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  Then there is the running gag of junior gym teacher Coach Bracket’s desperation to discover the reason his shimmering distaff counterpart Miss Honeywell (Kim Cattrall, the only Porky’s player to go on to anything like regular employment) is nicknamed Lassie. He finds out when he drags her up to the boys’ locker room and she becomes so howlingly inflamed by the torrid aroma of lingering boy sweat that he has to cram a jockstrap in her mouth. But more, much more than this, the defining Porky’s set piece, the moment burned into the memory circuits of a generation, and the moment which threw down the gauntlet to a million villains looking to get into the teensploitation business, was the legendary girls’ shower room scene. This is where Angel Beach’s roaring boys squat peering through holes punched in the walls behind the shower room, thus affording them a free, full-on, towel-flicking, buttocks-lathering peep show. “I’ve never seen so much wool,” hyperventilates Pee Wee. “You could knit a sweater. It’s got to be the biggest beaver shot in the history of Florida.” At that exact moment, the squashy rump of a big-boned bather blocks Pee Wee’s view. “Move it, lard ass!” he bawls, breaking the boys’ cover.

  A salient reminder that we’re observing another age comes from the girls’ reaction. They like the fact that they’re being watched, posturing for their voyeurs’ entertainment. Tommy responds by sticking first his waggling tongue, then his wiggling dick through the peephole. He fails to see the entrance of his eternally forbidding nemesis Miss Balbricker, who dispatches her charges. It takes a few moments for Tommy’s organ to come between her crosshairs, but when she spots it (it’s cheerfully chirping, “I’m Polly the Penis and I just love to have fun”), she takes immediate and decisive action. She grabs hard and holds on with a double-handed grip. The Big Yank is followed by a scene with Balbricker in the dean’s office demanding justice (“I’ve got him now and I’m not going to let him slip through my fingers”) in which the actors portraying teachers are called upon to pantomime hysteria for so long and so loudly that they must have been coughing up blood and particles of lung by the time “Cut” was called.

  Porky’s thin sliver of plot contained its more serious passages. Principally, there was the case of Tim. Pounded and abused by his leather-clad, boozing badass dad (“He tore a guy’s ear off”), Tim attempts to take out his frustrations on Jewish high-schooler Brian Schwarz, but Brian is no whining Woody Allen asthmatic type. He shrugs off Tim’s catcalls of “kite” (sic), but doesn’t stand down from a schoolyard face-off. “When you’re Jewish you either learn to fight or you take a lot of shit. I don’t like to take shit.” So saying, he flattens Tim. This provides the impetus for Tim to reject his loser of an old man and bond with the former target of his prejudice. Brian is also instrumental in the movie’s climax. Still smarting from the rough handling he received at Porky’s hands, Mickey the redneck sets out for the Everglades to seek revenge. He returns a bleeding pulp. His colleagues decide payback is overdue. Utilizing a combination of trucks, boats and chainsaws, they destroy Porky’s. (A moment of pathos ensues when the owner surveys the wreckage of his establishment and wheezes: “It’s gone. Porky’s is gone.”) There’s a chase back to Angel Beach where Mickey’s brother, the sheriff, shoots out the lights of Porky’s car and extracts a fine. The conquering heroes are met by a marching band and the cheers of their peers. As the movie concludes, Pee Wee almost gets laid.

  When set against the welter of soggy sex farces that would spring up in its wake, Porky’s seems like a model of restraint and even, kind of … classy. Atrocities like the Screwballs and Hardbodies series were packed with 28 year olds grimly going through the teen pussyhound motions. The cast of Porky’s actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. Dan Monahan, the sprite who played Pee Wee, brought a giddiness to a role that, in the hands of other actors, would have you renouncing your membership in the species. Although a Guy Movie to the nth degree, it boasted a couple of memorable female roles. Canuck screen vet Susan Clark strolled sardonically through her scene as Cherry Forever. (About Pee Wee, she sneers: “We’re going to have to tie a board across his behind or he’s liable to fall in.”) Kaki Hunter, who plays Wendy Williams, the inspiration for Pee Wee’s attempted devirginization, performs the same function in Porky’s that Julia Louis-Dreyfus does on Seinfeld. On absolutely equal terms with the boys, she’s able to mock and humor them, even when they pull the geriatric workplace prank of asking Wendy to find a friend of theirs. Her unfazed shrug after repeatedly yelling “Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?” is a charming moment.

