Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman may have been huge stars but they flounder trying to execute this type of comedy and also seem miscast in their roles. Writer Elaine May's script is often painfully old fashioned, like one of the old Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "On the Road..." movies minus the subtle charm and wit. And as far as the supporting cast goes, Carol Kane's talents are wasted, Jack Weston feels like a fossil and Isabelle Adjani (Beatty's girlfriend at the time) has zero comedic talent.
But to drill down a bit more, another reason Ishtar is so achingly unfunny is due to the performances of the film's co-leads. Beatty has done plenty of comedies but if you examine them (Heaven Can Wait, Bulworth, Shampoo) you'll find the scripts of these films require him to mostly just stumble through looking confused and play off the comedy happening around him. Hoffman also has an iffy track record in the comedy genre, his biggest hit being Tootsie where most of the laughs are found in the performances of Bill Murray and Teri Garr.
Ishtar's story plays like a lesser version of Spies Like Us. Hoffman and Beatty are Chuck and Lyle, a pair of aspiring singer/songwriters who get unwittingly mixed up in North African espionage and a CIA coup attempt. The plot is sometimes confusing; the locations and set pieces are uninspired, and our two bumbling protagonists aren't particularly amusing or sympathetic. (Beatty in particular appears stiff and thoroughly inept at comedy.) As a result, this film just trudges into its third act where we finally come to its one funny scene.
Chuck and Lyle, hiding out in the desert, stumble into a gunrunning deal, so Chuck poses as a local. The gunrunners are suspicious and threaten his life unless he's able to speak to a group of berbers and translate for them. So with a gun in his back, Chuck panics and begins spitting out a ridiculous mix of Spanish, Yiddish, nursery rhymes and just plain old gibberish. Aside from a scene featuring a blind camel repeatedly crashing through a marketplace this is pretty much Ishtar's high water mark. "A hatz foy-a!"... "Kareem Abdul! Kareem Abdul!"
In a frighteningly uncanny case of life imitating art, this well-known scene from John Hughes classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off features an economics teacher (real-life economics commentator Ben Stein) monotonously explaining the Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 to his class.
Though it's now more famous for the lines "Bueller?... Bueller?..." and "Anyone?... Anyone?...", the dialogue in this scene does a pretty tidy job of explaining the tariff, which raised taxes on imports to the United States. The goal was to protect American farmers and businesses by making foreign goods more expensive. This would, in theory, encourage Americans to buy domestically made products and help pull the country out of the Great Depression.
Sound familiar?... This is one hundred percent what the Trump administration is attemptingright now (albeit in a much more clumsy, illogical and random way.) After details of Trump's tariff plan were announced this week, the global economy was disrupted, U.S. markets sank and 401(k) and other investors experienced substantial losses, including significant decreases across portfolios, retirement funds, etc.
As Stein explains in painfully boring fashion, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff did not work. Foreign nations didn’t like it because it made their goods more expensive for American consumers and those nations responded by raising their own tariffs on American goods. This created a trade war and the result was international trade decreased, hurting businesses in both the U.S. and abroad. Instead of helping the economy, the tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression by reducing trade and making it harder for businesses to sell products overseas.
All of this is either explained in (or serves as the backstory for) Stein's dialogue in this scene, so as a student of history, I'll pick up the story from here.
The decline in international trade plunged some foreign nations, including Germany, into economic hardship because they could no longer easily sell their products to the U.S. In Germany, this in turn led to massive unemployment, poverty, and widespread discontent with the German government. Many Germans felt betrayed by their government and turned to extremist political movements, including the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler. Hitler promised to restore Germany’s economy, bring back national pride, and provide jobs for the unemployed and by 1932 (just two years after Hawley-Smoot) the Nazis were the largest political party in the country. In January of the following year, with no other leader able to command sufficient support to govern, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany.
Once in power, Hitler began dismantling his country's democratic institutions and weaponizing the government against all who opposed him. The Enabling Act of 1933, for example, gave him the power to make laws without the approval of the German parliament and he subsequently began manipulating the law to suit his agenda while ignoring any judicial orders that were in opposition to his policies... I'll ask again -- any of this sound familiar?
So when you follow the trail, it's not a stretch to say that tariffs had quite a lot to do with the rise of one of the most diabolical dictators in world history -- one who would go on to persecute foreign nationals and political opponents, threaten to (and successfully) seize strategic territories belonging to other nations, and ultimately ignite the greatest global conflict in world history.
April of 1983 saw the release of Flashdance, a film that became a sleeper hit and finished as the third highest grossing movie of the year. Artistically, Flashdance's visual style, combined with its music video-style editing and presentation of key scenes, established a paradigm used throughout the decade in hits like Footloose, Breakin', Beverly Hills Cop, Rocky IV and Dirty Dancing. Yet despite Flashdance's unquestioned appeal, success and influence, it's safe to say that this is a movie that would never in a million years get made today.
To begin with, the star of the film, Jennifer Beals, was a student at Yale and a complete unknown at the time. Co-star Michael Nouri had only a thin resume with mostly soap opera credits. With no big names in supporting roles or cameos, Flashdance,essentially had zero star power -- something that would be a big strike against getting any film project off the ground in modern Hollywood. Additionally, today's film industry execs would likely judge Flashdance's potential at the global box as being quite limited. This is because the film offers a story that appeals mainly to American sensibilities. For example, Flashdance is set in what is one of our nation's most distinctive metropolises -- the blue collar, steel city of Pittsburgh. Plus, if there's one thing blue collar Americans love, it's an underdog story. That beloved "I've probably got no shot and no one believes in me but I'll just work harder than everyone else and show them all" theme. Rocky III, which was a massive hit just a year earlier is a great example. That film, maybe not so coincidentally, was also set in a uniquely American Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia. Flashdance's Alex offers that same Rocky-esque type protagonist who bucks the odds, rises from anonymity and finally realizes their dream.
