Someone I had a crush on as a teenager is dead, which means that once again, all of you have to hear about it!
Dirty Dancing is the ultimate slumber party movie and its role in the culture can't be denied. Patrick Swayze was a dirty, intense beast, and my Dad, like nearly every Dad I know, hated him and was extremely upset I got into that movie all the while Mom looked on knowingly (she "got it" and Dad didn't). What's amazing is, with the death of John Hughes a month ago, it's like everyone associated with the slumber party film is dying off. I hope that the lady from Flashdance or Anthony Michael Hall are aware the Icy Scythe of Death is inexorably heading their way.
While writing this entry I was surprised to see he wasn't in Big Trouble in Little China, also called Big Redneck in Little China. It was such an utterly Swayzesque part I was amazed it wasn't him, as I remember, and I'll bet anything the script was written for him.
Some mention should be made of Roadhouse, which was so dead-on that it's totally sincere. The catch phrases from that movie have to be heard to be believed like "It's my way or the highway" or "You're my new Saturday night babe!"
I've wondered why it is that a lot of the movies my generation considers important such as the Hughes teenager movies, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Flashdance, etc. and on the boys' aisle, Back to the Future, Terminator and Raiders of the Lost Ark, were made in the late seventies and early to mid-eighties.
Then it occurred to me: this was the beginning of the current era of movies, centered on the idea of the blockbuster and the big opening weekend. No wonder people of my generation have never heard of any movie before Jaws; Jaws was the beginning of the current moviegoing experience.
2 comments:
Umm, well at least I know a few movies prior to Jaws, but it is ONLY due to faggot friends demanding that I watch films like"All About Eve", etc. If not for them though, Jaws.
Let's not forget Red Dawn, a classic right wing invasion epic. Isn't it grand how the most recent invaders always fear invasion the most? Brings us right back around to your Espanol rant and the fact that much of the states were priorly conquistadored by the Spanish.
Red Dawn was pretty ridiculous - John Millius was easily the least talented of that generation of UCLA film school grads.
It's actually reminiscent of an old, long-dead English genre, the Invasion story, which usually featured Merry Old England invaded by either the French or the Germans. I've heard it argued that alien invasion stories were actually just a modification of the usual invasion novel plot. Likewise, the modern techno-thriller war novel might be seen as that genre's step-grandchild.
There are a lot of popular genres that no longer exist. One of my favorites was the "Girl Captive" story, featuring a white girl taken by natives who struggles to preserve her virtue.
Post a Comment