Taking The '80's 'Wild Ride'

The mid 1980's seemed to inspire a sense of panic in the protagonists of American movies. Maybe the decade's virtue of materialism and money were starting to draw fear from people's sense of what they wanted to get out of life. Maybe they were already seeing their future neatly laid out in front of them, and wondering if there wasn't something more to hope for. These feeelings aren't specific to any decade, but this particular one really went after this sense of fear like no other. With the 80's yuppie at the helm and the tuned-percussion scores of Thomas Newman and Tangerine Dream, the "80's Wild Ride" gave viewers a fantastic feeling of escapism and salvation.
Taking place in major American cities, these films present us with bored, middle-class characters who have very little in the way of life outside of work. Usually, fate intervenes in the form of a free-sprited character who sees in them what they fear may already be lost. A path of adventure quickly becomes one of misadventure and their over-inflated sense of control all but disappears. Whether battling the seedier elements of the city they've mistakenly become involved with, trying to stop their professor from selling dangerous new designs to the cold war obsessed military, or being forced to operate outside the law; these characters are finally getting to see what they're truly made out of. Forget going out into the woods, here the city is what truly strengthens the spine. In the end, our bumbling heroes are a lot wiser and a little cooler. They most often end up with their love interests; and this time, the future is uncertain and wide open. Growing up with HBO in the 1980's, I watched these all repeatedly. Revisiting them, I'm reminded why I came to love movies so much.

'After Hours' (1985)
Martin Scorcese is the only director here who wasn't born out of the '80's. Making his mark in the '70's and later enjoying a career comeback in the next two decades, Scorcese seemed to enjoy taking bigger risks ('The Last Temptation of Christ') and playing around with comedies ('The King of Comedy') in the 1980's. Here he lovingly shoots his mean streets of NYC while following Griffin Dunne (always perfect as the adorably bumbling victim) through one hellish night.

'Adventures In Babysitting' (1986)
I guess after 'Halloween' gave babysitters a reason to retire, this one gives them something to fantasize about while stuck playing with someone else's bratty kids. Here, Elizabeth Shue takes the kids into the heart of downtown Chicago to pick up a hysterical friend at a bus station. A blown tire on the expressway sets forward a night of hook-handed towmen, Playboy-obsessed mobsters, skyscraper scaling, and a grumpy mechanic who may or may not be Thor.

'Desperately Seeking Susan' (1985)
Given it's legacy as a landmark 80's-guilty pleasure; this may as well have been a vehicle conceived, written, and executed with the sole purpose of cashing in on the endlessly ascending star of Madonna. But '...Susan' is way too smart to be lumped into the same company as "Crossroads'. An endlessly fun movie about chance and one bored housewife's accidental walk on the wild side. Great score!

'Into The Night" (1985)
Despite John Landis's distracting quest to put as many celebrity cameos in this movie as possible, it is fun watching the suffocatingly bored Jeff Goldblum get mixed up with accidental jewel thief Michelle Pfeiffer. The pair are chased around LA by a quartet of east Indian mobsters (one of whom happens to be John Landis) determined to get their hands on jewels from the crown of an ancient, Indian royal. The movie boasts a decent car chase, fantastic LA locales, and at least one moment of unnerving suspense. It's just a shame it's all mostly ruined by a horribly dated score. Great and charmingly subtle cameo by Bowie. Is Michelle Pfeiffer the most beautiful woman ever?

'Real Genius" (1985)
The recent 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' was such a breath of fresh air for many reasons - my personal biggest being Val Kilmer's triumphant return to the genre that made him a star in the first place: comedy. In 'Real Genius', he was the coolest student on a campus of the smartest. Tired of the dangers that came with being a genius, he decided to use his mind for elaborate pranks and oddball accessorizing. When he's asked to mentor incoming freshman Mitch, he does his irreverent best to steer him away from a psychological meltdown by summoning the animal in him. Even then, it was hard to believe there possibly could've been an animal in the hopelessly square Gabe Jarret. Still, it's fun watching the two send messages to Kent from god, make an ice rink in their dorm, and destroy Dr. Hathaway's house with a popcorn bomb.

'Risky Business' (1983)
THE definitive wild ride, and one of my favorite movies of all time. Ironically, the movie that initially made a star of Tom Cruise was maybe the only one he doesn't play a hotshot in. Here he's the quintessential nervous teenage boy: terrified of getting into a lackluster college, and worried that sex with the babysitter down the street will jeopardize his future. Baited by the unsung hero of '80's comedies, Curtis Armstrong; Cruise ends up battling Guido the Killer Pimp, drowning his father's Porsche, and hooking his Princeton admissions interviewer up with a hooker. It's a fun adventure set off by funny missteps, but Tangerine Dream's hypnotic score and Paul Brinkmann's assured direction makes it all so sexy and dreamlike.

'Something Wild' (1986)
Maybe the only wild ride where the leads leave the city and head into Americana to let loose. Jeff Daniels leaves his posh job in the city to follow lucious Melanie Griffith to her hometown for her high school reunion. It's a beautiful love story based on lies and told through the POV of an endlessly amusing road movie. Jonathan Demme puts his love of music and colorful people front and center here. It's all a sexy and magical time until a phenomenal Ray Liotta descends upon them like a dark cloud.

Musings On Five Unexplainably Great Movie Scenes

1. "I love that dress", 'Leaving Las Vegas' (1995)
Mike Figgis' brutal film about a man's determination to drink himself to death and a prostitute's determination to love him can be seen as a lot of things. It's hard though for many to see it as it truly is: a love story. For some unexplainable reason, the most romantic scene in the film comes in the form of Ben asking Sera for their first date. After a botched exchange in his motel room, Sera happens upon Ben on a city bench; drunk and sipping from a martini glass. When rejected after asking her out for dinner, she walks away as he mumbles to himself: "We can get prime rib. They got it on sale for $2.99. I love that dress". With the blinding lights of Las Vegas in the background, Nicolas Cage's slyly desperate delivery, and that piano-driven score; the scene feels like a darkly comic glimmer of hope in an otherwise hopeless story.

2. "You're a handsome devil. What's your name?", Gross Pointe Blank (1996)
'A hitman coming back to his hometown to do a job and attend his high school reunion is a premise that leaves ample room for a dark comedy; and John Cusack's four-man team of writers gives us plenty of casual, comic blood. But the film's most grim scene is also the quietest. 10 years after disappearing from home, Martin (John Cusack) comes back to find his mother (a wonderful Barbara Harris) widowed and confined to a nursing home after recreational Lithium usage has left her in a constant state of dementia and paranoia. All Martin's hopes for reconciliation are dashed immediately after she opens up their conversation by revealing that she spoke to his deceased father recently. "I imagine that'd be rather difficult" he replies with classic Cusack deadpan. After a few confused minutes, he is denied any kind of goodbye when she looks back at him and says, "Oh, you're a handsome devil. What's your name?" For only these few minutes, all humor is left out as Martin is revealed as a man who can never go back home again.

3. "Call it!", 'No Country For Old Men' (2007)
Anton Chigurh was one of the memorable movie villians right out of the cannon. It's too rare for an antagonist to be as terrifying as he is hilarious. It's even more rare and terrifying to see one try to bring a sense of logic and reason to his terror. Chigurh's brutal force is displayed almost immediately in 'No Country For Old Men' with one of the longest and most helpless death scenes maybe ever in films. But his next scene; where he confuses and threatens a hapless, old gas station owner may be his most affecting. Suddenly offended by the man's casual conversation, he mock's the man's Texas dialect and life decisions and gets increasingly frustrated at the man's confusion over his non-sequitors. He then pulls out a coin. "Call it", he says with a hilariously random sense of exhaustion. The flipping of the coin is maybe the only human commonality that Chigurh can understand, which he uses to justify his actions. Here he seems to feel an adrenaline rush from completely over-powering this old man, then has no problem walking away when the coin comes up in his favor. "Well done", he says easlily; then insists he not put it in his pocket. "You put it in your pocket, it'll just get mixed in with your others and become just a coin", he says. "Which it is."


4. "Sixteen Reasons Why I Love You", 'Mulholland Drive' (2001)
David Lynch is one of those great filmmakers whose work irritates those determined to have a reason behind everything they see in art. Like any surrealist or abstract artist, Lynch seems to create from feelings, images, and sounds; whose exact meanings may (or may not) come later. At the center of this film (arguably Lynch's best) is a scene that almost seemed as if it could've existed independent of the story. In the center of her dream (see my essay 'Thoughts On Mulholland Drive' for further analysis), "Betty" is taken to a movie set to meet the director who could make her career. In her real life, he is her nemesis: the man who stole her love away from her. But here, it's true love. The scene's opening crane shot always feels like an homage to the pop music of the '50's and the excitement of movie-making. The camera pulls back from a dolled-up quartet lip-synching Connie Stevens' 'Sixteen Reasons', then pulls up to reveal the movie set surrounding them. We then see Betty wisked into the room, and the director suddenly turns around as the two lock eyes in one of the sweetest "love at first sight" moments in movies. The subsequent zoom into Naomi Watts' face is worth the price of admission alone.



5. "I need a bike", 'Risky Business' (1983)
My mother, of all people, once said that a movie is only as good as it's music. For once, she wasn't wrong. Tangerine Dream's dark and quirky score helped establish 'Risky Business' as something above and beyond the American teen comedy. The mood-drenched, pulsating 'Love On A Real Train', will always be remembered for Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay's sultry love scene on the L. But it was the song's first moment in the film that was maybe even more special. After young Joel drowns his father's trophy car, fails his midterms, and gets suspended from school; he's broken in front of his buddies outside their school after dark. "I need a bike", is all he can say to ask for help. Speaking later about co-starring with Cruise in their first film, 'Taps', Sean Penn described Cruise as "sooo...like he was training for the fucking olympics. I think he was the first person I ever said 'Calm down' to". Watching Cruise ride that bike across Chicago, pace the L train platform in a complete panic, and running up Rebecca De Mornay's stairs; we can see what he was on about. Here his worst nightmare has come true: he made a horrible mistake and jeopardized his future. What's most endearing about the scene is the over-wrought sense that things will not be alright in the end for this upper-middle class, polite, and intelligent teenager. But watching Joel run across Chicago gives us a real sense of someone's world coming down on them.