Why St. Elmo's Fire Still Matters

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.

Related Posts:

The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie - How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema

The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie - How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema - Part II

Matthew Perry was Beloved by All -- but his Untimely Death Hits Gen X-ers the Hardest

Matthew Perry's recent, sudden death sparked an outpouring of grief and fond remembrances within the Hollywood community. It also brought a great deal of sadness to fans of the actor and just about anyone who's ever watched and loved him on television. Perry's talent extended far beyond a single TV show (I first noticed him in a guest shot he did on Just the Ten of Us in 1989 and also thoroughly enjoyed him opposite Salma Hayek in 1997's Fools Rush In.) Still, the actor will always be most remembered most as hilarious smart-aleck Chandler Bing on Friends. And therein lies the reason why Perry's death is especially painful for those of us in Generation X. It's because Friends is undeniably a Gen X show. 

In Friends first season (1994) we learn that Monica (and her high school classmate Rachel) are twenty-six years old. The rest of the gang is also right around this same age, with Ross (and possibly Phoebe) only slightly older. So when you do the math, Monica was born in 1968, placing her and the rest of the Friends squarely in Generation X. Numerous storylines and references throughout the series back this up. From Ross's fixation on Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi, to Chandler's Flock of Seagulls haircut and admission of rushing the stage at a Wham concert, clearly these characters grew up in the 80's and thus are unquestionably part of Generation X. That clarified, it's no wonder that Perry's death hits us the hardest. We've lost one of our own. 

My high school class recently had a well-attended reunion and though I wasn't able to make it, I took time to pour over the gallery of photos that were posted online in the days after. While clicking through, I smiled and laughed seeing faces from my past for the first time in literally decades. The funny thing was I wasn't even friends with most of these people. I made all of my lifelong friendships during college and to this day remain in touch with only a single high school pal. Nevertheless it warmed my heart to see people I spent four of my most formative years with and know, despite the abundance of receding hairlines and expanding waistlines, they were alive and doing well. Somehow, we all tend to have very strong sentiments towards our peers and those with whom we've shared a common, significant experience. But the flipside of that feel-good sentiment is the gut-punch and sense of loss we suffer when we learn that one of our comrades is now gone.

That's what many of us are feeling with Matthew Perry's death. Friends was the ongoing story of six Gen X-ers trying to make it in the world as they laughed with, leaned on and loved each other. As we did with the abundance of teen movies in the 1980's (e.g., The Breakfast Club, Fast Times, Risky Business) Gen X-ers saw authentic versions of themselves and their lives in the Friends characters -- whether it was Ross (smart and sensitive and carrying unrequited love) or Phoebe (so unapologetically authentic in her flakiness) or Chandler, with his rapier wit and brandishing sarcasm hiding underlying insecurities.

Many will say that Friends is a show that belongs to far more that just a single generation and that it appeals to Millennials and Zoomers as much as any other age group. This is certainly true. Enough time has gone by now that we can safely say that Friends, and many of it's themes, storylines and characters are classic. Nevertheless, the show provided a different experience for us Gen X-ers who tuned in during its original run. We were watching ourselves -- young adults in their mid-20's, living post-college life in the 90's, going through the same things we were at that same moment in time. For example, when Friends debuted, many Gen-X women (my girlfriend included) had just moved out of their parents' house, started their first real job and were realizing independence for the very first time -- just like Rachel in the pilot episode. Like Joey, many of us were pursuing a career in acting or the arts and working odd jobs to pay rent while we pursued our dream. And while young people watching the show for the first time even today can definitely relate to universal themes like this, at the time it originally aired Friends meant the most to Gen-Xers who got to come home, click on the TV and see Ross, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey and Chandler living their same lives -- or perhaps the lives we wished we had. These were our peers... our contemporaries... our cohorts. And losing one of those is often the hardest blow to take... 

R.I.P. Matthew. 

40 Years Ago, Risky Business Legitimized Teen Comedy

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.

