Welcome to our second book club chat of the year: Life Moves Pretty Fast by Hadley Freeman. I’m so excited to talk the movies of the Eighties and this book with all of you!
Ground rules remain the same as they always have. For those of you who might be joining us for the first time (hello new friends!) all are welcome. All of our topics are numbered and we ask that you refer to them below by that number to help people find the conversation topics they are looking for. If you are responding to someone else’s thoughts, please try to respond directly to them as suits your own ponderings. Also, note that while I’ve never once had to use it and don’t expect to now, I’ll delete comments that are not germane to our discussion (although I’m imagining this discussion will be pretty broad) or get out of hand.
In addition to the topics here I’ve saved a few for our Facebook group, Cannonball Read Book Chat so feel free to wander over there throughout the course of the day and evening.
On to the topics:
- How well do you feel the examination of how movies have evolved to what we have on offer today was handled by the book?
- Freeman focuses her work on the big movies of the decade, not the critical darlings. It is inevitable that in a book coming in at a crisp 305 pages many of the largest; most loved films are left out (heck, Freedman puts 20 of them in her epilogue). Which of yours did NOT receive an in depth discussion, and what lesson did it teach you?
- Movies today say so much about society’s changing expectations of women, young people, and art from their eighties counterparts. Why do you think some of these changing expectations have occurred?
- Which movie were you surprised to see included? Or, which movie’s “lesson” felt off to you?
- What do you make of Freeman’s stance that eighties movies are a lot more “politically engaged and female-friendly and even moral” than similar fare from the past fifteen years?
- Freeman’s tone and authorial voice: does it work for you? Does it match her subject?
- Freedman is going over some well-tread, very white territory. What else is she missing?
- The discussion of Dirty Dancing, When Harry Met Sally, and Steel Magnolias focus on these works as womens movies. How to you compare and contrast their reception to things like Big Little Lies in 2017?
- Do we see movies about real, relatable people any more? Were the movies of the 80s truly relatable?
- Grab Bag – pick a movie and sound off!
And… go!
Re: #7 and the whiteness of the movies, I was surprised that Do the Right Thing wasn’t included – talk about lessons learned. Freeman does mention it in the epilogue, since it’s an independent film. It’s hard to think of it as that, but yeah it was produced by Spike Lee’s company, and only distributed by Universal. So it technically doesn’t fit in with the other movies she covered.
Yea, I’m not done with the book yet (I noticed the last chapter is on Eddie Murphy and I’m not there yet) but so far, the homogeneity of all the movies are very striking to me. I think it really says something that these were the most well-loved.
In my to come review I’m going to postulate that she should have moved the Eddie Murphy chapter up to the beginning and then referred to it as she went on discussing the other movies. While I understand her methodology the homogeneity is startling (but then, so are many 80s movies which were blockbusters).
Moving the Eddie chapter would have been smart! I kind of felt like it would have made more sense to focus on actors or directors vs. specific movies.
John Hughes and
Bill Murray in particular got referenced in a few chapters…
With chapters on specific movies, you can skip around if you’ve only seen some of them.
But she doesn’t stay focused on the movies she’s talking about in each chapter. The Ghostbusters chapter is half Top Gun!
Re #9: I’m not sure if relatable movies happened then or now in a totally real way. I think almost every movie she talked about involved white middle-ish class families. Which isn’t reality for lots of people. Obviously one doesn’t need to match every characteristic to relate, and some films aren’t meant to be realistic, but I think the authors choice of films says a lot about how she related to films, but doesn’t hold up as well for sweeping statements about society.
Same. I felt let down in many chapters by her “arguments” regarding the lessons. If she had left off her subtitle and dropped that catch-all and instead wrote chapters around themes presented in the movies she discusses and their ubiquity in the decade, it would have made a stronger book.
We definitely do get relatable films today, but they tend to be the indie dramas or quirky ones that Fox Searchlight or Focus Features or Sony Pictures Classics release. In general, movies today are more about escapism and fantasy. Not as many films about every day people getting in trouble or having wild (believable) party. Neighbors or even Spring Breakers are more on the raunch side vs. the ‘let’s just have fun’ day in the life vibe of Ferris or Sixteen Candles. Edge of Seventeen is a period film and gets close to the vibe she means about Fun eighties films though.