Also contributing to Flashdance's Americentric feel is its music. Flashdance's dance scenes are some of the most iconic in cinema history. The music featured in those scenes (tracks like "Maniac" and "What a Feeling") epitomized the very contemporary and rapidly growing American synth-pop genre of the early 1980's. The Flashdance soundtrack, incidentally, would spend six weeks at #1 in the U.S. and earn a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. "Maniac" and "What a Feeling" both went to #1 and both were nominated for Record of the Year.
On top of this, the scope and story of Flashdance, though appealing, are both very small. Sure there could have been a sequel exploring what happens after Alex joins the dance company, but the source material is certainly not expansive enough for today's Hollywood execs to view it as something that could birth a franchise or a streaming series -- something that's practically required to get a film greenlit these days. Studios simply do not make small budget movies like Flashdance anymore, instead opting for stories with far larger scope. "Can it be a trilogy?... Or better yet a Netflix series?... Or better yet, a franchise that will let us crank out multiple movies AND provide source material for a streaming series?" These are questions that need to be answered in the affirmative before a major studio shows interest nowadays. Indeed, if you examine the smaller budgeted movie that do manage to get made today, you'll find they are typically pet projects championed by big stars or other power players in the industry. In these cases, such films are usually only backed in order to appease said big star and/or fulfill a multi-picture contract with them.
Despite Flashdance earning $90 million at the box office (a 13x return on investment), today's studios wouldn't be interested in that kind of a take. A $10 million movie that makes $100 million doesn't interest them. They're looking to make a $100 million film, pour another $100 million into marketing, and then gross a billion worldwide. (That's right, I'm looking at you Barbie!) Flashdance was in fact a studio pic, but 40 years later, small budget films that make it to the big screen are almost always independently produced and financed. Sure, an indy that happens to catch fire at a SXSW, Toronto or other prestigious film festival can still gain a studio distrubution deal, but small projects are much more often viewed today as having no pathway to the kind of paydays studios require. Thus, they have little or no chance of gaining production deals.
Despite Flashdance's stellar office performance, Beals chose to return to college and couldn't be persuaded to star in a follow-up. A stage musical based on the film debuted in the UK in 2008 but to this day as a film property Flashdance remains a one-off. Even so, I wouldn't put it past the "geniuses" who run Hollywood today to come up with the brilliant idea to produce a sequel -- one that effectively misses its window by decades. (That's right, I'm looking at you Gladiator II!) A better course, however, would be to forget about sequels or remakes and simply appreciate those more, open-minded days long ago when artists and executives had more vision and a small project like Flashdance could gain the development and backing it needed to be successfully realized on the big screen.
In discussing Andrew McCarthy's new documentary about the Brat Pack with a good friend, he began rather aggressively maligning the movie Saint Elmo’s Fire. Over a span of ten minutes, he ranted about how boring the plot was, how Mare Winningham was miscast, (rather randomly) why McCarthy's character in the film is such a "turd", and just how bad a movie St. Elmo's was to begin with when it was first released thirty-nine years ago.
Okay, I admit it; St. Elmo's Fire is not a great film. It wasn’t back in 1985 and it’s not today. But that’s not really the point. Few claim that Saint Elmo's is a masterpiece of filmmaking. In truth, it's not even above average or, by many measures, even particularly entertaining, But it’s by no means a "bad" film either. On the surface, St. Elmo's is a very average drama with no real highs or lows, featuring competent but not exceptional acting and a thin story that falls well short of captivating.
However, what St. Elmo's Fire offers is a take on some very common themes -- friendship, coming of age, secret crushes, finding your place in this world, etc. Certainly all of these themes had been explored on film previously, so St. Elmo's broke no new ground in that way. But what the film undeniably does is offer perspectives through the unique lens of the 1980's -- ultimately presenting keen new examinations of 80's youth by reflecting their psychology, pressures, problems, and world view.
Because Saint Elmo’s Fire applies a unique, extraordinarily contemporary (at the time) 80's filter, it stands out as one of the most emblematic movies of that decade. Think about it -- when you consider the most representative movies of the 1980's, you don’t think of Oscar winners like Platoon, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus or Rain Man. You think of ones that captured the zeitgeist of the time, whether that means films with Cold War overtones (Rocky IV, Top Gun, No Way Out, Rambo), 80's excess (Less Than Zero, Wall Street), a frivolous, fun-loving vibe (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Footloose, Police Academy),a distinct but somewhat undefinable 80's aesthetic (Flashdance, Lost Boys, Fatal Attraction, Risky Business) or a focus on youth culture (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl, The Breakfast Club -- and its sister movie released the same year, Saint Elmo's Fire.)
Indeed, if you examine the characters and plot of St. Elmo's Fire, you clearly see the social conventions, attitudes, mores and struggles common among 80's youth:
Billy Hixx (Rob Lowe) is a portrait of hedonism and apathy as he's dragged unwillingly into adulthood.
Coke sniffing, party girl Jules (Demi Moore) -- with her hot pink, neon apartment decor featuring a floor to ceiling mural of Billy Idol -- is a study in 80's glam and overindulgence.
Alec Newberry (Judd Nelson) shamelessly pursues promotion in the political world and perfectly captures the Gordon Gekko-esque materialism and aspirations toward upward mobility of 80's yuppies.
Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) is Alec's antithesis -- cynical, introspective and dismissive of conventional thinking.
Kirbo (Emilio Estevez) is fancifully pursuing things he only thinks he wants (a law degree and Dale Biberman.)
