Inside Out 1986

Jimmy Morgan is a financially successful entrepreneur whose life in a luxurious New York City apartment begins to crumble from the inside out. As his estranged wife plans to take their daughter and move to Chicago, Morgan watches his carefully built world slip away: his stock portfolio collapses in a tumbling market, a trusted business partner, Leo Gross, is siphoning funds, and Morgan himself finds solace in increasingly reckless gambling on professional football. The situation tightens its grip as debt piles up and options shrink, leaving him to cope with the mounting losses that threaten not just his finances but his sense of self.

Morgan’s life grows more insular as he retreats further from the outside world. He hires people and buys things not to improve his circumstances, but to dull the ache of his downward spiral—food, escorts, and drugs delivered by phone, and later accessed through his computer and modem. His television becomes an almost constant companion, a relentless soundtrack to a life he can no longer comfortably inhabit. His answering machine becomes the other half of his world, a steady channel through which he screens visitors and voices, carefully managing the people who attempt to reach him.

The apartment becomes a fortress and a prison. Morgan is revealed as an agoraphobe, unable to summon the courage to step outside even when stepping out might save him financially or personally. He observes the world through screens: his TV, security cameras that peer out beyond his door, and the windows that frame a city he no longer dares to enter. The perpetual hum of machines—television, cameras, and the answering machine—permeates every moment, turning his home into a control room where contact with real life feels increasingly risky.

When a transient figure, a homeless man, makes a temporary home in the building’s entry, Morgan forms a quiet, almost paternal, connection with him. He sometimes orders meals for the man, offering small acts of kindness amid growing despair. Yet the transient presence is as fragile as everything else in Morgan’s world, and the man disappears as quietly as he appeared. The financial strain intensifies: Morgan’s savings dwindle, and his gambles no longer just chase losses but threaten complete ruin. With his possessions foreclosed and the apartment emptied, he is left staring at an empty room—and his answering machine, the one link to the outside world he has kept intact.

In this bleak moment, a spark of resolve returns. The fragility of his situation forces Morgan to find the courage to step out again, to reach beyond the confines of his apartment, and to try to repair what he has broken. He signals a renewed attempt to reconnect with his wife Amy and, if possible, their daughter, aiming to start anew before they depart for Chicago. The ending leaves him standing at the threshold between isolation and possibility, a man who has confronted his fears and finally chosen to rejoin the world he once thought he could control alone.