"Heathers" Revisited
What
is all this legend and fanfare around "a cult film" known as
"Heathers"? To use a Winona witticism, the whole thing "didn't fry my burger".
It was billed as
"the movie to
see" by the langouring, flit-wristed alternative crowd-- downing valium and
standing out by the street corner in offish nonconformity like Weimar-era
cabaret fans gaily laughing it up over the rest of us. As the "party
line" went, talking in the AIDS-infested voice of the cartoon cow, this was the watershed cultural moment where dark, quirky
movies dethroned cheesy, conventional John Hughes fare-- the crown of sweet
"teen queen" wholesomeness removed from Molly Ringwald's pouting
countenance and put on the mysterious dark horse who had only her
inherent scrappiness to offer. The new teen queen would only shrug and give a wicked
smile as the dethroned princess of Middle America shrieked and locked herself in
a closet. "Oh, it's so
funny!", they'd exclaim in a
tight-knit huddle, cigarette in hand like a discount version of the Andy Warhol
in-crowd with glazed-eyed and iguana-like expressions who found black comedies of murder, suicide, and high school cliques
downright jolly and knee-slapping.
Winona was a teenager when she went inexplicably bonkers for the script and signed on despite the advice of pretty much everybody, but if I were her parents I would have put my foot down and said "no". Yet in their West Coast uselessness of Zen-like parenting-- if you even want to call it parenting-- they must have figured: "Yes, yes-- Winona can do whatever she wants!".
But here's what I'd say if I were her old man, another breed of Californian:
"What?!
My lovely daughter ain't gonna star in a movie LIKE THAT! You
might as well change the title to 'Dog-Fucker'!"
That's where "Linda Lovelace" got her start, before she moved on to "Deep Throat" that was funded by money put up by The Mob. Then the profits were channeled back into a delightful outing known as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
Hell, even some of us gotta have standards . . . . .
"WRRRAAHHH!"
The Boys of W.A.S.P.
Note: This is not Winona's Skull!
In short, "Heathers" was atrocious and not befit for man nor beast, nor for a lovely young talent who though wonderful in everything she does, happened to find herself in the wrong movie.
The film was made of individual scenes that looked and sounded good, but had no sense of rhythm or pacing. The dialogue buzzed back & forth much too fast, and unless you remembered something obscure mentioned eight pages before in the densely-laden script, events would seem to happen for "no reason" like Winona Ryder "popping out of the rabbit hole". You would have to watch the film 20 times to catch everything, but with all the hideously dark things that were happening-- who would want to stick around for seconds? It did not bother me so much that "the jocks" and "popular girls" died, but the acquiescence to the suffering going on in that world and how everyone took the cruelty for granted. It reminded me way too much of what I remembered, but never wanted to relive-- jacked up about 10,000 times like an atomic fireball.
We all revisit that darkness in our own way, and for me I hooked onto "The Turner Diaries" on the far-right fringe as the ultimate middle-finger cast at the society that damaged me so. But it is each our own responsibility to become less damaged, come down from our perch like mohawked teenaged punk-rockers growing weary of flipping off the police, and rejoin conventional society. At first, it may seem exciting-- if not liberating-- out there in the cold, windswept streets of young anger, but in the end you find out that you've thrown your life away on piss-ant adolescent fantasy instead of staring down life like a man (-- or a woman, for that matter).
Time to come back inside and let sleeping dogs lie.
*******************
"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
("I heard that, Missy!")
© 2008 by Insufferable Industries
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