Related Posts:
The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie - How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema
The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie - How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema - Part II
Welcome to Pop Culture Fiend

Remembering John Hughes

The recent death of director John Hughes got me thinking about his significance and his tremendous contribution to the last two decades of 20th century American cinema.

Hughes' most significant film was certainly The Breakfast Club, which, like Rebel Without a Cause thirty years earlier, gave a voice to the contemporary American teenager and offered both a humorous and sobering exploration of their angst, issues, and culture. The Breakfast Club expertly walked the line between comedy and drama -- something very few films are able to do effectively.

The Breakfast Club also served as a launching pad for young stars Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, and Emilio Estevez, and though only mildly successful at the box office when it was released in February of 1985, the film nevertheless marked the start of Hughes' (and the rest of Hollywood's) heightened interest in producing teen movies -- ultimately resulting in a sort of "High Renaissance" of the genre. The Breakfast Club became even more iconic a year after its release when it gained wild popularity among teens after it began appearing on cable television. As a result, The Breakfast Club has forever secured a place in pop culture history as THE defining movie for Gen X-ers. (For more on these topics, be sure to read my three part series, The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie: How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema.)

Hughes of course also wrote and/or produced and directed several other terrific 80's teen coms (and dramedies) including Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science. The prolific director also gave us Uncle Buck; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; and the underrated She's Having a Baby. In the nineties, Hughes was the writer of the little-known gem Career Opportunities, Disney's 101 Dalmations remake, and the hugely successful Home Alone.

And of course prior to The Breakfast Club, Hughes' big break came as the writer of National Lampoon's Vacation, which earlier this year, celebrated its 26th anniversary. (Maxim magazine published an interesting article, an oral history of this film, in one of its recent issues.)

Hughes' deserves a large degree of respect and remembrance for The Breakfast Club by itself. Throw in all the films listed above, plus the Vacation and Home Alone sequels, and the fact that Hughes helped assemble movie soundtracks that included some of the most hip, eclectic and evocative music of the 80's (e.g., Yello's "Oh Yeah", Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me") and it's no wonder that this filmmaker was, and will remain, one of our most beloved.

Watch the John Hughes tribute from the 2010 Oscars.

Related Posts:
The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie: How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema

The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie: How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema - Part II 

The Evolution of the 80's Teen Movie - How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema - Part II

Below is Part 2 of a three-part article. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

In the 1970s, cable television was largely relegated to rural or mountainous areas where home reception of broadcast television signals was difficult if not impossible. However, the 1980’s saw an explosion of American households in urban areas gaining access to cable television. During the decade, the number of cable TV households in the U.S. more than tripled, from 17% in 1978 to 57% by 1989. The growth of cable television was greatly fueled by the development of premium movie channels (like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and The Movie Channel) and the continuous slate of popular films they offered. Prior to cable television, once a film completed its theatrical run, it was usually years before it made its way to network television where, if the film was exceedingly popular, it might be broadcast twice a year. Meanwhile, as cable television was beginning to boom, sales of home videocassette recorders were spiking, thanks in large part to the American consumers’ resolution of the VHS vs Betamax issue and the Supreme Court ruling that home video recording was, in fact, legal and not a violation of copyright. (You can read the Court’s ruling here.)

