I would've died for you too, Duckie |
|
My sister was reading a supplemental Conde Nast magazine, Movies Rock, the other night, which included their choices for the top 50 greatest soundtracks ever. The selection ran the gammot, from EASY RIDER to 8 MILE to the number one selection of PURPLE RAIN (probably their selection that I agreed with the most). But it was the listing off of PRETTY IN PINK that got me to thinking. And the first thing I thought of was Jon Cryer sliding across the floor of the record shop that Molly Ringwald worked in, lip synching the words to "Try a Little Tenderness."
Which got me to thinking that I really only continue to watch that movie over and over for one person: Duckie. While Cryer went on to try and establish a hot young newcomer career (plummeting back down to earth after duds like HIDING OUT and DUDES crashed and burned at the box office) in film, people refused to shake their image of him as Duckie, the lovesick teenager with an obsession for his next door neighbor. It is Cryer that I think of when I quote that movie, from "His name is Blane? Oh! That's a major appliance, that's not a name!" (Although I usually screw it up and say the latter sentence backwards.) to "It's called a sense of humor - you should get one - they're nice."
I suppose I shouldn't feel too badly for Cryer, considering that he's managed to go on to form a fairly lucrative television career on "Two and a Half Men," but I've never watched an episode of that show, so I'm not sure if it's worth crowing about. I do know that he stars on it with another favorite sidedish of mine, the formerly hot Charlie Sheen.
I'm sure you're wondering why I would refer to one of Hollywood's most well known progeny as a sidedish. You see, I'm one of the few people who really doesn't like the movie FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. Perhaps it's because it's one of the only John Hughes movies that made a male character the strong lead. Perhaps it's because Matthew Broderick comes off as smarmy and unattractive as Ferris, making me wonder why all the kids in school liked him so much. Maybe it's just the lame lip synching scene in the parade. Point is, I don't like the film.
But I have watched it more than my fair share of times. Usually because someone else in the room liked the movie and refused to change the channel. For those moments, I just sat still and waited for Sheen, in a role that didn't even get a name (in the movie's credits he is mentioned as "Boy in Police Station"). The dark haired loner look, staring down a pre-op Jennifer Grey as she waits to be picked up by her parents after the bizarre and unsettling run-in with the school principal in her home. His shining bit in that movie gave me a crush that I might not otherwise have developed, easing into his low-toned voice and don't-give-a-shit demeanor that would become as synonymous with Sheen's reputation as his later drug abuse.
Hughes really was the master in creating niche roles for unknown young actors and giving them a shot at greatness. While Cryer and Sheen have both gone on to be recognizable household names, there is one man who shamefully did not get the same treatment. As the skinhead Duncan in Hughes' commonly overlooked SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL, Elias Koteas stole the mid-section and end of the show, in my opinion. His carved drawing of his what his girlfriend would look like without skin as well as his introduction to the rich kids' party with, "It must be a hen house, because all I see is chicken shit," make it hard for me to recall if I was happy or not when Stoltz's character finally comes to his senses and realizes that his best female friend is really the girl for him.
Koteas went on star in the first TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie as the beloved Casey Jones as well as continued to be a supporting character in many movies starring talents with less, well... talent than he had. (Evident the strongest in LOOK WHO'S TALKING TOO.) And while many might not be able to place him by name, he is one of those actors that I will seek out in film, as well as be more excited over a project if I see him attached. I've always liked the outcasts and Koteas is one of the bigger ones. (One of my personal favorites of his is the great HIT ME.)
While Bonnie Hunt seems like a big name and is a favorite amongst the Disney Channel set for her starring role in the remake and subsequent sequel of CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN with Steve Martin (and for the slightly older set, she might be remembered for her role as Alice Newton in the BEETHOVEN series), 
"I'm incapable of small talk." (Me too, Bonnie.) |
|
she's actually made more of an impact in the supporting roles that she's carried. While I clearly remember her as the chipper White House tour guide in the movie DAVE, it was in JERRY MAGUIRE that she captured my full attention. The sister to lovelorn Renee Zellweger's Dorothy Boyd, it was Hunt as Laurel, the pot-smoking, stern advice doling aunt and skeptic that really made the overly melodramatic moments a little easier to take. A funny counterpoint for every over the top eyebrow tweaking of Gooding Jr, Hunt sticks out the most to me in that movie.