And finally, Leslie and Wendy (Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham) both wonder how they became stuck in lives they never chose -- Leslie as a trophy girlfriend caught in boyfriend Alec's wake and fearing she'll never carve out her own identity, and conflicted Wendy yearning to choose her own path and break away from the life her parents want for her.
In its exploration of all of this, St. Elmo's Fire demonstrates the aforementioned unique 80's aesthetic, and in this way, St. Elmo's Fire is a movie that speaks for its generation.
And that’s why it’s important -- not because it’s a great movie, but because it’s a snapshot of 80's young adulthood. So for me and so many other Gen X-ers, St. Elmo's Fire is a film that still speaks to us today... because it spoke for us back then.
I have a tremendous memory when it comes to things pop culture
related (hence the name of this blog.) So even though it was 40 years ago (to the day in fact) I still remember what was
playing at Loews Wayne Sixplex (the flagship theater located near the Willowbrook Mall in the suburbs of Wayne, NJ) on the first Friday in May of 1984. Firestarter
and the Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins version of The Bounty
alternated showings in one of the big houses; Weekend
Pass and My Tutor(the latter on a re-release);
Footloose;Moscow on the Hudson; and opening in the
other big house was a curious new movie with an unknown cast of black and Latino rappers and street dancers called
Breakin’. At the time, breakdancing, b-boys and hip-hop
culture was a part of black, inner city culture exclusively.
Walls, however, were about to come down and Breakin’
would be the battering ram.
The origin of breakdancing
In New York City throughout the 1970’s, DJ Kool Herc, one of the architects of hip-hop, developed deejay techniques that would serve as the paradigm for many of the most important records of the first generation of that musical genre. One of Herc’s techniques involved isolating the most percussive and/or infectious part of the record, also known as the "break". Armed with two turntables and two copies of the record, Herc would let the break beat play on one turntable then “crossfade” to the second turntable where he had the same break beat already cued up. He then repeated this technique over and over, effectively extending these funky drum solos and bass grooves for as long as he wanted. Hearing the prolonged breaks inspired dancers to show off their moves and this ritual was soon dubbed “break dancing.” Herc’s innovation would go on to inspire the early recording technique of “sampling”, which began when artists and producers -- in efforts to simulate Herc’s innovation -- would copy and loop portions of a record to serve as the foundational bed of a new recording.
A pop culture phenomenon
Just about ten years after Herc pretty much invented breakdancing, it and other forms of urban artistic expression finally began entering the American pop culture zeitgeist more broadly. To this point, breakdancing was largely underground and undocumented, gaining perhaps its greatest national attention via the cult film Wild Styleand the Los Angeles based dance group The Lockers, who had showcased their talents on shows like Soul Train and Saturday Night Live. Three of the group’s founding members were Fred Berry who, as “Rerun” on the ABC show What’s Happening, would sometimes show off his “pop-locks” and other street dancing moves; choreographer/singer Toni Basil, later known for her hit single “Mickey”, and future star of Breakin’ Shabba-Doo Quinones. But Wild Style and The Lockers were not widely known. What breakdancing needed was a main stream showcase.
It would take pretty
much the first third of the 1980’s but interest in breakdancing and
other urban artistry would continue growing. Jean Michel-Basquiat was by this
time well known in Manhattan art circles for his raw, graffiti-style
paintings; breakdancing was featured in the hit 1983 hit Flashdance
and in music videos by Chaka Khan, Billy Joel and others. Run-DMC’s
first album, released in March of 1984 would become the first
gold-selling rap album and the group would join forces with Whodini, the Fat Boys and others in what would be rap's first successful live concert tour. The
small cultural circles in which these novel types of creative expression were found would soon widen.
Breakin’s legacy
Breakin’ earned almost $40 million on a budget of just $1.2 million. The film’s profitability caused studios and film producers
to view the breakdancing “fad” (as it was judged in many of their
eyes) as a something worth investing in. A sequel was rushed into
production and, in almost unprecedented fashion, that follow-up would
arrive less than six months later. More significantly, Breakin' helped expose white America to new art
forms – ones that, like jazz and blues, had their origins and for a long time were only appreciated in minority communities. Breakdancing, pop-locking, graffiti art, MC-ing, deejaying and
rap music would finally open bourgeois eyes – along with
movie producers’ wallets.
Breakin’ was followed by several similar
releases including Beat Street, Krush Groove, Body Rock and
Rappin’. Two years after Breakin’, 1986, was another breakthrough year for rap music, as the Beastie Boys debut License
to Ill and Run-DMC’s take on Aerosmith’s "Walk This Way"
officially legitimized rap for white kids. Soon after, Hollywood began “discovering” talented black writers and directors like Spike Lee
and John Singleton and allowing them to tell stories that shined
spotlights on black life and the urban experience. This resulted in
a type of Afro-centric New Wave – a revival in
Hollywood’s interest in films featuring black protagonists and
perspectives not seen since the heyday of “blaxploitation” in the
1970’s. This wave reached a high water mark in the early nineties.
Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, Juice and New Jack
City told harrowing tales of gang life and communities besieged by drugs and
violence. Above the Rim, Hollywood Shuffle, Poetic
Justice and Jason’s Lyric explored themes of love, art, betrayal and emotional abuse through the eyes of filmmakers painting portraits of the minority experience.
All of the
aforementioned films are better scripted, produced and acted than
Breakin’ and all are of higher quality overall. But many
of these movies would not have been so easily green
lit had the appetites of studio execs not been whetted by the box office receipts of Breakin’, which demonstrated once and
for all that the urban experience, creative sensibility and culture had a place in contemporary film.
One of the most enjoyable things about Murphy's series: seeing the three most iconic actresses of the 1980's sharing the screen for the very first time... we have Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore who, forty-plus years after their initial fame, crush their roles and once again show us why they became stars.
