Ruining Your Favorite Movies – a Saturday Night Participatory Post!
[guest post by JVW]
A friend of mine shared a popular Facebook meme the other day. It is a picture of Lloyd Dobler (the John Cusack character) from the movie Say Anything holding up the boombox blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” outside of the window of his love, Diane Court (played by Ione Skye). The caption to the photo is that the world would be a better place if we all “loved like Lloyd.”
So my immediate reaction was that when it’s John Cusack doing something like this he is considered to be “sweet” and “vunerable,” yet when somebody like me does it we are considered to be “creepy” and “obsessive.” We had some fun going back-and-forth on what today’s feminist Social Justice Warriors would think of this type of behavior. Finally, since the best part of being a conservative (in my opinion) is being a curmudgeonly un-romantic, I made this point:
I always wonder if Diane Court woke up one day only to realize that Lloyd is a proto-slacker with no job prospects who wants to spend all of his time training for kickboxing. I don’t imagine that relationship lasted too long in England.
And that got me thinking as to how of the happily-ever-after endings from 1980s teen romantic comedies might have dissolved into something a bit more realistic, based upon the lifelong observations of a grumpy old dude like me. Allow me to finish ruining Say Anything for everyone who loved that movie, then I’ll get to contaminating another 80s classic.
Say Anything
After Diane kicks out Lloyd, she switches her course of study from British Literature to Feminist Theory, and goes on to earn a PhD. Due to her good looks and American accent, she becomes a mainstay on BBC television shows where she rails against the patriarchy and the oppressiveness of phallocentric culture. She marries the eldest son of an Earl who has a 300-year-old family estate in the countryside, and she and her husband settle into a large apartment in a fashionable part of London. The marriage quickly grows stale, and Diane begins an affair with a lower-ranking minister in Tony Blair’s Labour government which leads to her divorce. Her father dies of cancer in prison, and after attending his funeral she never again steps foot in America, telling her European friends that she finds it “stifling and provincial.” Today she blogs at the UK version of the Huffington Post.
Lloyd Dobler returns to Seattle after the break-up. Because he doesn’t want to “buy anything sold or processed, sell anything bought or processed, or process anything bought or sold” he becomes a booking agent and assistant manager at a punk rock club. In 1991 he is offered the chance to manage the band Nirvana just as the album Nevermind is about to be released. He turns it down contemptuously expressing his belief that their music has become too commercial. Today he works at a liquor store and serves soft drinks at an all-ages music club on Thursdays and Saturdays. At least four times a week he drives by Diane’s old house and is overcome by melancholy.
Sixteen Candles
The movie ends with sophomore Samantha “Sam” Baker (Molly Ringwald) sharing a dining room table birthday kiss with her senior heartthrob Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling). The two of them continue to date for the rest of the spring. On prom night Sam loses her virginity to Jake in a room at a Holiday Inn two towns over. She had told her parents that she would be attending an all-night after-party sponsored by the PTA.
Jake leaves that fall to attend the state university 150 miles away. Sam writes him a letter every day declaring her unending love. Jake pledges a popular fraternity but comes home every other weekend in September and October to visit Sam. He skips his visit in early November, rationalizing that he will be home for an extended stay over Thanksgiving. When he comes back at Christmas break, he and Sam spend every possible moment together.
That spring, Sam begs her parents to let her travel to campus for Jake’s fraternity formal. After lots of negotiations they relent. At the formal the frat bros think Sam is pretty hot, but they tease Jake for being involved with a high school junior. Meanwhile, Jake’s visits home to see Sam become less frequent, and Sam’s friends begin to tell her that they are hearing that Jake has been seen around campus with a Tri Delt. It all comes to a head when Jake chooses to go to Cancun with his fraternity bros for spring break, even though it means he will miss Sam’s 17th birthday. He also begs off from escorting her to her junior prom, explaining that he has to study for finals (instead, he road-trips to New Orleans). He comes home at the end of the semester, but then tells Sam that he has to go back to campus in July for the second session of summer school. By the fall of her senior year, Sam is dating her school’s star quarterback.
The Geek (Anthony Michael Hall) is expelled from school after installing spy cameras in the girls’ locker room showers. He does time in the juvenile justice system and has to register as a sex offender. Long Duk Dong returns to China and joins the army. He is said to have participated in the Chinese army massacres both in Tibet and at Tinanmen Square. Bryce decides to move to Seattle to live with his sister, and starts going by his middle name, Lloyd.