  Two sequels, Porky’s 2: The Next Day (1983) and Porky’s Revenge (1985), followed. The first revolves around the boys’ attempt to save their drama class production of Romeo and Juliet after a coalition of Christians, KKK members and city councilmen object to a Seminole Indian being cast as the male lead. The second had Mr. Porky (absent from The Next Day) return with the intention of blackmailing the school’s basketball coach for gambling debts. By this time, most of the cast looked like they were only sticking around to pay for their own kids’ expensive orthodontic work. Though Porky’s was eventually superseded by a decade’s worth of teen comedies, whenever a locker-room raid was on the horizon, its imprint was unmistakable.

  * * *

  Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) is more than just a Grossout pioneer. In its variegated vignettes are many moods, nuances and flavors, almost as many as in the components of the Sherman Oaks Galleria in which its ensemble lurks and works. But if you consider the scenes which made the biggest and most immediate audience impressions, and those which still have influence at this very moment, you will think of 1) Sean Penn saying “You dick!” to Ray Walston, 2) Phoebe Cates fellating a carrot and 3) Judge Reinhold wanking in the crapper. So it is that Fast Times takes its place in the pantheon.

  In the seventies, Cameron Crowe was one of Rolling Stone’s star reporters. He was 16, an almost unheard-of age at which to hold down a position of influence at a magazine staffed by wizened men of letters. But Crowe radiated a boundless enthusiasm for the stuff that made the graybeards wince. The Eagles, Frampton, Fleetwood Mac, you name it, he raved about it, and without the ironic distance that makes today’s seventies boosters such insufferable company. The luster of Stevie Nicks was quick to dim and Crowe discovered what it takes most American rock writers a lifetime to learn: theirs is no fit gig for a grown-up. He left behind the pressures of the bimonthly deadline and, for the purposes of a book project, went into deep cover at an unnamed American high school (thought to be Clairemont High in San Diego), still fresh-faced enough at 21 to pass unnoticed among the student body. A year’s worth of observed and overheard language, fashion and lifestyle choices formed the content of the Teen Like Me exposé Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The book quickly became a movie. Written by Crowe and directed by Amy Heckerling, Fast Times was a launching pad for a shoal of young actors including Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Eric Stoltz, Forest Whitaker, Anthony Edwards and Nicolas Cage.

  Establishing a teen movie convention, it takes place in a world entirely uninhabited by parents. Establishing another convention, it takes place in a world almost solely inhabited by whites. (The awed reaction to Forest Whitaker’s fierce football star is almost subtle compared to the sense of Otherness with which blacks are regarded in subsequent films.) It is, of course, most immediately memorable for Sean Penn’s audience-slaughtering performance as the sweet-natured, brain-fried surf savant, Jeff Spicoli. Spicoli—the man who, while talking on the phone, will beat himself about the head with a shoe (“That was my skull, I’m so wasted”). Spicoli—the man who will wreck Charles Jefferson’s car but show no fear, even though Jefferson’s younger brother predicts certain death (“Relax, my old man is a TV repairman, he’s got an ultimate set of tools. I can fix it”). Spicoli—the man with a respect for history (“So what this Jefferson dude was saying is, We left this England place because it was bogus. If we don’t get us some cool dudes, pronto, we’ll be bogus, too…”). From his choking en
unciation to his beautifully staged classroom duels with Ray Walston’s Mr. Hand (“C, D, F, F … what are you people, on dope?”), Spicoli is up there with Belushi’s Bluto as a bad influence of heroic proportions. The character has continued to reverberate down the years, detectable in the personas of Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth, Pauly Shore and Kato Kaelin.

