As most of you will be aware, Dolly Parton passed away earlier this week. She was 80 years old.
Dolly Parton, born the same year as both of my parents, was already part of the pop culture landscape by the time I was born. As a result, she is one of those celebrities who has been around for my entire life.
I remember hearing her songs on the radio, of course. I also remember the spate of successful movies that she had in the 1980s: 9 to 5, Steel Magnolias, Rhinestone, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Because of my generational identity—and perhaps because of my gender—I was never a fan of Dolly Parton in the same way that I was a fan of Rush and Sylvester Stallone. That said, I have enjoyed much of her output over the years. I even have at least two favorite Dolly Parton songs: “Jolene” and “Islands in the Stream” (her duet with Kenny Rogers).
At this point in life, I’ve lost too many people whom I actually knew to be profoundly saddened by the death of an octogenarian celebrity whom I never knew. I will admit my selfish inclinations here. Dolly Parton’s death represents a passing of yet one more part of the world in which I grew up, a world which I believe to be in many ways better than the one of the 21st century.
My personal perspective aside, Dolly Parton seems to have been a genuinely good person, and everything that she added to our culture was positive so far as I remember. Her presence will be missed. Dolly Parton, 80. R.I.P.
Today Vietnam vets are older men in their seventies and eighties. But when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, Vietnam vets were young middle-aged men in their thirties and forties.
When I was very young, Vietnam vets were still in their twenties. I was born in 1968, so I have no direct memories of the Vietnam War. I do, however, remember its immediate aftermath. It was a common topic of conversation in the mid-1970s. In those days, the war—as well as the political and social turmoil of the 1960s—were very much in recent memory.
Movies about the American War and Vietnam began to appear in the 1970s. These include Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter. Although Taxi Driver is not technically a movie about the Vietnam War, its central character, Travis Bickle, is a disturbed Vietnam War veteran.
And this was the common “meme,” to use an internet-age word: the disturbed Vietnam War veteran. In film and literature, Vietnam vets were often portrayed as brooding, volatile individuals.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that the American Vietnam War experience began to be portrayed with a bit more nuance. The release of the Vietnam War film Platoon, a commercial and critical success, portrayed the Vietnam War as a complex situation in which American soldiers often had to choose the least bad option. As the 1980s concluded, portrayals of Vietnam vets became far less simplistic, more diverse, and more respectful.
I would never attempt to write a novel about the Vietnam experience itself. But I did include a Vietnam vet in my Gen X coming-of-age novel, No Sure Thing. The novel is primarily the story of Paul Nelson, a 19-year-old University of Cincinnati student. But Paul’s mentor, Ron McNab, is a 42-year-old Vietnam vet. (No Sure Thing is set in 1988.)
I would describe the character of Ron McNab as half-fictional. Throughout my formative years, I met many Vietnam vets who shared their experiences with me. Several of them became an inspiration for Ron.
We all know the history surrounding Nazi Germany and its authoritarian controls on popular culture. The Third Reich aggressively banned art that the Nazi Party deemed substandard, degenerate, or subversive.
But that was 90 years ago, right? Today Germany is a modern, democratic nation that isn’t afraid of free expression. Right?
Not exactly. The old authoritarian impulses still hold sway in Berlin. Last month German movie regulators refused to assign a rating to director Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante. Since it is illegal to distribute films in Germany that have not been rated, this effectively banned Citizen Vigilante from the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Citizen Vigilante stars Armie Hammer as Michael Sanders, a vigilante who hunts down rapists and violent criminals, many of whom are migrants from Islamic countries.
The movie is an unsubtle statement on government policies that have tolerated—and perhaps even encouraged—mass migration from the Middle East to destinations in the European Union and (to a lesser extent) North America. (Uwe Boll is a German filmmaker.)
By all accounts, Citizen Vigilante is not a pleasant film, and perhaps you could argue that it is not even a particularly good one. But if present headlines are any indication, this is a debate that is not going away anytime soon. The backlash against mass migration is not limited to the Trump-voting sectors of America. The same backlash has been building in Europe for quite some time now. The immigration issue is the primary reason for the recent successes of Germany’s right-leaning Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
In the internet age, you simply cannot stamp out ideas. After the movie was suppressed in Germany, Elon Musk made it available for 48 hours, free of charge, on his X platform.