Feel free to ruin your own 1980s movies (or movies from your generation) in the comments.
– JVW
You know what other relationship stood no long-term chance? Ronald Miller (Patrick Dempsey) and Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson) in Can’t Buy Me Love.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:24 pmLloyd Lloyd
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:29 pmAll null and void
My top nomination for “movie that ends just in time, before the roof falls in” is THE GRADUATE. I have always loathed that film. But, when you get right down to it, Dustin Hoffman has made a career of playing people I don’t like. I understand the attraction of most of them, for the actor. I totally get the desire to PLAY those parts. I just don’t want to watch.
C. S. P. Schofield (ab2cdc) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:30 pmHow about looking at “Peter Pan” a different way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi-cMWcXtBI
Actually, I love “Honest Trailers.”
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:31 pmwell lloyd joins the army, and becomes a professional assasin, ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ I know Cusack is an inveterate lefty, (WAR Inc anyone) but that one was moderately entertaining,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:32 pmwell lloyd joins the army, and becomes a professional assasin, ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ I know Cusack is an inveterate lefty, (WAR Inc anyone) but that one was moderately entertaining,
I thought of that idea too, but I couldn’t reconcile that with Minnie Driver’s role versus Ione Skye. That was a good flick.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:39 pmMarty McFly travels to now, and finds they are no hoverboards or flying cars, because the CARB banned their productions,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/26/2015 @ 5:49 pmThe wrestler dumps the dandruff freak for a mat girl, then blows out his knee and loses his college opportunity and the mat girl. He ends up pumping gas at the nearby gas station and smoking pot in a run-down apartment.
The hood and the prom queen date twice as the prom queen’s parents divorce. The prom queen moves in with her older brother and throws the hood to the side, as the hood had already moved on to another girl to add to the list of girls he never throws away.
The math geek suffers from a nervous breakdown for not being perfect and spends 6 months in a psych ward after his second failed suicide attempt.
The teacher is busted in private files and loses his job and pension.
John Hitchcock (0b843f) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:02 pmthat would have more likely happened to Principal Rooney, Ferris was glib enough to become an investment, who gets indicted by Pat Fitzgerald, in a stock scheme even though he was innocent,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:09 pmDang, I’d like to be a content provider, but all I can do is link to people who do a better job than I ever could.
CayleyGraph (dfcefe) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:17 pmJohn Hitchcock — Love it. Breakfast Club (a miserable disgrace of a movie) has an infinite number of sad post scripts that can be speculated on.
narciso — I almost took a stab at Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I like where you are going with it; what do you think happens to Sloane? I think Cameron probably joins a religious cult, or becomes an annoying Democrat politician like Gavin Newsome or someone.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:36 pmwell seeing most of Allen Ruck’s later work, that’s probable, yes he would probably join the crazy Applewhite cult,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:39 pmCameron’s dad, furious over the loss of his Ferrari, not only sends Cameron away to military school (Cameron a year later commits suicide after endless bullying) but, knowing Cameron would never have cooked up the trip on his own, makes sure Ferris’ mom and dad know what a budding thief, liar and sociopath Ferris is. Ferris spends the rest of his senior year in his room, perfecting his hacking skills. Ferris, unable to give up the thrill of “going big,” ends up in jail after a minor “fun” prank on the White House website after the FBI subsequently finds nude pics of Sloane (still technically a minor) on his computer.
Jeannie, his sister, takes up with the Charlie Sheen juvenile delinquent and gets caught up in his latest drug deal gone awry, losing a limb and the use of her right side in the escape attempt. Cameron’s mom and dad still visit both of them every week in the penitentiary and nursing home, respectively. Rooney goes on to be local Superintendent of Schools and spends the rest of his career making the school boards and principals miserable. The Bueller family dog is run over accidentally and gruesomely by Grace, the sweet school secretary, who is so distraught that she begins drinking to drown her guilt. She dies of liver failure three years later.
no one of consequence (325a59) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:40 pmno one of consequence — Outstanding!
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 6:54 pmthat was inspired and unfathomably dark, I had forgotten about Ferris’s hacking, he might have started a ‘global thermonuclear war’ with not too much effort,
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:01 pmThanks and that was really a lot of fun. Great idea for a post and hope to see lots more movies skewered.
no one of consequence (325a59) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:06 pmFast Times at Ridgemont High
Stacy Hamilton and Mark Ratner start dating that summer, but Stacy soon decides that he is a boring drip and breaks up with him. At a party in the spring of her sophomore year, she tries cocaine for the first time and ends up sleeping with Damone again. Later on she starts a torrid affair with the father of one of her classmates, and subsequently breaks up that marriage. Today she tends bar at Moonshadows in Malibu, though she’ll probably be fired if her looks continue to fade.