In 1982, only 4% of American households owned a VCR. By 1988, the figure had reached 60%. No doubt, Americans were enamored with the VCR for its fundamental functionality that allowed one to record a show and then watch it later. But in addition to being able to “timeshift” their TV watching, VCR owners were also excited that they could now enjoy feature movies in the comfort of their homes, whenever they wanted. In response, Hollywood studios began scrambling to form home video distribution divisions for the huge catalogs of movie titles they owned. Concurrently, as these studios implemented the technologies, sales, marketing, and delivery methods needed to ready their pictures for public consumption on videocassette, large video rental chains (Blockbuster, West Coast Video, and others) were founded and fiercely competed with each other, along with the small mom and pop dealers that were springing up on every corner. Thus, between cable and home video, Americans now had the ability to see complete, unedited recent hits (Chariots of Fire, Taps, Kramer vs Kramer, Foul Play, War Games, Close Encounters, Poltergeist) that were long gone from cinemas but hadn’t made it to network TV quite yet. Fine films that were overlooked during their initial theatrical releases (Nighthawks, Blade Runner) were "discovered", as were cult and foreign films like Harold and Maude and Cat People. And of course, popular comedies like Arthur, Smokey and the Bandit, 9 to 5, Cannonball Run, and 10 were watched repeatedly and their laughs enjoyed over and over again. Studio executives quickly realized that a film’s success at the box office was no longer the sole factor determining whether or not their releases could be impactful and profitable. Films could now be remarketed (or in some cases, bundled as a group) and sold for broadcast on basic and premium cable TV channels. As this was taking place, market research began to show that a large part of the audience for cable TV movies (particularly repeat viewings of these movies) were high school and college youth, who had ample amounts of free time on their hands to sit around watching their favorite films. (On a side note, it’s clear that the American pop culture phenomenon of quoting movie lines first began with these teens of the 1980's who would watch (and re-watch ad nauseum), memorize and repeat dialog from 80's cable TV staples like Blazing Saddles, Caddyshack, Animal House, Stripes, and Airplane.) 

When studio brass saw their films' viewer ratings and the corresponding audience demographics, a concerted effort was made to unshelve or acquire rights to (or otherwise script, shoot and release new) content that appealed to this key “Generation X” demographic -- and that content consisted largely of teen movies. 

America, and particularly Hollywood, was soon completely enamored with the teen movie genre. The profit margin (box office receipts now combined with cable TV revenues) of movies like Porky’s, Private Lessons, Homework, and The Last American Virgin proved very attractive to production companies and their investors. Particularly attractive were the low-budgets these films offered -- typically under $10 million and often less than half that. Teen actors almost always worked cheaply, as most were happy just to have a role in a Hollywood feature. Principal photography took place in cheap locales (malls, high schools), props were simple and inexpensive, and shooting schedules tight. Screenplays could be written quickly, with writers tapping into their own teenage experience (real or imagined) for material. 

Soon, filmmakers exploring the teen movie genre became more creative. Writers and directors began to acknowledge there was more to teenage life than the neverending quest to get laid and began to make films that explored other aspects of contemporary youth. Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, though it failed to do much business upon its release in late summer of 1982, was nonetheless praised for it’s dead on depiction of contemporary teenage culture, customs, and mores. Much has been written about how screenwriter Cameron Crowe, in his attempts to make his script more authentic, went undercover at a southern California high school. But what’s more important is that it resulted in a teen movie rife with identifiable characters that, in between laughs, are dealing with real issues and scenarios. Let’s face it, as high schoolers, very few of us were seduced by our friend’s mom, road-tripped to a Mexican whorehouse, or wore dresses and makeup to sneak into an all-girls school. What was great about Fast Times was that the characters were placed in situations, some comical (Brad fantasizing about Linda while he watches her poolside) and some serious (Stacy’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion) that most of us, as teenagers, either went through ourselves, or knew someone who had. 

In short, Fast Times at Ridgemont High resonated as the first authentic teen movie. Yes, there are secondary storylines involving Brad’s job woes and the antics of the now famous Jeff Spicoli. But while most teen films up until this time relied on an anecdotal series of gross humor and sexual gags to sustain their momentum, Fast Times, at its core, gave us a lovable, empathetic central character (Stacy) and a more meaningful and realistic series of events involving her search for a boyfriend and her relationships with her brother, and friends Linda, Damone, and Rat. 

The legitimization of the teen movie continued in 1983 with Martha Coolidge’s sentimental Valley Girl, and Paul Brickman’s Risky Business, which broke the teen movie mold with its Revolutionary Road and The Graduate-like themes of rebellion against the supposed American dream of life in the suburbs, attending an Ivy League college, and landing a high paying corporate job. 