I didn’t hear about the movie because of Elon Musk, however. I learned of Citizen Vigilante when I read a finger-wagging article decrying the film’s very existence. It probably would have escaped my notice otherwise. That’s the irony of cancel culture: the very act of denouncing something has the unintended consequence of amplifying it.
I haven’t seen Citizen Vigilante, though I’ve seen clips of some of its most controversial scenes. By all indications, the movie is boilerplate vigilante spectacle. That’s an old genre in entertainment. It goes all the way back to the Race Williams detective stories published in Black Mask in the 1920s, when large numbers of Americans were anxious about rising crime rates. In the 1970s, it was manifest in the Death Wish vigilante films starring the already fifty-something Charles Bronson.
The notion of citizens taking the law into their own hands is an uncomfortable topic for a film. But when such movies become popular, it is usually because of some genuine grassroots frustration with the status quo. Perhaps this is the issue that the German government should really be paying attention to, rather than trying to ban what is, by all accounts, a rather mediocre movie.
Although the Third Reich ended more than eighty years ago, German authorities are still uncomfortable with the concept of unregulated speech. They are also, apparently, unfamiliar with the concept of reverse psychology.
Never before have so many movies, videos, and whatnot competed for our attention. The best way to convince people to seek out an otherwise obscure movie is for a government to declare its director a pariah and his movie verboten. Citizen Vigilante received over 10.5 million views, from all over the world, during its 48-hour free run on X.
Brett Arnold of Yahoo! is distinctly unimpressed with the latest, endless installment in the Star Wars franchise:
“‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is easily the worst Star Wars movie, but even calling it a movie feels like giving it more credit than it deserves. It’s a feature-length episode of streaming-era television, and boy, does it look and feel like it. It’s uncinematic in pretty much every way, from the drab visuals to its repetitive structure that lacks the storytelling heft needed to make the jump from TV to film. Say what you will about ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ or the prequel trilogy; at least they’re movies!”
Reading the above, I feel a little like the lead singer in the J. Geils Band, who discovered that his high school sweetheart had been turned into onanistic fodder for a girlie magazine:
Star Wars was amazing when it first came out. I can say this with certainty because I was there at the beginning.
It was the summer of 1977 and I sat with my dad in a cinema in northern Kentucky as the very first Star Wars film began.
I was nine years old.
I will soon be 58.
I’m sure you caught the irony. That was almost half a century ago.
The last Star Wars movie that was really necessary was Return of the Jedi in 1983. I remember watching The Phantom Menace in 1999, sixteen years later. It didn’t feel like Star Wars.
Since then, the movies have only gotten worse. It’s obvious that Disney is just milking the Star Wars universe as one of its few reliable cash cows.
Star Wars was great! But it’s time for new science fiction stories and fresh space operas.
I’m late to this party. I didn’t realize that yet another television adaptation of Stephen King’s It was in the works. So now I know.
Forgive me if I skip this one. I love Stephen King’s books. (Or well, I love many of them, anyway.) But I read It for the first time as an 18-year-old in 1986. (I purchased one of the original hardcovers at the Waldenbooks in my local mall.)
I reread the book once in the 1990s. I’ve seen two screen adaptations already.
I always preferred King’s shorter, tighter books, anyway. For me, It marked the point where every Stephen King book was no longer a guaranteed page-turner.
But that really isn’t the point. This story has been in my brain for almost 40 years now. I understand that Hollywood prefers stories with prequalified demand (i.e., decades-old franchises). But there comes a time when I want something new.
No disrespect intended toward Mr. King. It was entertaining, the first—even the second—time around. But do I need yet another tour through the mythical town of Derry? Of all the teenage experiences I’d like to relive at the ripe old age of 57, this book doesn’t rank very high on the list.
Save the Cat! is a 15-point formula found in many screenplays and movies. Is this formula worthwhile for novelists and short story writers?
Yes, and no, and maybe.
Save the Cat forces you to think about stories as systems of moving parts. This may be a new and necessary insight for many writers.