1. When Hadley pointed out in the Ferris Bueller chapter, about how class is largely absent from movies today, I find that to be quite true and I’ve never thought about it like that before. It helps me to understand now why people in my ages group (millennial) can feel so comfortable talking about racism and sexism and whatever, but be so closed off to topics regarding class and socioeconomic status.
I’d also like to point out that she rags on The Other Woman a lot, but I think she missed the point of that movie. I agree that that movie was pretty shit, but it was definitely not about pitting women against each other. It was actually about women coming together to utterly screw Jamie Lannister.
I was wondering about The Other Woman as I read, because I haven’t seen it (I’ve seem most of the movies discussed in the book) but her take felt ever so slightly off. I also had some issues with her interpretation of The Hunger Games as she, like many, give zero credence to Katniss’s inner life.
#8 – I feel that the lukewarm reception to Big Little Lies as just another “evening soap” and the full-throated excitement about Twin Peaks‘s revival speaks directly to this point: the critics are by and large men and they respond to images of themselves. You will never convince me that Twin Peaks is any less soapy than MOST of what gets labelled “womens stories” yet because its David Lynch it is “art”. I for one, am annoyed that we are still here.
#8 I think one of the things that interested me the most about her discussion of gender and movies was the historical details about how tough a road the writers, filmmakers, and producers had getting films (like Dirty Dancing, etc.) to the theaters. In light of the “surprise” success of Wonder Woman, it feels like things definitely haven’t changed that much.
#4 Which movie were you surprised to see included?
I mentioned in my review that I had never heard of Baby Boom so that suprised me…
I was also a little suprised about Batman because I don’t think of it as a particularly ‘eighties’ film.
I’d never heard of Baby Boom either. That chapter really made me want to track the movie down, though.
Baby Boom was excellent. One of my favorite movies as a kid. I think it’s on Netflix.
Not done, but there’s not a chapter devoted to Steve Savage movies like Better Off Dead or One Crazy Summer. Many John Hughes players ended up in his films too!
There’s also a dearth of science fiction or fantasy movies as well!
I had totally forgotten about One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead. My version of this book would have included a chapter devoted to John Cusack –from background player in Class and Sixteen Candles to The Sure Thing, a movie that I still quote to this day, and onwards to Say Anything. I recently gave away my videotape versions of Hot Pursuit, Tapeheads, and One Crazy Summer (since I haven’t had a working VCR since about 2009).
I LOOOOOVED John Cusack. Grosse Pointe Blank crystallized my obsession and I scoured ebay for VHS copies of every film (sadly many of these are lost now). My AIM screenname was even teresacusack. :)
We were always meant to be friends, Teresa! The lack of Cusack (and oh how the mighty have fallen there) in this book is terrible. While Grosse Pointe Blank is my favorite, the 80s are full of high quality Cusacks.
Late to the party! Got overwhelmed yesterday and didn’t check in here or Facebook. So many things to say, I don’t think I can say them all. So I’ll just pick two and go.
5.What do you make of Freeman’s stance that eighties movies are a lot more “politically engaged and female-friendly and even moral” than similar fare from the past fifteen years?
My main problem with this book was that I felt it was constantly trying too hard, reaching too far on the points being made, and this is one of those points. She went in with a thesis she was hell bent on proving, and completely ignored the contexts of the non-80s movies which were supposedly inferior to those she was writing about. Her points, in almost all the chapters, were far from being proven, I thought. The whole thing felt so flimsy. Why was it necessary for her to put down other movies in order to redeem a decade of movies previously thought only as fluff? One is not necessary for the other. It really bugged me.
6.Freeman’s tone and authorial voice: does it work for you? Does it match her subject?
I thought her attempts at being relatable and funny fell flat every time. I thought she was being consciously adorable and clever in a bid for relatability, and it grated on me. I much preferred when she proved her knowledge of her subject rather than trying to court my favor with shallow cuteness.
Like, the Dirty Dancing chapter was legitimately fascinating for me! (When she wasn’t shitting on other movies to prove her point.)