[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