Most fiction writers know that they need an inciting incident, and a climax/conclusion. Where fiction writers most often struggle is in the vast middle portions of novels (and even long short stories). Save the Cat has remedies for this. The midpoint and “bad guys close in” are concepts that can be profitably employed in any story form.
One can argue that novelists should write with movies and television in mind, anyway. Visual media has affected the expectations that readers bring to fiction, and you ignore this at your peril. Try to write like Melville (or even Saul Bellow) today, and you won’t get far.
That said, stories and novels are fundamentally different from screen-based media. A novel is not a screenplay, just as a screenplay is not a novel. This may be why screen adaptations of novels are seldom satisfactory for viewers who have already read the book.
In particular: the screenwriter’s obsession with scenes and “show don’t tell”. Scenes are the building blocks of any story, but they aren’t the sole building blocks of fiction. All fiction contains some backstory and exposition that simply couldn’t exist in a movie. This is true even of commercial fiction. The “show don’t tell” dictum, when carried to extremes, can become counterproductive. In this regard, it’s a lot like the oft-repeated “no adverbs” rule.
If your goal is to write screenplays, stick with the original Blake Snyder book. If you’re interested in writing fiction, go with the Jessica Brody spinoff, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.
In the spring of 1981, my seventh-grade English teacher assigned our class “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, a short story by James Thurber.
The eponymous lead character is a middle-age man who has gone into a trance in his day-to-day life. Walter Mitty is married, but there is no spark between him and his wife. (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was published in 1939, before the advent of no-fault divorce.) The story’s sparse 2,000-odd words don’t tell us much more about the details of Mitty’s circumstances, but we can easily imagine him as a low- or mid-level administrative employee in an office somewhere.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) theatrical release poster
To escape the dullness of his actual life, Walter Mitty retreats into various daydreams. He is alternately a US Navy hydroplane captain, a bomber pilot, and a brilliant surgeon. Mitty’s daydreams of a more glorious existence are inevitably interrupted when someone—often his wife—scolds him for zoning out.
I was twelve years old when I read this story for the first time. I remember enjoying some of the imagery of the story. But as a seventh-grader, I simply could not get my arms around the ennui and resignation that often accompanies middle age. I had not yet been on the planet for thirteen years. Everything was still new to me.
I recently reread Thurber’s story at the age of 57. What a difference 45 years can make, in the way one interprets a work of fiction.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a Walter Mitty. I don’t daydream about flying a navy hydroplane while I’m driving a car, as Mitty does. But at the age of 57, I do understand how a person can become disconnected from the larger world.
American society is forever fixated on the future, and that naturally tends toward a youth obsession. Once you reach a certain age, you tend to fall off society’s radar. People are much more interested in what younger folks are doing.
The flip side of that is that you, in turn, are much less interested in what most other people are talking about. This doesn’t necessarily lead to constant daydreaming. But it does lead to a sense that you are not as fully a part of this world as you once were.
This process might be unavoidable, and it might not be completely unhealthy, either, for aging individuals or for society at-large. Society would never change if the concerns of the same cohort of people forever dominated the zeitgeist. For the individual, gradually losing touch with the world—even in late middle age—might be viewed as an advance preparation for leaving the world entirely.
Anyway, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” has apparently struck a chord with a lot of people since it was first published. The story was made into a movie in 1947, and then again at 2013.
I was just turning 15 when Risky Business—the movie that launched Tom Cruise’s acting career—hit the theaters in August 1983. I was too young to get into an R-rated movie without an adult; and this wasn’t a film that either of my parents would have been interested in seeing with me.
I neglected to see Risky Business for more than 40 years, partly because I was put off by the much-played clip of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. Call me homophobic if you’d like; but that isn’t the way to get me to see a movie. And there were just so many other movies to see.
I finally got around to watching Risky Business a few days ago. (Better late than never!) The movie was quite well done for a film that was originally conceived as a throwaway flick for Reagan-era young adults. (Moreover, despite the ubiquity of that clip with Tom Cruise in his underwear, that scene is a minuscule portion of the 95-minute movie.) Continue reading “‘Risky Business’: an entertaining film that would never get made today”
I have been watching some old movies from the 1980s recently. Some have been movies that I saw, but have long since forgotten. Others are iconic films of that era that I never got around to seeing when they were current.