  If Spicoli was Fast Times’ hit, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Stacy Hamilton was its heart. “Brad, your sister’s turning into a fox,” observe associates of senior Judge Reinhold as his little sib passes by. And therein lies her dilemma. While simmering with womanly desire, she’s still awkward and self-conscious (and still packing a little baby fat; a pre-Madonna pot pokes out now and then). Her best friend Linda (Phoebe Cates), the epitome of sophistication and experience, is appalled at Stacy’s late development (“God, Stace, you’re fifteen!”). Attempting to fall into step with the sexual status quo, she gives her number to a sluglike salesman who eats at the mall pizzeria where she works. He takes her to the make-out rendezvous, The Point, and slobbers on her while she stares at the ceiling. She agrees to go on a date with bashful Mark “Rat” Ratner (Brian Backer), a colleague at both Ridgemont High and the mall (he’s the assistant to the assistant manager at the multiplex). The Rat is buoyed with advice from his weasely friend Mike Damone (Robert Romanus) the scalper (“When it comes to making out, whenever possible put on side one of Led Zeppelin 4”), but blows the date big time, taking Stacy to a swank eatery and then forgetting his wallet. Nevertheless, she asks him back to her home (her parents are—of course!—away for the weekend). They sit in her bedroom leafing through a photo album and then she offers herself to him. He starts to respond, then makes a mumbling excuse and flees her bedroom. It’s too much for him!

  Stacy rebounds to Mike, whose professional gregariousness (“Can you honestly tell me that you forgot the magnetism of Robin Zander or the charisma of Rick Neilsen? I Want You To Want Me? The Dream Police?”) seems to cross out the possibility of his being clumsy or inexperienced. In the event, he knocks her up. Although he grudgingly agrees to give her a lift to the abortion clinic, he leaves her in the lurch. It’s left to brother Brad, whom she tells she’s going bowling, to take her. When she emerges, Brad’s waiting for her, sympathetic and nonjudgmental.

  Brad’s luck with life and love is scarcely better than his sister’s. When we first clap eyes on him, he’s a Golden Boy, glowing with self-confidence (“I’m a senior now. I’m a single, successful guy”), a hot car, a loving girlfriend and a position of importance at All American Burgers. He dumps the girlfriend, thinking he’s restricting himself from the many vistas of womanhood that are his for the taking. He loses the plum job at the burger dispensary after being drawn into a war of words with a short-tempered customer. Soon, he’s reduced to working in a seafood joint and forced to wear a pirate uniform. Then, when he spies the lovely, bikini-clad Linda reclining by his pool, he rushes upstairs to pleasure himself and is caught in the act by the star of his grubby fantasies. “You’re telling me the fun is over,” he will bitterly tell a career officer. “I’m still waiting for the fun to begin.”

  Though Spicoli gets all the laughs, Fast Times’ sympathetic treatment of Stacy, Brad and Mark Ratner’s precarious progress through their teenage years belies the movie’s come-on title. Time is flying, but not everyone’s having the fun they’re supposed to be having.

  A semisequel penned by Crowe, The Wild Life (1984), attempted to replicate Fast Times’ structure, placing its protagonists in post–high school situations. Eric Stoltz had the Brad-type role of the bright guy with the big future that falls apart the moment he moves into his swinging bachelor pad. Lea Thompson, Stoltz’s estranged girlfriend, is Stacy a few summers down the line: a waitress having an affair with a married cop. The Sean Penn, big-hearted bonhomie quotient is provided by beefy brother, Chris, as a cheerful wrestler. It’s no catastrophe but how highly can you recommend a movie whose most memorable moment is a fleeting cameo from Ron Wood during a party scene in Eric Stoltz’s swinging bachelor pad?

  We Don’t Need No Education

  School Movies

  Screwballs (1983) is the madman in Porky’s’ attic. When the prerelease buzz about the positive testing of Bob Clark’s film registered on Roger Corman’s antenna, the veteran carpetbagger determined to rush out something almost exactly the same. Cribbing from Clark’s shooting script, Screwballs’ writer/producer team, Linda Shayne and Jim Wynorski (they hired Canadian director, Rafael Zielinski, who lacked what suddenly came to be seen as the light comedy touch of countryman Bob Clark), set their piece in 1965 in the environs of T&A High. There, a quintet of droolers enliven school days by pretending to be doctors and extending breast examination to interminable lengths. T&A’s last surviving virgin, Purity Busch, fails to see the funny side and lands the boys with detention. For this, they swear, The Bitch Must Pay! Among the high jinks is a strip bowling contest during which a nerd gets his member caught in a ball yet still manages to execute a strike. This one’s really a relic from the rollicking days before date rape became a consideration. Appropriately for a movie containing so many shower scenes, the viewer feels grubby throughout. A sequel, Loose Screws (1985), contained exactly one joke. Here it is: the requisite allocation of stud (here called Hardman), fat guy (Marvin Eatmore) and dweeb (Hugh G. Rection) are sitting round a cafe table bemoaning their imminent expulsion. “This is the last straw,” exclaims one. “No, there’s plenty more,” chirps a waitress, depositing a fresh selection of straws on the table. You had to be there.

