Word: teenpix
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...young actor in the early '80s there was plenty of roles, but mostly in the tits-and-zits teenpix that emulated Porky's. Cruise did time in a dim comedy, Losin' It (1982), about some lads who visit Tijuana to mislay their virginity; he played the sensitive one. From its plot synopsis, Risky Business (1983) promised more of the lame same. An affluent high school senior has an affair with a hooker (Rebecca de Mornay), dunks the family Porsche in Lake Michigan, turns his house into a brothel and still gets into Princeton. Sounds like the Reagan era in miniature...
Where are the teenpix of yesterday? Gone with the demographic wind. As the U.S. movie audience ages toward thirtysomething, Hollywood has discarded the teen genre like so many Molly Ringwald paper dolls. What's left? Only caustic satire, as in the new black comedy Heathers, or retro fantasy, as in Sing...
...screenplay by Daniel Waters (a find) offers all that and much more. It believes, like J.D., that "the extreme always seems to make an impression." Its language is extreme -- a voluptuously precise lexicon of obscene put-downs and dry ironies -- and so is its scenario, which adjusts the teenpix format to accommodate subjects as bleak as copycat suicides and killer peer pressure. Heathers finds laughs in these maladies without making fun of them because Waters writes from inside teenagers. He knows what makes them miserable and what makes them bad: that they are already adults but can't accept...
...dialogue is all song cues; Pitchford's songs are standard technopop, except for a comic showstopper, called Life Ain't Worth Livin' (When You're Dead), that the suicidal teens of Heathers might take to heart. Otherwise, Sing is strictly Gold Diggers turned to brass. In the latest teenpix class portrait, it's a dropout...
David Puttnam had a good idea when he took over Columbia Pictures in 1986. He would match Hollywood actors with daring directors from Britain, Europe and the U.S. independent bloc. The films that emerged from this cultural Marshall Plan in reverse might not be better than the usual teenpix and dime-novel dramas, but they ought to be more exciting...