She went on to perfect that role of the best friend, later writing, directing and starring in the woefully underappreciated RETURN TO ME. This time she wasn't the sister but she was still the one handing out the sound realistic advice, including the warning that not shaving one's legs before a first date will help to ensure that it won't go "too far." Or the moment perusing the women's magazine and reading aloud, "'What do you expect most from a relationship? A: Companionship. B: Sex. C: Respect.' I'd have to go with B: Sex. But let's mark "C" so we get a higher score..." Although I suppose I'll have to admit that as the writer and director she might have had a more deft hand at making sure that her character got the better lines.
An actress who's been around longer than most realize, slugging it away in a business dominated by an uneven ratio of Caucasian to different ethnicities, is the always good Sandra Oh. Of Korean descent but raised in the suburbs of Ottawa, Canada, Oh usually stands out for just looking different. But in the road/buddy movie SIDEWAYS, as the lusty wine afficionado Stephanie who ends up in an affair with Thomas Haden Church's Jack, Oh stands out for her attitude rather than her exotic exterior.
From the moment that she pours too much wine at a tasting, taunting the men with "I know, I need to be spanked," when they point out her unusual generosity, Oh steals her portion of the show. A wine-drinking, pot-smoking mom to a little girl, you never know quite what to expect out of her character and in the end you're on her side even if you saw her downfall coming. Stephanie isn't the perfect woman but Oh was the perfect woman to play her.
But that isn't the most... to say the least. Perhaps one of my favorite lines from the movie GREASE, uttered by the pinnacle of perkiness herself, Patti Simcox, the line reminds me not only of the movie but gives me that nostalgic feeling for high school and the girls that headed our cheerleading squad. Actress Susan Buckner only appeared in a few episodes of various television shows after her memorable turn in the popular musical turned movie turned musical turned reality television show. But I will forever get the image of her bopping about at the dance with Lorenzo Lamas in that fluffy blue dress when I see the DVD cover for the film.
Terrence Howard earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his turn as a pimp and wanna be rapper in 2005's fantastic HUSTLE & FLOW, but I had a hard time getting the image of his sparkling blue eyes and wide open grin out of my head for the first 20 minutes of that film. Howard was such a visual as the star football student Louis Russ in 1995's MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS, the kid who couldn't find the beat. You struggle right along side him in the movie, watching his frustration at not being able to even bang on a drum. You choke up with pride as his father points out his son while he's playing in the town parade. And you cry when you find out that his character dies while in Vietnam. His lines are so few and yet his impact on that film is so great that he was prominently featured in television ads for the movie at the time of its release and is still the first thing people see in their minds when recalling the movie.
Back when I had a roommate that forced me to sit through multiple viewings of some of the sappiest chick flicks of all time, I took a little comfort in the fact that both of her favorite ones to watch had some particularly fun side characters that I could enjoy. In the romantic comedy PRETTY WOMAN, Julia Roberts may have been the hooker with the heart of gold but it was Laura San Giacomo as Kit De Luca who was the hooker with the heart of tin. She is slightly more believable as a street walker than Roberts was, chewing through her scenes with a raspy accent and that disheveled look that came off like she'd actually just been doing her "job." What little reality that the movie had in it, I looked for in her.