For example, I recently wrote a post about Mystic Pizza (1988). Last night I watched Risky Business (1983). I will have a post about Risky Business soon.
A scene from Mystic Pizza (1988)
One thing I’ve noticed is that many films created in 1980-something as disposable teen comedies were actually pretty good. In 1985, did anyone imagine that people in 2025 would still be talking about The Breakfast Club? Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) has been recognized by the American Film Institute for its merits.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the diversity in movies from that bygone era. In 1985, an original movie, properly executed, could make a lot of people rich. But the economics of the 21st-century box office encourage conservatism and a tiresome emphasis on franchise films. Continue reading “The comparative joys of old (1980s) movies”
On September 2, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally, effectively ending World War II. The American postwar occupation of Japan began shortly thereafter.
Japanese forces committed many atrocities during World War II. Their victims included subjugated Asian populations, as well as Allied prisoners of war. The postwar era would bring a reckoning. Among the first tasks of the US occupation authorities was to round up Japanese officials who were guilty of war crimes.
Japanese officials aboard the USS Missouri on September 2 1945 for the surrender ceremony
Adjacent to this was determining the culpability of Emperor Hirohito. Hirohito’s future status was a sensitive topic.
The Allies did not demand Hirohito’s overthrow and imprisonment as an explicit condition of surrender, which dissuaded the Japanese from fighting until the last man. But Hirohito’s long-term continuation on the Chrysanthemum Throne was not a foregone conclusion, either. That would depend on whether or not the American occupation authorities would try him as a war criminal.
In a worst-case scenario, Hirohito would hang, and the Japanese would stage a general insurrection against the US occupation. A bad outcome for everyone. Therefore, the options had to be weighed carefully, and it would all begin with an investigation.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High, that quintessential teen movie of the first half of the 1980s, hit the theaters 43 years ago today, on August 13, 1982.
On that date I had just turned fourteen. I did not see Fast Times in the cinema. (I could not even drive yet.) I did catch the movie a few months later, on cable. By that time, it had become a must-see movie for anyone among the teenage set.
I liked the movie then, and not just because of the iconic scene in which Phoebe Cates emerges from the pool. Even at that age, I could tell that Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a thoughtful teen movie, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
The movie does contain explicit sex scenes, especially by today’s less tolerant cinematic standards. Fast Times originally received an X rating. The film was reedited to receive an R rating. Primarily because of the sex, all of the “teens” in this film were already adult actors by the time production began. (Jennifer Jason Leigh was almost twenty years old when she portrayed the 15-year-old Stacy Hamilton.)
And yes, that Phoebe Cates pool scene was unnecessary and tawdry, much as it delighted the 14-year-old version of me.
#OnThisDay American coming-of-age comedy film Fast Times at Ridgemont High released . August 13, #1982 Directed by Amy Heckerling in her feature directorial debut. it starred Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, and …. pic.twitter.com/AL2RH9sWiI
But underneath all the raunch and bawdy comedy, there is a message about hubris-driven teenage risk-taking, and the consequences that result. I would go so far as to call Fast Times at Ridgemont High a teensploitation film with a conservative message.
I watched this movie for a second time a few years ago. I was an adult in my fifties. The 1980s and high school were long behind me.
I thought the movie was even better the second time around.
I’m not the only one who believes that Fast Times at Ridgemont High stands the test of time. In 2005, the National Film Preservation Board recognized the movie as “culturally and historically significant”. This is one time when I agree with the consensus view.
Released August 13, 1982, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is an American coming-of-age teen comedy-drama film directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, and Ray Walston. pic.twitter.com/7TClCGleHH
Some romcoms are good, and Mystic Pizza is one of the good ones. This movie came out shortly after my twentieth birthday, but I somehow neglected to see it.
Mystic Pizza is about three Gen X working-class Portuguese women who are in their early 20s. (Since this movie came out in 1988, Gen X was still young, and still not widely referred to as Gen X.)