We are barely halfway through Ryan Murphy's latest offering, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans but we've already been treated to a once in a decade type performance by Tom Hollander who positively disappears into his (title) character role. Hollander perfectly captures Capote's dual nature -- amusing and endearing but also pompous and infuriating --- and also replicates his speech and mannerisms so precisely it's practically spooky. (To be honest, they should just skip the ceremony and give him the Emmy right now.)
That said, the "Swans" referred to in this series are a group of elite socialites (most of them New York-based) who befriended and patronized Capote after he reached fame with his sensationalistic novel In Cold Blood. After years of trusting some of their most guarded secrets to the author, he reveals them in a Esquire article that included excerpts from a new book titled Answered Prayers. The group then proceeded to ostracize Capote, forever banishing him from the high society circle he relished so much. Capote supposedly coined the term "Swans" to describe these women that were, by all appearances, perfectly composed but in reality were carrying tremendous weight and beneath the surface were always paddling furiously to keep themselves afloat.
Often, elements of this story and the reaction of the Swans to Capote's betrayal are difficult to understand. Why would these women -- wealthy, refined and entrenched in the upper crust of society, care so much about Truman? Why are they so devasted when he exposes them this way? And why do they second guess themselves for even a minute about cutting them out of their lives?
It's because Capote's assessment of them was correct. Beneath their veneers of perfection, these women are struggling mightily. They've lost their identities after marrying bankers, European royalty, and other rich and powerful men and now deep down perhaps they're realizing that most of what they've accomplished was only made possible through their family and social connections. Maybe they're awakening to the thought that although they're the envy of many, their lives are largely empty, short of pruning the perfect garden, earning "best dressed" honors, or planning Truman's famous Black and White Ball. Or maybe the betrayal thrust these women into turmoil due to simple embarrassment. For the Swans, appearances (we quickly learn) are paramount. Confronting Truman and making a scene in a swank restaurant they frequent is deemed just as much a sin as the betrayal itself. Likewise, husbands' infidelities are tolerable but the thought of others knowing is not.
It speaks to why Capote was able to fall in with the Swans in the first place. He ingratiates himself with flattery, preying on their superficiality and appearance consciousness, even going so far as to toy with them (and send them into a competitive tizzy) by suggesting he'll be choosing one of them as guest of honor at his ball. In spite of his not so subtle pandering and social climbing, the Swans adopted Truman, introduced him to power brokers, brought him along on lavish vacations, all while sharing their personal doubts and fears. So yes they are clearly victims but not entirely sympathetic due to their own snobbery and pretentiousness. All of this makes them rich, multi-layered characters that any actress (particularly those of a certain age) would love to play.
Which brings me to one of the most enjoyable things about Murphy's series: seeing the three most iconic actresses of the 1980's sharing the screen for the very first time. In addition to Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, wife of CBS head William Paley; Calista Flockhart, as Lee Radziwill, younger sister of Jackie Kennedy, and Chloe Sevigny as fashion icon and author C.Z. Guest, we have Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore who -- forty-plus years after their initial fame -- crush their roles and once again show us why they became stars.
Diane Lane first grabbed headlines at age fourteen when she starred opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1979 feature A Little Romance. Olivier called her "the next Grace Kelly" and Time magazine put Lane on the cover, proclaiming her one of Hollywood's "whiz kids." This was at a time when print was still a dominant form of media, so for a respected world news magazine like Time to dedicate a cover story to a Hollywood actress (especially one still in her early teens) was practically unprecedented.
Lane next made waves in the cult classic Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains and the more mainstream family pic Six Pack. At the famous casting sessions for Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of The Outsiders, she beat out a who's who of other young ingenues for the role of the beautiful and conflicted Cherry Valance. The performance earned Lane a Young Artist Award nomination. Coppola was so taken with Lane that he cast her in his next film, Rumble Fish (also based on an S.E. Hinton novel.)
In 1984, Lane took on the role of Ellen Aim, a kidnapped rock star in Walter Hill's vastly underrated Streets of Fire and later that year she scored her first "adult" role as singer/gun moll Vera Cicero in Coppola's brilliant The Cotton Club. Lane was just eighteen during shooting (her co-star Richard Gere was thirty-four) but brought a sultriness to her performance that helped establish her as one of Hollywood's leading screen sirens. (She would go on to star in two other films opposite Gere, the acclaimed Unfaithful -- for which she earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination -- and Nights of Rodante, adapted from the Nicholas Sparks novel.)
Diane Lane's other 1980's film roles included stripper/femme fatale Lorry in The Cincinnati Kid-esque The Big Town, and lead in the erotic thriller Lady Beware. She closed out the decade with an Emmy nominated performance in 1989's Lonesome Dove miniseries.
Lane has one of the meatiest roles in Feud, portraying Nancy "Slim" Keith, who wed filmmaker Howard Hawks and Broadway producer Leland Hayward before marrying into British royalty. According to some accounts, Slim helped Capote land high powered agent Swifty Lazar and a million dollar book deal. Lane's Slim is resolute in her disdain and quest for revenge after Capote's backstab and Lane's strong performance portrays her as the icy ringleader of Capote's ostracization. As she did with her character in The Cotton Club, Lane plays Slim as calculating, direct and in charge. When it comes to the Swans, she is "the center of the center" -- as Slim describes herself in episode 3. Lane is also fantastic at replicating the high-born accent and affectations of New York's upper crust.
