the groundhog day project

The thing about Baby is, she is already is someone who wants to make the world a better place. Maybe despite her parents—it's a little presumptuous to think they aren't all for her plans—she wants to join the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps had only recently begun. The first group of volunteers started training in June 1961. She references monks burning themselves in protest—Thich Quang Duc famously did so June 11 1963. Right before the film starts. And, she "wants to send her leftover pot roast to Southeast Asia" (sort of) and she plans to major in "Economics of Underdeveloped Countries"— (I find it odd that Neil tells her that he is "going to Mississippi with a couple of busboys, freedom ride." With a different tone, it could be a sarcastic response to her Peace Corps plan, like he doesn’t buy that a rich Jewish girl like her would deign to do that. Except, the actor playing Neil doesn’t say it that way. He says it like he means it. His reference ...

I want to say coincidence, but I'm guessing there's something more involved than just chance. But, anyway, weird coincidence that Dirty Dancing came out just a month after Adventures in Babysitting and they both* begin with The Ronettes' "Be My Baby". (* This isn’t true but for whatever reason “Be My Baby” sounded just like “ Then He Kissed Me ” in my head and then even as I realized the mistake I was already writing.) Which at least distracted me momentarily-- trying to see if there was a producer or someone in the music department that worked on both these films --from the voiceover narration that lasts all of three sentences. The worst kind of narration, the useless opener because someone involved, probably the director, couldn't think how to establish place and time succinctly. That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me "Baby" and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatle...