Coming Of Age...
A couple days back, I stumbled onto George Lucas' AMERICAN GRAFFITI on STARZ or another cable channel. Took me no time at all to get me sucked in even though the last time I had actually seen the thing was back in the late Seventies in a second run theater. (It could be that I saw GREASE there too. I remember REALLY not liking GREASE either. Songs were great, the plot stitching them together, not so much.) It was probably an unconscious rebellion against what was popular as well...I remember everyone swooning about how great it was. John Travolta was white-hot at the time. That meant nothing to me. All I saw were these twenty-something actors/actresses pretending to be teenagers....)
But A N Y W A Y......I remember loving GRAFFITI because it was everything GREASE was not: REAL. It was basically a love-letter to George Lucas' halcyon youth in late Fifties/Early Sixties California. It was all there. Classic cars, cruising down the main streets of America, drag-racing, rock and roll in high school gymnasiums, awkward fumblings in the back seats of cars with the windows steaming up, the promise of the future beckoning...The American Dream was in full swing. America had just helped to win a war against the biggest uptight square on the planet Earth, the economy was booming, youth culture was coming into it's own and they had a proper soundtrack to do it with. (I can't imagine how much the producers of that movie spent on the music clearances alone...)
But the Coming-Of-Age tale...it manages to capture the most fleeting of periods. That hinterland between innocence and fear of an uncertain future. Change is in the air. Something is about to end...while something else is about to begin. And AMERICAN GRAFFITI conveys that perfectly. You've got gear-heads cruising around in souped up vehicles. For them, this is as good as life gets. Being the fastest, toughest, and coolest. You've got gang-members stealing quarters out of pinball machines. You've got break-ups and make-ups...but for me the core of the movie is the Richard Dreyfuss character. He's about to board a plane for college THE VERY NEXT MORNING...and he's obsessed with the blonde woman crusing around in the white Thunderbird(played by a young Suzanne Somers) and spends this last summer night trying to connect with her...even enlisting the aid of Wolfman Jack himself to get the message out there. Is he trying to make a connection that will last forever? Prolong his youth? You get the sense that during this last night of summer-cruising before adulthood beckons, futures will be molded and directions will be chosen. The first collective age of The American Teenager is about to end...and the future is scary. Hell, you can see why Baby Boomers mythologize this time period so hard especially when you see what came after. The death of John F. Kennedy, Viet-Nam, Watergate...All of that shit was going to come stomping down on whatever innocence was left lingering on those doo-wopping street corners.
So I started thinking about the Coming Of Age story. A direct spiritual descendant of AF is DAZED AND CONFUSED...Youth culture forming up on the other side of those tumultuous events. You had another bunch of teenagers trying to find their footing, figure out their path...The one that comes to mind is the slacker Matthew McConnaughy character. The guy who pushing past college age and he's still hanging out with the fringes high school society, the same high school he once attended...(Or maybe even dropped out of? I've only seen the movie once and it was a while back. Maybe it's time to revisit?) Here is a guy that can't or won't move on. The future is uncertain so he slows down time by foregoing adulthood. He lectures the students trapped in the conformity factory that rules are for chumps. Freedom is his mantra...even though it's the freedom never to leave the high school.
One of my favorite movies is FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. I remember seeing it about a month before my own high school graduation. And yeah, Ferris (brought to glorious life by Matthew Broderick) is a vaguely New Wave Peter Pan, bringing a free-wheeling inspiration to all of the other droogs stuck in the high school prison system. But the movie is REALLY about his super-neurotic friend CAMERON FRYE. (Alan Ruck) He's got bullying dysfunctional parents (who loom large even though we never actually meet them), no confidence, and a crippling fear of EVERYTHING that could go wrong. Now THAT character spoke to me. And the line that REALLY resonated was when he and Sloane(Mia Sara) were just chatting while Ferris was finishing up his parade float lounge act. The exchange goes something like this:
CAMERON: "Ferris can do anything. Me? Parents, job, future...complete failure."
SLOANE: "What about college? What do you want to do? What
are you interested in?"
CAMERON: (smiles) "Nothing".
SLOANE: (laughing almost in relief) "Me neither."
I remember feeling the same way. Everyone around seemed to have all of these grand plans about college, career, and everything else. Me? No idea. A whole life stretched out in front me that I was going to have to navigate, somehow. A tall order...especially when most of it made no damned sense. This was the first time I'd ever seen teenagers(albeit fictional) actually admit that they didn't have a clue. Yep. I could relate.
So basically, I'm going to have to make it a point to see more movies like this...(Can you believe I never saw THE GRADUATE for example? Another film with its finger on the pulse of youthful anxiety.) Also, there's a three minute(ish) song that captures this youthful fear of the future. AIMEE MANN'S "Ghost World". It was supposed to be used for Terry Zwigoff's movie, based on Daniel Clowe's graphic novel.
https://youtu.be/rLkrK22rUNk
The line that really stood out for me: "Everyone I know is acting weird or way too cool/They hang out by the pool. So I just read a lot/And ride my bike around the school." Nailed it.