Though she's three years Lane's junior, Molly Ringwald's career path was eerily similar -- from starting out as a child actress, to having a cover story crowning her the new face of young Hollywood, to having her career propelled forward by a genius director. She first gained attention for her lead role in the west coast production of the stage play Annie. In 1979, at just eleven years old, she played Molly in the The Facts of Life but the show was retooled after its first season and the cast drastically reduced. It was a lucky break for Ringwald; she quickly found success in feature films, beginning with 1982's Tempest, for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination. But it would be 1984's Sixteen Candles that would rocket the young actress to fame. Writer-director John Hughes cast Ringwald as the film's protagonist Samantha Baker, a high school sophomore whose sixteenth birthday is forgotten in the chaos surrounding her older sister's wedding. Ringwald was praised for her tender and authentic portrayal and the film helped propel the teen movie genre into its High Renaissance.
Like Coppola did with Diane Lane, Hughes was inspired by Ringwald and cast her in his next project -- the film that would come to define Gen X, The Breakfast Club. Ringwald would become something of a muse for Hughes and she next took on the lead role in the director's follow up, Pretty in Pink. A few weeks after the film's release, Ringwald was on the cover of Life magazine in a special issue that christened her as "Hollywood's Teen Queen". Two months later, her own Time magazine cover story cemented this status.
At this point, Molly was eighteen and ready to take on more mature roles. She turned down Hughes' Some Kind of Wonderful and starred as Cordelia in Jean Luc Godard's avant garde exploration of King Lear; played opposite Robert Downey Jr. in the Warren Beatty-produced The Pick-Up Artist; and finished her 80's run with the comedy For Keeps and the drama Fresh Horses, adapted from the stage play.
In Feud, Ringwald plays Joanna Carson, ex-wife of Johnny, who (like the New York Swans) is taken with Capote's charm, wit and intellect. Carson adopts the discarded Capote and brings him into her circle of elite (this time Hollywood) friends. Ringwald's signature red tresses are colored brunette for this role and at fifty-five years old she naturally no longer possesses her waif-like figure, so it's easy to forget who you're watching. As Carson, Ringwald brings the same effusiveness she did with her Pretty in Pink character Andie and her compassion for Truman is on display in several pathos-rich scenes that portray the man at his lowest.
Demi Moore's road to 1980's stardom was far different than Lane's and Moore's. She wasn't an accomplished child actor and in 1983 -- at the exact same time Lane was shooting scenes with the Academy Award-winning Coppola and Ringwald was about to become the face of the American teenager -- Moore was earning her bones as a recurring character on General Hospital. But in 1984, she starred opposite Michael Caine in the charming but overlooked romantic comedy Blame it On Rio. Though newcomer Michelle Johnson was the breakout star, it was Moore's first major film and she soon began a slow climb to success that would culminate with a run of critical and commercial successes through the 1990's. Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecemt Proposal, Disclosure and Striptease (the film that made Moore the highest paid actress in Hollywood) were all in her future, along with her own iconic magazine cover, but her rise to fame largely began with the sweet and quirky 1984 teen comedy No Small Affair. The role of Jules in the seminal Gen X coming-of-age drama St. Elmo's Fire followed, as did a relationship with co-star Emilio Estevez and membership in the famous "Brat Pack". Moore then played John Cusack's love interest in One Crazy Summer and re-teamed with her St. Elmo's co-star Rob Lowe in the beloved About Last Night, both released in the summer of 1986.
Her next film, The Seventh Sign (despite being highly anticipated) was a box office flop. Moore then closed her 80's career with the role of Molly -- a prostitute who befriends two escape convicts (Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn) masquerading as priests -- in the much-hyped Christmastime release We're No Angels.
Interestingly, though her box office hit rate was spotty, Moore's career never stalled during the eighties. She married Bruce Willis, who at the time was starring in the ABC hit Moonlighting but with the release of 1988's Die Hard would soon become a full on movie star. He and Moore became Hollywood's "it" couple which helped Demi move solidly onto Hollywood's A-list -- where she basically remained until the 2000's.
In Feud, Moore plays Ann Woodward, a former radio star and showgirl who was married to wealthy banker William Woodward Jr. In what would become one of the biggest stories of its day, Ann killed William after mistaking him for a burglar. Speculation that it was murder ignited after Capote's book preview, which included a character based on Ann who was painted as a gold digger and murderess. In real life, Capote seemed to have personal disdain for Ann and publicly accused her of killing her husband.
Moore gives us a picture of Ann battling depression and straining to maintain her dignity amid the public stares. She displays venomous anger in certain scenes and intense vulnerability in others. At the ball, we see Moore at her best, portraying calm and elegance -- but when Truman calls security to have her ejected we see her shaken, pleading, humiliated. It's a scene where Moore demonstrates swan-like comportment as she calls Truman out for his misdeeds and it's reminiscent of another emotional scene in which Moore displayed similar range -- the break up scene in About Last Night.
For Lane, Ringwald and Moore, streaming shows and other high end television like Murphy's Feud offer strong, female lead roles that come few and far between in feature films. Past the age where they can star in rom-coms, take on "lethal lady" action roles (e..g., Black Widow, Atomic Blonde) or other parts written for younger actresses, fifty-something actresses are these days too often relegated to lesser fare -- guest shots on network shows or if they're lucky perhaps a starring role in their own series (think Tea Leoni in Madame Secretary or Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep.) Thankfully, Capote and the Swans shines a spotlight on three of the most talented and beloved mature actresses who by chance came up at almost the exact same time. You literally could not have chosen three women more representative of young Hollywood during the 1980's than these three. In fact, you almost wish Murphy would have made it an all-80's party and given the Watts, Sevigny and Flockhart roles to Elisabeth Shue, Lea Thompson and Winona Ryder instead.