Risky Business also set itself apart from other teen movies with its artful cinematography (Lana’s first appearance; the train sequence) and an ethereal original score by Tangerine Dream that proved a big departure from the typical teen movie soundtrack full of contemporary pop and new wave hits. Still, while the well-received Risky Business and a handful of other films did much to establish credibility for teen movies, the unequivocal validation of the genre came with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders. 

Oklahoma-born S.E. Hinton’s first novel The Outsiders, chronicles the experiences of Pony Boy Curtis, a teenage “greaser” growing up in Tulsa, struggling with the death of his parents and searching for meaning in his life. In a period where juvenile comedies like Joysticks were in abundance, The Outsiders offered a serious and genuine examination of teen angst (similar to Rebel Without a Cause) as it explored themes like loyalty, friendship, jealousy, class warfare, and parental neglect. Interestingly, one of Hinton’s later novels, Tex, had previously been made into a feature film directed by Tim Hunter and starring Matt Dillon. Tex, though, was barely noticed upon its release in the summer of 1982. Not the case when production began on The Outsiders. Director Francis Ford Coppola had won two Best Director Oscars for The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, and also helmed the critically acclaimed Apocalypse Now. As a result, the director had ascended to the pantheon of America’s greatest living filmmakers, so when he signed on to shoot The Outsiders, Hollywood took notice. Every young actor in the business pressed their agent to get them an audition for the film. Indeed, with a respected director like Coppola now working in the genre, teen movies now had Hollywood’s official seal of approval. 

The Outsiders firmly established that teen movies could successfully extend beyond comedy so Hollywood quickly began cranking out more teen dramas (Racing with the Moon, All the Right Moves, Rumble Fish) and expanding teen movies into other genres like thrillers (The Boys Next Door, Out of Control) and horror (A Nightmare On Elm Street, Fright Night.)

But of course, what most of us remember The Outsiders for is that incredible cast of young actors, all completely unknown at the time, and each of whom would go on to become a bonafide movie star. Credit Coppola and casting director Janet Hirshenson (who incidentally, is still at the top of her profession -- she cast this summer's Angels and Demons, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe) with recognizing the talent and charisma of Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, and Diane Lane. Within two years of The Outsiders release, each would be a lead actor with above the title billing. This group would go on to star in some of the most popular and signature films of the decade, including The Karate Kid, The Breakfast Club, Top Gun, Dirty Dancing, and Rain Man. Like American Graffiti, which ten years earlier had kickstarted the careers of Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Suzanne Somers and others, The Outsiders served as a launching pad for some of the coming decades' biggest stars.

Next: Part III - The Brat Pack and the Legacy of 80s Teen Movie

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The Evolution of the 80's Teen Movie - Part I

The Evolution of the 80s Teen Movie - How Bob Clark, Gen X, and Home Video Changed the Landscape of American Cinema

Part I

There was a time when Hollywood wasn’t producing very many movies about or starring young people. From the mid-50s (with films like Rebel Without a Cause and The Blackboard Jungle) all the way through the 1970s, only a handful of pictures were being made featuring teenagers (or early twentysomethings) in starring roles. Typically, rather than offering an examination of young people’s lives (in either a real or imagined way) these films were quick, lightweight attempts to cash in on a young star’s presumably limited fame and box office appeal. This was most evident during the 1970s when Jodie Foster, after her strong performance as a 12-year-old prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, went on to appear in the saccharine Disney family-comedy Freaky Friday, and the gimmicky Bugsy Malone, a gangster movie spoof featuring an all children’s cast. 

In other instances, teenagers appearing in feature films were mainly there to support established adult box office stars. Tatum O’Neal, for example, gained fame after her Academy Award-winning performance alongside her father Ryan in Peter Bogdonavich’s Paper Moon. Moreover, through the remainder of the decade Tatum's best roles were in The Bad News Bears with Walter Matthau, International Velvet, opposite heavyweights Christopher Plummer and Anthony Hopkins, and the disappointing Nickelodeon (1976), once again starring Tatum’s father (along with the country’s number one leading man at the time, Burt Reynolds.) 

