Bob Greenberger

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August 22, 2004

Sundays

Sunday night has been reserved as family night. The kids can’t go out, and every chore needs to be done by 6 p.m. Deb or I make a nice Sunday dinner and on most of those nights, we put our plates on our laps and catch up on television. For years we stockpiled shows such as Buffy, Angel, Joan of Arcadia, Gilmore Girls, Boston Public, or Alias and can work through 2-3 of these until that night’s new episode of Alias. By 10 the VCR was recording The Practice and we had cleaned up and repaired to bed, having shared a few hours together.

On other nights, we play cards or board games at the dinner table so it’s now always about the tube.

And when we’re caught up on episodic stuff, we watch movies. A few weeks back we showed the kids Bull Durham but we’re as apt to see a musical or drama.

This past Sunday, we let Kate pick the meal and the movie. After all, it was her last Sunday at home before going to college. We couldn’t repeat this ritual again until Semester break in December. She asked for lamb chops, roasted potatoes, broccoli and fruit pie. At Blockbuster, she went looking for 13 Going on 30 but came home instead with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She read my copy of the book years ago and had heard much about the movie so it was now or never.

I had read Cameron Crowe’s book about his undercover journalistic experience when it came out in the 1980s. The movie was a pretty faithful adaptation and it performed quite well when it opened in 1982. For a movie made on a $4.5 million budget, it grossed over $27 million making it a solid success.

The movie didn’t gloss over the casualness of the sex, the various high school “types” and their oddly overlapping arcs, and the lifestyle of its time. It was a true glimpse of the Los Angeles valley lifestyle just ahead of the valley girl craze. Watching it, Deb squirmed a little as Jennifer Jason Leigh gets naked a few times and Judge Reinhold masturbated to the classic image of Phoebe Cates emerging from the pool. After all, Robbie is a young 16 and he usually doesn’t like watching sex scenes when the adults are around.

It’s incredibly well made and well cast. Director Amy Heckerling does a masterful job adapted Crowe’s script and had a magic touch with the cast. This is one of those movies where even the bit players grow up to be stars. If you look over the list, there’s Leigh and Cates, the emergence of Sean Penn, Reinhold and the bit guys like Forrest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Anthony Edwards and Nicholas Coppola (before changing the surname to Cage). Ray Walston revived his career Heart’s Nancy Wilson cameos and later married Crowe. And Crowe’s attention to the music is evident here, too.

And it looks really dated. Partly it’s the grainy film stock, but it’s also the hairstyles and fashion, the slang and the things that are deemed important. (Did anyone really use Led Zeppelin IV side one for seductive mood music?) After it ended, the kids liked it but Robbie was quick to assure us kids didn’t talk like that today nor did the girls practice oral sex on carrots during lunch. He also remarked he had heard of the scene when Walston visits Penn in his home to make up the time wasted in the classroom so now he knew what people had been talking about.

I like it when we can watch stuff and it leads to conversations. No doubt, today we will be having a meal and chatting about something goofy even though we’re not home playing cards or watching TV. It’s the way things are supposed to be. Sundays are going to be very different when Kate goes away.

Posted by Bob Greenberger at August 22, 2004 09:44 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Michael Burstein at August 23, 2004 08:22 AM