The Cannonball Run is a zany comedy about a group of auto racers competing in a cross country trek from Connecticut to Los Angeles. In addition to Burt Reynolds (who stars as J.J. McClure), Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett and Dom DeLuise, it features an all-star cast of wacky characters played by the likes of Adrienne Barbeau, Bert Convy, Jamie Farr, Jackie Chan, Mel Tillis, Terry Bradshaw and others. The film is directed by former stuntman Hal Needham, who was known for testosterone-fueled action-comedies like Smokey and the Bandit and was by no means a master of film photography. Nevertheless, as unlikely as it seems and in spite of the genre and subject matter, in Cannonball Run, Needham and cinematographer Michael C. Butler teamed to shoot a handful of gorgeously lit rom/com-like scenes that made the already stunning Farrah Fawcett look positively ethereal.
One of the methods employed was halo lighting, which uses bright, focused backlighting. This technique makes the subject stand out from the background and creates a glowing, halo effect around it. In Cannonball Run, early scenes introducing Farrah's character Pamela Glover use halo lighting to help establish her as the exquisite, almost otherworldly object of J.J.'s desire. Notice how the backlighting helps carve Pamela from the background and draws you in -- much like J.J. is drawn in when he first spots her in a crowded bar.
Later in the film, J.J. and Pamela share a quiet moment in the back of an ambulance and the two become closer. Needham and Butler employ the same sort of halo lighting to create a romantic glow around Farrah. The technique is especially effective with Farrah because it further accentuates one of her best features -- that golden mane of hair for which she's well known.
The soft, warm light creates a form of halation and gives her character an almost angelic quality. A similar result can be seen in the below shot from 1984's The Natural, where halo lighting is used to both set Glenn Close's character apart in the crowded stands of a baseball stadium and also symbolize the sense of goodness and purity her character possesses.
The Pop Culture Fiend Archives includes an extensive collection of popular (and obscure) periodicals dating back as far as the early 1980's. My closets house crates and bins with literally hundreds of magazines (from a wide variety of genres) including Time, Newsweek, People, Us, Ebony, Sports Illustrated, Flex, Ironman, Muscle and Fitness, Runners World, Tennis, Men's Health, GQ, Vanity Fare, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Photo and Rolling Stone. The collection also includes defunct titles like Maxim, Stuff, Spin, Spy, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, Life, U.S. News & World Report, Sport, Parade, Premiere, Movieline and Playboy; along with several short-lived and/or long forgotten ones like Details, Detour, Model, Mouth to Mouth, Code, Bikini, Razor, Inside Sports, and Mirabella.
Now in addition to these full issues that take up far too much of my closet space, there were also scores of other issues that I chose to get rid of... but not before I clipped and saved a ton of their best and coolest articles and photos. These photos now occupy yet another plastic storage container in my humble dwelling and now, after many, MANY years, I've finally gotten around to scanning/digitizing them so they can be preserved and shared. You can scroll to see some of my first batch and I'll also be posting a lot of these to relevant communities on Reddit, including subs like r/OldSchoolCelebs, r/80s, r/90s, r/ClassicScreenBeauties and r/GenX.
Finally, know that many of these photos are extremely rare. I Google image searched a bunch of them and in many instances didn't find them anywhere else on the internet. So I guess props to me for being the conscientious custodian and curator of this content. After all, there aren't many of us who possess such a volume of 30-40 year old magazines and photos, or who would take the time to scan, digitally enhance, upload and publish them online.
I guess that's just what makes me the Pop Culture Fiend.
Richard Gere in costume for The Cotton Club - 1984
Belinda Carlisle - 1988
Farrah Fawcett - 1990's
Bruce Willis
Cybill Shepherd
Salma Hayek
Patti Smyth (former lead singer of Scandal) - 1988
80's stars Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Melissa Gilbert & Rob Lowe at an anti-nuke event
With due respect to the John Hughes'
classic The Breakfast Club, the most important teen movie of
the 1980's may very well be Risky Business. Released 40 years
ago, Paul Brickman's Risky Business legitimized
teen comedy like no film before it and set the stage for the “High
Renaissance” of that subgenre that took place in the middle of the
decade.
The early 1980's was an era filled with
“high school boys looking to get laid” comedies (e.g., Porky's,
Losin' it, My Tutor) that were thin on story and heavy on goofy,
sometimes inane, humor. But then Risky Business comes along,
featuring that same teenage boy out for sex... except now we get to
see WHY he's experiencing that sexual frustration (as well as a ton of other anxiety.) We witness the pressure he feels (some applied by his
parents, some self-imposed) to raise his SAT score, join school clubs
he has little interest in, and get accepted into the college not he,
but his parents want. Tom
Cruise's Joel Goodson was the first Gen X hero – bored,
disillusioned, forced down paths he's not sure he wants to tread and
enduring a suburban hell complete with a pristine home/prison,
successful parents he can never please or measure up to, and a voice
in his head warning he'll “never have a future.” As Joel courageously tries to live up to his surname, his
attempts to relieve his growing angst by defiantly maxing the volume
on the family stereo and joyriding in his dad's Porsche prove insufficient. Though the apprehension he feels about where he's headed
in life is apparent, relief seems unattainable. That is until he's pointed to call girl named Lana with
the promise, “It's what you want... it's what every white boy off
the lake wants.” It's this exploration of the unknown – the dark,
not so pristine world of sex, prostitutes, and life or death run-ins
with “killer pimps” – that drives the story of this restless,
uneasy Gen-X teenager.
It wouldn't be until the middle of the
decade – with Hughes' Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind
of Wonderful trilogy – that teen comedies would so earnestly
acknowledge and portray the contemporary fears and anxieties of those of us
who came of age in the 80's. Joel's experience in Risky Business
underscored a generation's gnawing need to subvert societal
conventions and oblivious parents who failed to recognize how much
emotional turmoil we were in as we struggled to figure out who we
were and what should come next. In the process, we also had to
navigate our way through expectations of continuing the American familial tradition that existed since the Great Depression, whereby
each succeeding generation acquired more wealth and success than
their parents. In these ways, Risky Business actually defined
Gen X, crystallized its world view and authored its motto with the
ironic and oft quoted line, “Sometimes
you gotta say, 'what the fuck.'”