Ratner becomes despondent after Stacy breaks up with him. He goes cross-country to New York where he starts working with an acting coach. He does community theater while waiting tables at a restaurant near Lincoln Center, and gets his big break on a soap opera where his character lasts for twenty years. Later he comes out as gay and settles down with a sociology professor at NYU.
Linda Barrett appears in Playboy’s “Girls of the California Beaches” photo spread, which leads to some minor roles in B-movie sex comedies. As her career starts drying up she starts appearing as a featured dancer at strip clubs, and as she descends deeper into drugs she ends up in porn movies. She’s now a cocktail waitress at Binion’s Casino in downtown Las Vegas.
Brad Hamilton attends junior college at LA Valley while working at the convenience store. He rents an apartment with a fellow student who is 25 and who deals drugs on the side. Stacy sleeps with his roommate one evening after scoring some coke. Brad then moves to New Mexico where he runs a gas station on historic Route 66 in Tucumcari.
Damone becomes a Christian, marries the daughter of a noted televangelist, and heads up a ministry that encompasses seven states and serves 12,000 people. He’s under investigation for tax fraud.
Spicoli is killed by local surf Nazis while trying to surf Lunada Bay. No one is ever charged with the murder.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:14 pmLeonard (“Gomer Pyle”) only shoots Gunny in the groin before he shoots himself. Gunny survives after undergoing a series of operations. While convalescing, he re-evaluates his life and opts for additional elective surgery. Joker, Cowboy and Snowball walk into a USO in Saigon and find Gunny in a WM uniform complete with skirt and 1.5-inch heel regulation pumps and calling “herself” Brigitte (pronounced bree-zheet).
nk (dbc370) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:49 pmJVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:14 pm
lol — Didn’t even see that movie but that’s soap opera level hilarious.
no one of consequence (325a59) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:51 pmI actually love Breakfast Club. And I see myself in that movie. I’m the math geek in Breakfast Club, the track geek in Juno, and the Indian (dot) who plays a very tiny bit role in Easy A. And I love all 3 movies.
John Hitchcock (14132f) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:57 pmnk (dbc370) — 9/26/2015 @ 7:49 pm
no one of consequence (325a59) — 9/26/2015 @ 8:08 pmam seeing a pattern here 😉
Yeah, I know a lot of very respectable people who like (or even love) the Breakfast Club. Myself, I just loathe most John Hughes movies with the exception of Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller. Oh, and Weird Science too. I just though that Hughes had a cookie-cutter vision of what high school was like — clearly he was dealing with some personal angst from his school days. But what really turns me off on Hughes movies is that they seem to have given every woman of my generation carte blanche to insist they were the overlooked and under-appreciated sensitive soul, so that even the popular girls like the cheerleaders have bought into that garbage.
Anyway, that’s just me. As I mentioned, I am grumpy and curmudgeonly.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 8:23 pmHarold and Maude. But instead of tooling around in a E-Type hearse, they both go on holiday in a Morris Marina. Whereupon, in true Top Gear fashion, a piano drops on the car.
Bill H (2a858c) — 9/26/2015 @ 8:36 pmUnited States Naval Aviator LT Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) still mourns Goose’s death, he’s put it behind him in his new position as an instructor in the “Top Gun” program at Miramar. The problem is his relationship with Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood, the smokin’-hot astrophysicist and civilian Top Gun instructor (Kelly McGillis) who likes to ride behind him on his motorcycle. You see, she’s 5′ 10″ tall in her bare feet, whereas he’s 5′ 7″ at best. In sneakers and jeans on the b-ball court, the height difference wasn’t noticeable. But then, with his promotion, came the requirement to go to evening social functions — and it frankly tweaked Maverick’s nose that Charlie towered over him in the fashionable heels she insisted on wearing. “Evening gowns are proportioned so that they can only be worn with these,” she insisted, but he’d just storm off again, humming “Take My Breath Away,” and eventually their communications broke down altogether.
Charlie soon fell in love with, and married, a submariner; they now live in Hampton Roads, VA, with seven children. Maverick resigned from the Navy and joined the Scientologists, with whom he’s still closely associated.
