the groundhog day project

From the Los Angeles Times , April 9, 1967: "Hippies... many officials see them as a serious threat to today's young people." In 1963, counsellors and campers at were run off from a summer camp outside Rosman, North Carolina after "'Hate literature was distributed around [the nearby] town saying some very untrue things about the camp--that we were sex perverts, Communists and God knows what else,' [camp counselor Bruce] Grund said" (NYT, 1963). In 1964, Reverend Frederick C. Wood, Jr. stirred up controversy when he suggested that sex was a "good." "Premarital intercourse need not be 'bad' or 'dirty,' he said. 'Indeed, it can be very beautiful.' (NYT, 1964). In 1959, Leo F. Koch, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Illinois was dismissed from his position after purportedly condoning premarital sex. Koch wrote a letter to the school paper, which included this: With modern contraceptives and medi...

Interesting thing. I'm watching Chaplin the other night and I'm too sick to really get into some preachy, self-help-style rant about being creative, being yourself, and all that jazz. Tonight, I'm watching Dazed and Confused and it occurs to me I could pull the same sort of message out of this film. I mean, that is the point to, say, Pink's (Jason London) throughline, yeah? That's what the freshmen are doing heading out to party with the older kids. That's even what Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) is doing hanging out with everyone younger than he is. They're all trying to just hold onto some ideal form of self, to enjoy a life full of possibilities and... ("I wanna dance," indeed.) See, it could turn cheesy, easy. And then I get distracted, because cheesy rhymes with easy and I thought maybe I should replace it with corny and then I got to wondering what was the difference between cheesy and corny . And, I'm feeling like Slater (Rory...

The one thing that Poltergeist is, aside from a three-decades-old horror film that holds up pretty damn well despite a few structural flaws-- (For the record, those structural flaws include the late introduction of Steve's boss, and the very late lead in, thereby, to the explanation of what's going on, or rather why. Its is also, arguably, a structural problem that all those potential metaphors I mentioned yesterday pretty much get forgotten after the first act... or get twisted up into the one metaphor I'm going to play through today. The movie hints at things that are not followed up on. Why do Dr. Lesh and Tangina exist as separate characters at all? (I might figure out how to answer that last one below.) And, for the record, there is definitely something going on in this film regarding suburbs and tract homes, but that also gets twisted into today's actual topic. Actually, the potential dangers in domesticity--those kids with the remote control cars that purpos...

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First a nitpick: Lisa should not be in Mr. Hand's US History class. At least, I don't think she's supposed to be a freshman. While a senior (Brad) being with a freshman isn't unheard of, it seems strange that, since they've been together for two years (and this is said at the beginning of the movie, thus at the beginning of the school year), that he, presumably as a freshman, got together with a sixth grader... or if the 2-year measure is approximate, sophomore Brad got together with seventh grader Lisa. Seems odd. Maybe she just really sucks at history, but then she should have had summer school or something by now. If she is a freshman, or has flunked history class numerous times, it seems a lot more reasonable that Brad, a senior, wants to break up, whether or not they're having sex. Keep in mind, book Brad is a virgin while movie Brad claims that Lisa is good in bed. But anyway, I'm drifting beyond the obvious topics today. So, first... second of all...

(Before moving on from sex and feminism, there is a notable detail I should share. Crowwe's screenplay was based on Crowe's book which was based on time spent under an assumed name at the high school he had attended not too many years earlier. That isn't the notable detail. There may be a Hollywood-type reason that movie Stacy is both sexually naive and sexually adventurous... I mean aside from it actually being possible to be both. In the book, its is a girl from out of town--Laurie Beckman--who receives the blow job lesson from Linda, not Stacy. Somewhere in the transition from book to screenplay, I suppose Laurie and Stacy got combined.) But, I want to talk about Spicoli. This is from the book version of his arrival at Mr. Hand's class: Jeff Spicoli, a Ridgemont legend since third grade, lounged against the doorframe. His long dirty-blond hair was parted exactly in the middle. He spoke thickly, like molasses pouring from a jar. Most every school morning, Spico...