Risky Business would proceed to
enter the zeitgeist in several ways. The scene where Joel slides
across the hardwood floor in his socks became instantly iconic and
has been parodied in everything from The Simpsons to video
game commercials. Cruise's wardrobe in the film -- Docksiders,
button down dress shirts, Izod polos – became the standard for
preppies everywhere and after he sported 60's style Ray Bans in
multiple scenes, the brand saw a resurgence that continues to this
day. Risky Business proved particularly popular among college
students, so much so that within six months, it was screening on
university campuses and the film's one-sheet was pretty much the
coolest thing you could have hanging in your dorm room. By the
following fall, the film was a mainstay on HBO and its many memorable
lines -- including “Get off the babysitter!”, “Porsche, there
is no substitute.” and “Looks like University of Illinois!” --
were being quoted ad nauseum.
Risky Business further
set itself apart with its artful
cinematography (Lana’s first appearance; the train sequence) and an ethereal original score by Tangerine Dream
that proved a huge departure from the typical teen movie soundtrack
full of contemporary pop and new wave hits.
The end result saw audiences
immediately embracing the film and its stars. Risky Business
grossed $63 million on a $6 million budget and, boosted by positive word of mouth and a
strong second run, would finish as the eighth highest grossing film of the year and the #2 comedy behind only Trading Places. An unknown Rebecca De Mornay (who won the role of Lana after Michelle Pfeiffer passed) was catapulted to
Hollywood's A-list and, though she worked sparingly, graduated to
starring roles in The Trip to Bountiful, The Slugger's Wife,
and the And God Created Woman remake. Over her career, she's delivered a string of stellar but overlooked performances in films
like Runaway Train, The Three Musketeers and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Oh, and that Cruise guy did okay too
– starring in films that grossed a combined $10 billion at the
box office, earning multiple Oscar nominations and becoming what many
consider to be “the last Hollywood movie star.”
Now, forty years later we can look back
at Risky Business and it's cleverly written script as the teen
comedy that broke the mold and forged an alternative paradigm for the
sub-genre. With its more serious take on the teen experience – in
this case, through its The Graduate-like themes of eschewing
the supposed American dream of an Ivy League education, landing a
high paying job, and moving to the suburbs – Risky Business
paved the way for John Hughes' films, Say Anything,Adventureland, and virtually every other smart, thoughtful
teen comedy that followed.
Basic Instinct, which hit theaters in March of 1992, was one of the most noteworthy and influential film releases of the decade. For starters the screenplay, written by Joe Eszterhas, touched off a Hollywood bidding war before finally being sold for an eye-popping $3 million. The early 90's was a unique time in the filmmaking industry when writers like Shane Black (The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight), Tom Schulman (Medicine Man), and Eszterhas (Jade) were inexplicably paid exorbitant amounts of money by studios for scripts that were far more run-of-the-mill than they were novel, unique or high concept. Nevertheless, the Basic Instinct sale broke records and the film's success sparked yet another career resurgence for star Michael Douglas. Topping that, co-lead Sharon Stone owes her entire career to Basic Instinct. The actress had been languishing around Hollywood for close to a decade, unable to make a mark beyond starring in feeble offerings like King Solomon's Mines, Police Academy 4 and Blood and Sand. But Stone found a champion in Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven, who had previously worked with her in the 1990 big budget sci-fi effort Total Recall. As femme fatale Lori, wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, Stone crushed in what was her first meaty Hollywood role. Additionally, Total Recall and Basic Instinct had the same production company (Carolco) and distributor (Tri-Star Pictures) so those relationships and Stone's previous work with Verhoeven almost certainly helped her land the part of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct. Afterwards, Stone's career took off. Her next two roles were another erotic thriller, Sliver (for which she received top billing and a hefty paycheck) and the Sly Stallone vehicle The Specialist, where she appears in steamy (no pun intended) shower and love scenes. By mid-decade Stone was wearing the crown as the sexiest actress in Hollywood and had earned a Golden Globe Award and Oscar nomination for Casino -- all resulting from the springboard Basic Instinct provided.
But of course what Basic Instinct is best known for is its highly sexualized plot and subject matter. Catherine Tramell, we discover, is bisexual and though the film took criticism at the time from the gay community for portraying her as a heartless killer, Basic Instinct deserves praise for having the guts to include a powerful and unashamedly LGB antagonist.
Beyond Tramell's sexual preferences, Basic Instinct's focus on sexuality, violence and general sordidness went to levels reminiscent of film noir -- a particular style of American filmmaking (generally considered to have originated in the 1940's) that features a cinematic focus on cynicism, crime, moral corruption and other "dark", unseemly sides of society. Basic Instinct's story is rife with drug use, stalking, deceit, manipulation, murder and psychological torture, And of course no punches are pulled when it comes to sexual content. In addition to sex scenes as graphic as anything found to that point in an A-list Hollywood feature, there's bondage, sexual assault, and of course Stone's infamous leg-crossing, vagina-revealing interrogation scene.