Beldar (fa637a) — 9/26/2015 @ 8:59 pmMarty McFly travels to 2015 and finds that Biff’s son is running for President.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:02 pmAt the end of Aliens, as Riply tucks herself into hibernation, you see an alien moving in the background. Oh, wait…
Kevin M (25bbee) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:04 pmwhen they did prometheus, they forgot LV-426 doesn’t have an atmosphere, so that can’t be where the horse shoe ship crashed.
narciso (ee1f88) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:07 pmIn Horton Hears A Who, Horton finally realizes that the noise he was hearing was his hearing aid turned up too loud. This simple misconception condemns all of Whoville to death.
Bill H (2a858c) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:12 pmAt the end of The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke almost falls into the depths of the gas giant, but luckily catches himself at the last moment on an antenna mount under the station, he realizes that there is nothing remotely like a breathable atmosphere around him. Before the Millennium Falcon can reach him he breathes in several lungsful of methane and chlorine and whathaveyou and falls off the structure, dead.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:16 pmAt the end of Ghostbusters, when they cross the streams, it is exactly as bad an idea as was first suggested, and the universe collapses into a black hole.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:18 pmAt the end of Ruthless People, Sandy waits for a long time on the beach for Ken to come out with the cash, but unbeknownst to her, Ken and Barbara have met up down the beach and are now halfway to Mexico. The police arrest Sandy for Barbara’s kidnapping and murder.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:23 pmWeird Science
Hilly and Deb soon come to their senses that realize that Wyatt and Gary are two dweebs with almost zero social skills. They start avoiding the boys’ calls, and they do no more than give the boys a pained smile and “hi” when they see them at school. They stop hanging out with high school boys altogether and start frequenting fraternity parties at the local college. Both are now stay-at-home moms of promiscuous teenage daughters, Hilly in West Palm Beach and Deb in Scottsdale.
Gary and Wyatt get tired of being bullied by Max and Ian (Robert Downey, Jr.), so they pay those scary-looking black guys at the blues club to have them killed.
It dawns on the boys that they could have both slept with Lisa (numerous times), and they are driven slightly crazy wondering why they never seized the opportunity. They vainly try to recreate her with several late-night bra-on-the-head hacking sessions, but they are never again successful. Wyatt writes a book in which he takes most of the credit for Lisa, which causes a rift between the two. Gary starts a company specializing in artificial intelligence, while Wyatt starts a company emphasizing robotics. The two of them never collaborate again.
Chet is an IRS regional director and president of the local school board.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/26/2015 @ 9:58 pmno one of consequence (325a59) — 9/26/2015 @ 8:08 pm
If one is claiming to have made a grittily realistic movie about the U.S. military, especially the Marines, nooc ….
nk (dbc370) — 9/27/2015 @ 3:55 am31.
A true favorite of mine.
As Rhett walks to the door, Scarlett takes out her pistol and shoots him in the back, saying “Jerk! For you there will never be a tomorrow!”
BTW, Loew’s is using that Cusack with the boombox in its current ad. Won’t say how as it would truly spoil the humor for those who haven’t seen it.
kishnevi (31ba4e) — 9/27/2015 @ 6:42 amBetter Off Dead
Monique goes back to France, you know FWANNCE, where she dies in a horrible baguette accident in a boulangerie.
Lane ends up wrecking his Camaro drag racing with some guy that Roy Stalin brings in from outside the town, some guy named O’Connor. But that works out for the best because he then goes to try and find Monique in France, fails and becomes a ski instructor on the slopes of St Moritz.
MrScience_ (cd3d49) — 9/27/2015 @ 7:31 amRoy Stalin gets Beth Pregnant and then disappears from her life. She puts the child up for adoption.
Badger, realizing the potential of the internet, and his love for trashy women, starts a holding company that now owns PornHub, Xhamster, and most of the other “free” porn sites.
Lane’s parents both die when Lane’s mom accidentally poisons them with her cooking.
Oh, come on, folks.
While they didn’t focus on RomComs, it’s obvious what you guys are really looking for is this…
Seriously.
IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (dfad0f) — 9/27/2015 @ 8:01 amDid you forget the part in the “Sixteen Candles” sequel where Samantha accuses Jake of rape (18 months after their last consensual sexual encounter), and the whole fraternity is kicked off campus?
Dagwood (d51cb9) — 9/27/2015 @ 8:41 amGreetings:
I’ll be exercising the “from your generation” option forthwith.