Structurally, the movie reminds me a little of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), insofar as there is an ensemble cast (Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, and Annabelle Gish), each working her way through a slightly different moral and emotional conundrum.
These dilemmas deal with issues of love, sex, socioeconomic class, and ethnicity. (I should make clear, though: Mystic Pizza is not a “message film”. It is simply an artifact from a time when even young adult date movies had artistic worth.)
Vintage 1988 theatrical release poster
The movie is set in the late 1980s in the fictional town of Mystic, Connecticut. All three of the young women work at “Mystic Pizza”, a mom-and-pop pizza restaurant run by a late middle-age Portuguese couple.
This was the movie that launched Julia Roberts’s career, more or less. Mystic Pizza also includes the then-unknown Matt Damon in a very minor, nonspeaking role.
Most impressive of all, though, is the performance of Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays the marriage-minded boyfriend of one of the young women. What is impressive is that the previous year, D’Onofrio starred in Full Metal Jacket as the bumbling but mentally disturbed Private Leonard ‘Gomer Pyle’ Lawrence. D’Onofrio displays an impressive range, moving easily from a psychotic villain role in a war movie, to a leading man role in a romcom.
Mystic Pizza is a must-see for all Gen Xers who may have missed it in 1988. Millennials will find some aspects of the movie they like. Gen Z viewers will probably not understand the relationship portions of the movie, but they will marvel at the payphones and Internet-free world of 1988.
I’ve seen most of Mel Gibson’s movies, but I somehow missed Payback (1999). I watched the movie tonight and was distinctly underwhelmed.
Payback, as the title suggests, follows a boilerplate revenge plot. Mel Gibson plays Porter, an unlikable underworld figure who has been shot, left for dead, and cheated out of $70,000. Most of the movie concerns his violent quest for retribution.
Payback seems to be influenced by the nihilistic violence of [the much overrated] Pulp Fiction (1994), which was then recent in the public memory. There is much bloodshed in Payback, but none of it is very believable. Characters sustain fatal gunshot wounds, but recover long enough to deliver a coherent wisecrack or two, before falling off to sleep.
Payback proceeds with a smirking, tongue-in-cheek tone and vibe. The result is a movie that is not enough of one thing or another. Payback is too grim to succeed as a comedy, it’s too ridiculous to succeed as an action film.
Mel Gibson has starred in some great movies over the years. Payback isn’t one of them.
-ET
VENETIAN SPRINGS
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Mark Baxter thought a trip to the casino would mean easy money. Instead he faces a desperate fight to save his wife from a ruthless narcotics kingpin.
I’m not sure how 40 years went by without me seeing Commando (1985). But I finally caught it last night with my YouTube Premium subscription.
Commando stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired military operative, who is called into action when a group of international bad guys take his daughter hostage.
It’s a very basic plot, with a lot left to assumption, or the viewer’s imagination. This is pure 80s escapism, and the film suffers somewhat from the production values of that era.
On the plus side, there are no boring moments in the 90 minutes that it will take you to watch Commando. The movie is a lot of fun, in the same way that the A-Team and Magnum P.I. were fun in the 1980s.
There is no romantic subplot in Commando. Rae Dawn Chong, however, provides a solid performance as Schwarzenegger’s sidekick (and, at one point in the movie, his pilot). The 12-year-old Alyssa Milano, who was decades away from becoming annoying and political, appears as Schwarzenegger’s daughter.
This past week marked the 40-year anniversary of the release of Back to the Future on July 3, 1985.
I saw the movie when it was new. I enjoyed it; but I never thought that this was a film that would be remembered four decades later.
But hey, I was 17 years old in the summer of 1985. What did I know?
1985 theatrical release poster
One of the forgotten facts about the movie is that Disney originally rejected it. The dealbreaker was the subplot in which Marty McFly’s mother becomes infatuated with him during his time in 1955. Disney execs didn’t like the incestuous plot twist.
And it struck me as a little strange at the time. Never mind that this is not the sort of scenario that anyone is likely to encounter in real life.
Whether Disney was right to reject the film or not in the 1980s, herein lies a measure of how much Disney—and the movie business—has changed since then. As we all know, Disney is more than happy to let its freak flag fly nowadays.