Moviegoers loved every bit of it and Basic Instinct became a rare spring hit and the fourth highest grossing film of the year. Producers, writers and studio execs noted the film's success and (in the typical fashion of what we know is a copycat industry) began cranking out Basic Instinct clones. In no time at all, Hollywood had fully embraced this new iteration of the movie sub-genre known as "erotic thrillers." Body of Evidence, Consenting Adults, Whispers in the Dark, Sliver and Malice were all released within the year and a half following Basic Instinct but these films certainly can't be considered the first in the genre. Tattoo, Dressed to Kill, Body Heat, Sea of Love, Body Double and Jagged Edge (also written by Eszterhas) from the 1980's, as well as Love Crimes, Under Suspicion and Final Analysis (all released just prior to Basic Instinct) all certainly qualify as erotic thrillers. But what Basic Instinct achieved was to take the core elements of the genre -- danger, suspense, morally ambiguous or outright sociopathic characters, storylines full of plot twists, shadowy cinematography -- and inject it with ultra-heightened levels of sensuality and sexual content. In this way, Basic Instinct raised the bar for the erotic thriller and filmmakers working in the genre began engaging in battles of "can you top this?" as they scripted and shot their films. S&M, group sex, voyeurism and other areas of sexual exploration where Hollywood films had previously only treaded lightly, were now on full display in major productions. From Body of Evidence's infamous Madonna/Willem Dafoe candle wax scene, to Bound, with its focus on the lesbian relationship between the two protagonists, the envelope of explicit sexual content found in erotic thrillers was being pushed further and further.
But of course there's only so far theatrical releases can go in terms of graphic nudity, sex scenes and the like, and only so much A-list talent will agree to. Studios and distributors still had MPAA ratings to consider (Basic Instinct, in fact, had barely dodged the dreaded NC-17.) These factors and the ever-increasing prurient appeal of erotic thrillers led to an explosion of titles made by smaller production companies and then released by independent distributors (or subdivisions of major ones) directly into the home video markets. VHS rentals, cable channels in need of content and (later) the brand new DVD format (first introduced in 1996) gave film distributors viable alternatives for any erotic thrillers that pushed the envelope too far or otherwise weren't suitable for theaters. What's more, erotic thrillers quickly proved to be among the most-watched and most-rented titles. For example, Color of Night (with Bruce Willis and Jane March) flopped upon its release in 1995 but was one of the most rented movies of the year thanks to word of mouth about its explicit sex scenes. Soon a new paradigm was established: script and produce an erotic thriller on the cheap using B- and C-list talent; make it as sexually explicit as you can; combine a titillating adjective (“Indecent”, “Animal”, “Carnal”) with a provocative noun (“Sins”, “Desire”, “Instinct”) for the film's title, then skip theaters entirely and find distribution on late night cable and/or go straight to DVD.
Indeed, this strategy worked so well that for the entirety of the 1990's, home video and cable were glutted with racy films like Sins of Desire, Animal Instincts, Scorned, Night Eyes, Illicit Dreams and Indecent Behavior. These and dozens of other low budget erotic thrillers heavy on sexual intrigue and nudity would soon become go-to after-10PM programming on Showtime, Cinemax (or “Skin-e-max”, as it came to be known) and other cable channels. Truth be told, features like these kept a lot of folks in the movie industry employed for close to a decade and what's more, many of the actresses who starred in these films gained measures of fame for their sexy portrayals and softcore sex scenes. Even today, close to thirty years later, Shannon Tweed, Tane McClure, Maria Ford, Joan Severance and others are recognized and celebrated for their contributions to the erotic thriller sub-genre.
Early 2000's releases like Original Sin, In the Cut and the well-reviewed Mulholland Drive and Unfaithful were some of Hollywood's final entries as the golden age of the erotic thriller wound down. Nevertheless, today you can still find scores of erotic thrillers on the various streaming platforms. Most still adhere to the rules of old paradigm (low budget, B-list talent, no theatrical release, etc.) and only occasionally do you see movies' biggest names revisiting the genre. Still, it's important to remember that in the 1990's many of the decade's most successful actors, actresses and directors (Demi Moore, Kim Basinger, Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow, Wolfgang Peterson, Phillip Noyce, Barry Levinson and many more) all took swings at the plate with erotic thrillers – and all were looking to duplicate the grand slam home run that was Basic Instinct.
Wealthy businessman Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield) -- in an effort to inspire and keep his son from dropping out -- enrolls and joins him at college. Father, son (and the son's best friend) have adjacent dorm rooms, until Thornton has the walls knocked out to create a luxury suite and then throws a post mid-terms bash to blow off some steam.
The highlights:
Seminal 80's band Oingo Boingo plays the gig and rocks out on "Dead Man's Party."
Police sent to break things up bring cases of beer instead.
Thornton frolics in the hot tub with four bikini-clad coeds.
Bachelor Party
The setup:
The title says it all. Tom Hanks is groom-to-be Rick, and his brother and five degenerate best friends throw him a bachelor party "with chicks, and guns, and fire trucks, and hookers, and drugs, and booze..."
Barbells crash through the floor and destroy the wine cellar
The aftermath: Pizzas on the turntable, suds coming out of the air vents, and Ted the geek (Anthony Michael Hall) leaves with Carolyn in a Rolls Royce.
Weird Science
The setup:
Teenagers Gary and Wyatt (Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith) go mad scientist and create their dream woman -- who goes on to throw a "nasty little soiree" at Wyatt's house.
Supernatural whirlwinds that strip girls of their clothes and send the piano crashing into a gazebo in the backyard.
Killer mutants crash their motorcycles through the front windows.
Aforementioned mutants dispatched by Gary and his .44 handgun
Risky Business
The setup:
"Future enterpriser" Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) just wants to graduate and go on to major in business at Princeton. But when he gets mixed up with sexy call girl Lana (Rebecca DeMornay), Joel's house party becomes a high-priced brothel and his high school friends the customers.
The highlights:
Party tunes that include Talking Heads' "Swamp" and Prince's "D.M.S.R."
Amidst the debauchery, Princeton admissions officer Bill Rutherford arrives to interview Joel.
Joel and Lana duck out to make love on a real train.
Rutherford makes a couple of new friends.
Revenge of the Nerds
The setup:
College dorks trying to form a fraternity throw a dud of a party -- until "wonder joints" and the girls of Omega Mu kick things into high gear.
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