Stay as young as you can, my friends.
But A N Y W A Y......I remember loving GRAFFITI because it was everything GREASE was not: REAL. It was basically a love-letter to George Lucas' halcyon youth in late Fifties/Early Sixties California. It was all there. Classic cars, cruising down the main streets of America, drag-racing, rock and roll in high school gymnasiums, awkward fumblings in the back seats of cars with the windows steaming up, the promise of the future beckoning...The American Dream was in full swing. America had just helped to win a war against the biggest uptight square on the planet Earth, the economy was booming, youth culture was coming into it's own and they had a proper soundtrack to do it with. (I can't imagine how much the producers of that movie spent on the music clearances alone...)
But the Coming-Of-Age tale...it manages to capture the most fleeting of periods. That hinterland between innocence and fear of an uncertain future. Change is in the air. Something is about to end...while something else is about to begin. And AMERICAN GRAFFITI conveys that perfectly. You've got gear-heads cruising around in souped up vehicles. For them, this is as good as life gets. Being the fastest, toughest, and coolest. You've got gang-members stealing quarters out of pinball machines. You've got break-ups and make-ups...but for me the core of the movie is the Richard Dreyfuss character. He's about to board a plane for college THE VERY NEXT MORNING...and he's obsessed with the blonde woman crusing around in the white Thunderbird(played by a young Suzanne Somers) and spends this last summer night trying to connect with her...even enlisting the aid of Wolfman Jack himself to get the message out there. Is he trying to make a connection that will last forever? Prolong his youth? You get the sense that during this last night of summer-cruising before adulthood beckons, futures will be molded and directions will be chosen. The first collective age of The American Teenager is about to end...and the future is scary. Hell, you can see why Baby Boomers mythologize this time period so hard especially when you see what came after. The death of John F. Kennedy, Viet-Nam, Watergate...All of that shit was going to come stomping down on whatever innocence was left lingering on those doo-wopping street corners.
So I started thinking about the Coming Of Age story. A direct spiritual descendant of AF is DAZED AND CONFUSED...Youth culture forming up on the other side of those tumultuous events. You had another bunch of teenagers trying to find their footing, figure out their path...The one that comes to mind is the slacker Matthew McConnaughy character. The guy who pushing past college age and he's still hanging out with the fringes high school society, the same high school he once attended...(Or maybe even dropped out of? I've only seen the movie once and it was a while back. Maybe it's time to revisit?) Here is a guy that can't or won't move on. The future is uncertain so he slows down time by foregoing adulthood. He lectures the students trapped in the conformity factory that rules are for chumps. Freedom is his mantra...even though it's the freedom never to leave the high school.
One of my favorite movies is FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. I remember seeing it about a month before my own high school graduation. And yeah, Ferris (brought to glorious life by Matthew Broderick) is a vaguely New Wave Peter Pan, bringing a free-wheeling inspiration to all of the other droogs stuck in the high school prison system. But the movie is REALLY about his super-neurotic friend CAMERON FRYE. (Alan Ruck) He's got bullying dysfunctional parents (who loom large even though we never actually meet them), no confidence, and a crippling fear of EVERYTHING that could go wrong. Now THAT character spoke to me. And the line that REALLY resonated was when he and Sloane(Mia Sara) were just chatting while Ferris was finishing up his parade float lounge act. The exchange goes something like this:
CAMERON: "Ferris can do anything. Me? Parents, job, future...complete failure."
SLOANE: "What about college? What do you want to do? What
are you interested in?"
CAMERON: (smiles) "Nothing".
SLOANE: (laughing almost in relief) "Me neither."
I remember feeling the same way. Everyone around seemed to have all of these grand plans about college, career, and everything else. Me? No idea. A whole life stretched out in front me that I was going to have to navigate, somehow. A tall order...especially when most of it made no damned sense. This was the first time I'd ever seen teenagers(albeit fictional) actually admit that they didn't have a clue. Yep. I could relate.
So basically, I'm going to have to make it a point to see more movies like this...(Can you believe I never saw THE GRADUATE for example? Another film with its finger on the pulse of youthful anxiety.) Also, there's a three minute(ish) song that captures this youthful fear of the future. AIMEE MANN'S "Ghost World". It was supposed to be used for Terry Zwigoff's movie, based on Daniel Clowe's graphic novel.
https://youtu.be/rLkrK22rUNk
The line that really stood out for me: "Everyone I know is acting weird or way too cool/They hang out by the pool. So I just read a lot/And ride my bike around the school." Nailed it.
Stay as young as you can, my friends.
Always had a place in the heart for American Graffiti. Didn't grow up in that car culture but love the chance to see it from afar ..It has always seemed to be the only real picture of that culture at least through the eyes of the people who lived it. Much Thanks .
ReplyDeleteIn some cultures, car means FREEDOM, the chance to write your own ticket, pursue your own destiny. Nowhere is that narrative more true than in The United States in the 1950s and 60s....
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