many a good man before him, would sign on the dole and started selling hash.