  * * *

  For anyone who’s ever gotten a wedgie, had their head stuck down a toilet bowl, their sexuality called into question in mixed company or their hair used as a handy storage space for a still-soggy ball of chewing gum, two school bully–bashing movies went part of the way to easing the agony. (Years of expensive therapy went the rest of the way.) In My Bodyguard (1980), cringing little Clifford (Chris Makepeace) turns the tables on nogoodnik Moody (Matt Dillon) when he engages hulking Linderman (Adam Baldwin), previously Moody’s instrument of torture, to be his hired muscle. Ultimately, Clifford learns to stand up for himself but the few scenes where the schoolyard power is suddenly within his grasp are sweet indeed.

  * * *

  Three O’Clock High (1987) is an altogether weirder proposition. Straight outta film school and sizzling with technique, director Phil Joanou imbued his high school High Noon with all the dazzling and disorienting effects at his disposal. The camera spins and swings, the cast all act like zombified versions of teen stereotypes. The only natural element in the movie is the mounting distress of its hero Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko). The whole school is ablaze with rumors of new transfer Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson), a notorious psycho, whose homicidal exploits are exaggerated with each telling. Jerry, a nose-to-the-grindstone straight arrow, is persuaded by his best friend, the editor of the school newspaper, to do a “Welcome Buddy!” piece. In an effort to ingratiate himself, Jerry pumps the bad dude’s hand. Only then do we find that, more than all the other things that set him alight, Buddy hates being touched! So much so that he vows to annihilate Jerry in the parking lot at … three o’clock high! Jerry descends through several levels of Hell, stooping so low as to pilfer from the till of the student store he manages in order to buy off the bully. In the end, though, the underdog has to stand up for himself, taking a few lumps and then, in front of the whole school, knocking Buddy unconscious with a sneakily concealed knuckle-duster. Not only is Jerry’s use of a hidden weapon lauded as a triumphant example of brain over brawn but, in the closing moments, he’s suddenly catnip to all the teen sex kittens who’d previously disdained him.

  * * *

  More male wish fulfillment permeates two notorious older woman schoolboy fantasies. First, Class (1983). Spotless Rob Lowe and baffled Andrew McCarthy are prank-playing preppies, as adept at vomiting and voyeurism as any attendee of T&A High. McCarthy, though, is still unsullied. That is, until a spot of solo barhopping b
rings him into contact with an older woman—and not just any older woman, but Jacqueline Bisset, whose pinups fueled the straining and squeaking of a million midseventies single bedsprings. Before you can say “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,” she’s impaling herself on him in the middle of a glass elevator. Come Christmas, rich kid Lowe, in a display of largesse, insists McCarthy, a man of more modest means, join him at his sprawling family home. The visit is a rousing success until McCarthy meets Lowe’s ravishing mother who is, of course, La Bisset. (Lowe, McCarthy and Bisset in one movie? Timber!) He’s dumbstruck, slack-jawed and boggle-eyed. In fact, he’s the same as he is in every movie.

  The thrill of nailing his best friend’s mom wanes quickly for McCarthy. But the movie plays a cruel trick, on both him and us. Bisset won’t leave him alone. Class appeared before the Fatal Attraction woman-from-Hell cycle, so she’s not razoring the crotches out of his shorts. Instead, she sneaks into his bedroom at night, feels him up under the dinner table and follows him back to school. Mention is made by Lowe’s father, Cliff Robertson, of his wife’s neuroses, but it is never ascertained whether she’s a nut, a drunk, a stalker or some sort of crazy free spirit. Once her proclivities are revealed, she’s simply removed from the picture and the real climax nail-biter is whether Lowe will forgive McCarthy and they can go back to being preppie friends again. Go on, guess.