Life Moves Pretty Fast: The lessons we learned from eighties movies (and why we don't learn them from movies any more) by Hadley Freeman Page A
Authors: Hadley Freeman
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those he made with Ringwald. In the New York Times , chief film critic A.O. Scott wrote: ‘Molly Ringwald was for Mr Hughes what Jimmy Stewart was for Frank Capra: an emblem, a muse, a poster child and an alter-ego.’
But Hughes and Ringwald never spoke again, and she instead pursued an acting career without him. There was no final tearful make-up scene between her and her former mentor, no Hughesian climactic final scene. But that’s the thing about awkward girls: they might get their happy endings, but they don’t always follow the script.
TOP FIVE BRITISH BAD GUYS
5 Charles Dance, The Golden Child
Charles Dance, phoning it in and all the funnier for it.
4 David Bowie, Labyrinth
One of the weirdest villains of the eighties and one of the weirdest songs, too. I expect nothing less, David Bowie.
3 Steven Berkoff, Beverly Hills Cop
It’s the law for Berkoff to appear in any list of top villains: Shakespearean, James Bond, you name it. He clocked up a few in the eighties, including in Rambo First Blood Part II . But obviously this one’s my favourite.
2 Terence Stamp, Superman 2
‘KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.’ For his facial hair alone, Stamp comes zooming in at number two.
1 Alan Rickman, Die Hard
No competition. Unbelievably, this was Rickman’s first film role, and with his debut, he became the uber-Brit villain (albeit playing a German). Unbettered by anyone until Rickman played the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood Prince of Thieves .
When Harry Met Sally :
Romcoms Don’t Have to Make You Feel Like You’re Having a Lobotomy
Come closer, children, come closer, and sit by your old granny’s knee. I’m a-gonna tell you a tale from times of yore, of what life was like back in the olden days. Oh, it was all very different back then, I can tell you! Back then, we didn’t have things like mobile telephones – good gracious, no! If you wanted to walk around with a phone that had a photo of you and your friends on the front, you’d have had to cut a handset off the wall and tape a Polaroid on to the back of it. What’s that you ask? ‘What’s a handset on a wall? What’s a Polaroid?’ Oh dear, I’m using old world language. Let’s try again. So as I was saying, back when your granny was a young child, we didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t have the internet and, perhaps most shockingly of all, romcoms weren’t synonymous with mind-numbing retrograde crap that made you think all women were insane and all men horrible human beings. I know! It’s like hearing about a time when people didn’t have indoor plumbing, isn’t it?
Those of us who were born before 1995 know that romcoms didn’t used to be terrible, but we know this in the way that we know we used to love Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby in a manner wholly uncomplicated by their personal lives. We accept that time did exist, even if it does feel impossible today. The low status of the romcom today makes me very sad because it is so wrong. What’s more fun to watch than romance and comedy, for heaven’s sake? The answer is ‘ANYTHING’ if by ‘romance and comedy’ we now mean ‘misogynistic bullshit starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler’, as apparently we now do, judging by 2009’s The Ugly Truth . And the result is, romcoms have been declared dead.
‘RIP Romantic Comedies: Why Harry Couldn’t Meet Sally in 2013,’ blared the Hollywood Reporter . ‘Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?’ mused the Atlantic . ‘Death of the Romcom,’ read a graph on Box Office Mojo, showing how the romcom has tanked while movies about superheroes have soared.
Do we really want to live in a world in which Captain America is considered to be more universal than romance and comedy, for heaven’s sake? Nobody, goes the theory, wants to see romcoms any more, because they are terrible. The end. But the truth is, the only reason romcoms are terrible these days is because Hollywood stopped giving a shit about women. Fin.
Romcoms
But Hughes and Ringwald never spoke again, and she instead pursued an acting career without him. There was no final tearful make-up scene between her and her former mentor, no Hughesian climactic final scene. But that’s the thing about awkward girls: they might get their happy endings, but they don’t always follow the script.
TOP FIVE BRITISH BAD GUYS
5 Charles Dance, The Golden Child
Charles Dance, phoning it in and all the funnier for it.
4 David Bowie, Labyrinth
One of the weirdest villains of the eighties and one of the weirdest songs, too. I expect nothing less, David Bowie.
3 Steven Berkoff, Beverly Hills Cop
It’s the law for Berkoff to appear in any list of top villains: Shakespearean, James Bond, you name it. He clocked up a few in the eighties, including in Rambo First Blood Part II . But obviously this one’s my favourite.
2 Terence Stamp, Superman 2
‘KNEEL BEFORE ZOD.’ For his facial hair alone, Stamp comes zooming in at number two.
1 Alan Rickman, Die Hard
No competition. Unbelievably, this was Rickman’s first film role, and with his debut, he became the uber-Brit villain (albeit playing a German). Unbettered by anyone until Rickman played the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood Prince of Thieves .
When Harry Met Sally :
Romcoms Don’t Have to Make You Feel Like You’re Having a Lobotomy
Come closer, children, come closer, and sit by your old granny’s knee. I’m a-gonna tell you a tale from times of yore, of what life was like back in the olden days. Oh, it was all very different back then, I can tell you! Back then, we didn’t have things like mobile telephones – good gracious, no! If you wanted to walk around with a phone that had a photo of you and your friends on the front, you’d have had to cut a handset off the wall and tape a Polaroid on to the back of it. What’s that you ask? ‘What’s a handset on a wall? What’s a Polaroid?’ Oh dear, I’m using old world language. Let’s try again. So as I was saying, back when your granny was a young child, we didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t have the internet and, perhaps most shockingly of all, romcoms weren’t synonymous with mind-numbing retrograde crap that made you think all women were insane and all men horrible human beings. I know! It’s like hearing about a time when people didn’t have indoor plumbing, isn’t it?
Those of us who were born before 1995 know that romcoms didn’t used to be terrible, but we know this in the way that we know we used to love Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby in a manner wholly uncomplicated by their personal lives. We accept that time did exist, even if it does feel impossible today. The low status of the romcom today makes me very sad because it is so wrong. What’s more fun to watch than romance and comedy, for heaven’s sake? The answer is ‘ANYTHING’ if by ‘romance and comedy’ we now mean ‘misogynistic bullshit starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler’, as apparently we now do, judging by 2009’s The Ugly Truth . And the result is, romcoms have been declared dead.
‘RIP Romantic Comedies: Why Harry Couldn’t Meet Sally in 2013,’ blared the Hollywood Reporter . ‘Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?’ mused the Atlantic . ‘Death of the Romcom,’ read a graph on Box Office Mojo, showing how the romcom has tanked while movies about superheroes have soared.
Do we really want to live in a world in which Captain America is considered to be more universal than romance and comedy, for heaven’s sake? Nobody, goes the theory, wants to see romcoms any more, because they are terrible. The end. But the truth is, the only reason romcoms are terrible these days is because Hollywood stopped giving a shit about women. Fin.
Romcoms
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