“The Magnificent Seven”, while certainly a cinematic and musical gem, is actual the a progressive infiltration of the American mind and, perhaps, the initial move in the Lady Samantha Power’s “responsibility to protect” subterfuge.
Think about what you have imbibed. The initial subplot has two aging, approaching poverty “Anglo” gunfighters “riding shotgun on a hearse” to help bury a dead and rapidly decay 100% true Amerindian in the local Boot Hill in spite of the overtly racist wishes of the local non-Amerindian townfolk. Subsequently, the two find four other similarly situated racially and economically “anglos” and a Mexican “anglo wannabe” to fulfill the title’s requirement. Then, in spite of their own precarious economic situations, they drop every thing and head off to Mexico to protect “los peones Mexicanos” from the slings, and arrows, and bullets of “los banditos Mexicanos” and in destroying those latter miscreants provide the “anglo wannabe” the opportunity to rediscover his roots, find the truest of true loves, and reject the imperialist, colonialist, oppressive, evil culture that has gifted him with the opportunity to do both.
And, slower learner that I am, I must have watched it a couple of dozen times.
11B40 (0f96be) — 9/27/2015 @ 8:49 amHuh, 11B40, I never saw the movie in that light before. That’s something to think about.
A future fun post might be “subliminal political messages hidden in our favorite movies.” But I guess since Hollywood is so damn overtly political to begin with, it might not be all that subliminal.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/27/2015 @ 9:21 amIt would only be “subliminal” if the message were straight, conservative or Christian.
Hoagie (f4eb27) — 9/27/2015 @ 9:26 amMy problem is I’ll never be able to see it in any other light from now on!
Hoagie (f4eb27) — 9/27/2015 @ 9:30 amMr. Miyagi did 1-4 for statutory sexual seduction:
“Daniel-San, come here. Show me… whacks off.”
Dr. Detroit (733151) — 9/27/2015 @ 10:34 amGreetings, JVW, Hoagie, et al.:
Well, with that kind of reader response, how can I deny you both/all a continuation.
Let’s look a bit more closely at the “riding shotgun on a hearse” scenario to see what we can see. Lo, and behold, we have a traveling salesman who seems to have precipitated the situation by disregarding the principle of first finding out why something was/is done before you undo it. Because the Indian “dropped dead in front of” him, he feels that his economic power, paying the undertaker, is authorization for him to impose his unknowing will on the local population. His sartorially (not to mention that chapeau) resplendence clearly identifies him as a “in the geography, but not of it” passer through. Yet his moral superiority drives him forward in spite of his lack of knowledge of the local sociology. What if the local indigenous types don’t bury their dead in the ground and doing so is likely to send them on some kind of rampage like those our modern Muslim brothers and sister so seem to enjoy. Thus, his moral superiority and lack of intellectual curiosity may well end up inflicting dire consequences on the locals while he goes merrily on his way pursuing even more economic benefits wherever he can find them.
Somewhat similarly, let’s look at the Yul and Steve duo. Are these two not “independent contractors”, plying their gunslinging trade in a rapidly shrinking marketplace? So, instead of some allegiance to human rights for all, everywhere, and forever, isn’t it just as plausible that what they’re doing is seizing an opportunity to display their craft abilities in hopes of drumming up some needed business and income? Even that close to the wonderfulness of Mexico, one does not live by “plumbo” alone. A good source of “plata” is also required. And, as diaz follows noces, an offer of employment materializes.
11B40 (0f96be) — 9/27/2015 @ 12:14 pmI nominate 11B40 for guest studio host next time the AMC channel re-runs The Magnificent Seven.
JVW (ba78f9) — 9/27/2015 @ 12:44 pmThe Geek (Anthony Michael Hall) is expelled from school after installing spy cameras in the girls’ locker room showers. He does time in the juvenile justice system and has to register as a sex offender
This was in the 1980’s before they had these lists. Maybe he has to register ten years later?
13.
The White House did not establish a web site until 1993. But there was hacking before. in fact there was a famous worm released in 1988.
Sammy Finkelman (2972ba) — 9/27/2015 @ 2:45 pmThis ain’t America’s Blooper, Spammy!
Yoda (7d462a) — 9/27/2015 @ 4:55 pmYoda feeling tired and old he is! To see the change from when I was just a wee toad, depressing it is! Yoda has now lived through two millennia, two centuries, six decades and three years, I have.
Yoda (7d462a) — 9/27/2015 @ 5:02 pm