Most of the aforementioned films from Foster, O’Neal and other young actors judged worthy of "above title" billing -- e.g., Kristy McNichol (Little Darlings, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia), Scott Baio (Bugsy Malone, Skatetown, USA), and Brooke Shields (Tilt, Just You and Me Kid) -- were box office and/or critical failures. As a result, Hollywood remained hesitant to script and produce films that explored the world of teenagers in a meaningful way. In an era where most of the top production executives were holdovers from the Hollywood’s old studio system, “star power” was still something of a prerequisite for getting pictures green-lighted and “kid actors” were viewed as not having enough of it to be anything more than risky box office draws. Case in point, even when casting the (what would prove to be wildly successful) frat comedy Animal House, the filmmakers turned to 30-year-olds Tim Matheson and Peter Riegert, and the established 29-year old star of Saturday Night Live, John Belushi, to portray the college-age protagonists. 

But as the 1980s rolled in, Hollywood’s attitude towards writing and producing films about young people (and examining their lives and experiences using real teen actors) was about to change -- and the film that would initiate this change would prove be a most unlikely entry.

Porky’s was a low-budget high school comedy written and directed by Bob Clark, a 40-year-old Hollywood veteran whose best known work had been as a writer for The Dukes of Hazzard TV series. Porky’s was produced for a meager $4 million, but would prove to be groundbreaking in a number of ways, including its subject matter. Unabashedly raunchy, even by today’s standards, Porky’s follows a group of high school boys as they play practical jokes on each other, spy on the cheerleaders in the shower, and torment the girls phys ed teacher, Miss Ballbricker. The story centers on the boys’ attempts to gain entry to a local strip bar and their subsequent confrontation with the bar’s owner (the eponymous "Porky".) Some of the film’s more hilarious scenes involve the guys enlisting the services of a prostitute, two gym teachers having loud sex in a laundry room, and one of the boys teasing the girls with his penis before having it nearly yanked clean off by Ballbricker. Interestingly, even amidst all this highly-charged sexual humor, Clark manages to work in a redeeming social message, as one of the boys learns a lesson about racial tolerance. 

Make no mistake however, Porky’s is first and foremost a riotous, rude comedy about a bunch of guys trying to… well… get laid -- a plot that would be repeated ad nauseum in teen films throughout the 80s, 90s, and into the next millennium. Porky’s however, was one of the very first to tread this ground, and in doing so, became a huge hit. 

Another significant aspect about the movie was the fact that it featured a cast of unknowns. Porky's box office success flew in the face of conventional wisdom by proving that when it came to the teen movie genre, star power was of little importance. On the strength of the teen and twentysomething dollar, Porky’s grossed nearly $60 million at the box office. Hollywood took notice and a fundamental philosophical shift occurred, as the already few and far between “coming of age” stories like Breaking Away (1979), Foxes (1980), and Endless Love (1981), that sought to honestly explore all sides of the teen experience, both serious and comedic, were quickly passed over (by both producers and consumers) in favor of bawdy teen sex romps. Indeed, the success of Porky’s triggered a frenzied race among production companies and major studios to cash in by duplicating the film's formula. As a result, the next two years brought a slew of Porky’s clones, most of which featured similar casts of unknowns and offered little more plot-wise than a bunch of pubescent boys out for sex. The Last American Virgin (1982), Goin’ All the Way (1982), My Tutor (1983), Private School (1983), Spring Fever (1983), Spring Break (1983) and Losin’ It (1983) are prime examples. All of these, however, failed to match the success of Bob Clark's film. 

Despite this, the new genre of the teen movie would not be short-lived, as the film industry pleasantly realized it had two additional sources of revenue for their movies—cable television and home video. These two new outlets would prove pivotal to the success of teen movies, and would fuel Hollywood’s continued exploration, expansion, and diversification of the genre through the remainder of the decade. 

Next up: Part II - The VCR and The Outsiders Make Their Marks