In the romantic 
Admit it, you choked up too... |
|
drama-slash-comedy-slash-musical DIRTY DANCING, Jennifer Grey was the overlooked Francis "Baby" Houseman, the girl who wasn't pretty enough or lithe enough to garner much attention from the boys. She snags Swayze while her prettier older sister Lisa, played by actress Jane Brucker, ends up with the lascivious waiter who knocks up Swayze's regular dance partner and leaves her to the bloodied hands of a back-alley abortion doctor. I'd always liked Brucker as the clueless sister who doesn't seem to understand that she can't sing a note in tune but not because she was spoiled as most of these types of characters are. I saw her cluelessness as being an ignorance of the times, back when beauty was a more important asset in women than intelligence. She's actually kind towards Baby in a way that is commonly forgotten or overlooked, helping her sister out in the only area that she knows how: with men. It was Lisa who was really the one getting shortchanged all along.
Sometimes being pretty can be a bad thing. At least, when it comes to men it is. Only the third film in Val Kilmer's resume, TOP GUN was the first film that people paid attention to the actor in. Originally destined to be an insignificant player in the film, test audiences had such a strong reaction to Kilmer's unforgettable character, Ice Man, that director Tony Scott edited in additional scenes with him. The funniest thing in all of it to me is that Kilmer was opposed to being in the movie, seeing it as being too mainstream for his tastes at the time. But due to a contractual obligation with the studio, he was forced to oblige. Many people note that the trademark sneer and palpable animosity towards lead Tom Cruise came more from Kilmer's disdain for having to participate in the film at all. Whatever the case, Ice Man became one of the (unintentionally) favorite characters in one of the most popular action movies of all time.
Sometimes the movie makes the character and sometimes the character makes the movie. One of my favorite movies of all time, Quentin Tarantino's masterful freshman debut, RESERVOIR DOGS, featured so many characters that vibrated off the screen that they took what otherwise would have been the very tired premise of a diamond heist gone wrong and turned it into something else entirely. Actor Steve Buscemi as the unforgettable Mr. Pink made his entire career on the power of what his character represented in that movie. Antsy, nervous, paranoid and a little delusional, Mr. Pink is what every little guy would be like in those circumstances. The idea of robbing a place and making a great deal of money sounds great until you have to actually carry it out. Plus it is Mr. Pink who gets to utter the most politically incorrect lines, tapping into the depth of what many people think but few people express. When I think of RESERVOIR DOGS, I think of how many arguments I've had over the years over whether or not Mr. Pink dies at the end. And I'm honestly still on the fence about that one.
But Mr. Pink isn't the only shining stand-out in the film. Michael Madsen as the psychotic Mr. Blonde (also referred to as Vic Vega earlier in the film, the name of the character that John Travolta plays in Tarantino's PULP FICTION) gets the movie's most popular and mind blazing scene. Pulling a bound and bloodied cop out of the trunk of his car and then mutilating him and dousing him with gasoline all while dancing to Stealer's Wheels' "Stuck in the Middle with You," he put into motion an entire nation of people who do the "Mr. Blonde" whenever they hear that song come over the sound system.
In all of this and the countless other characters that I've stupidly overlooked in an attempt to find a clumsy way to wrap this sucker up, I find the greatest value in film. Some people believe that it's in a way that a director shoots a scene, in the way a score underlines the emotion between the actors. I believe that it's all of that and the small contributions that were given in full earnestness without any clue as to how monumental they would become. People coming in and doing their job, working their hours, reading their lines with a full heart. Sometimes out of a need for a paycheck, sometimes out of a love of the material. Sometimes because they wanted to hurry up and get the hell out of there.
It's really the greatest lesson that any of us can learn about life in general. All those little things, even the ones that we don't think are going to matter, can end up being life-altering. The magic is in the unexpected.
I think that's why it's magical.
 email this column to a friend
Comment on this Column:
Sorry, you must be a member to add comments to columns.
Join or Login. |
 Subscribe to MatchFlick Movie Reviews through RSS
|
| Neglected Foster Child of Hollywood |
Every other Wednesday
Not-so-gentle musings from the girl who is saving room in her uterus for Tarantino's spawn.
|
| AwesomeZara |
She's awesome, who would have guessed that?
|
| Contact |
If you have a comment, question, or suggestion, you can send a message to AwesomeZara by clicking here.
|
|
