Life Moves Pretty Fast: The lessons we learned from eighties movies (and why we don't learn them from movies any more) (6 page)

Thus, the US ratings system is built to ‘reflect the standards of American parents’, as Graves puts it, and if that sounds somewhat fluid, then it is. There is no strict rubric about what is and isn’t allowed, only a sense of what ‘American parents’ will tolerate. But Graves is very clear that the ratings board does not offer instructions to filmmakers about what they can and can’t film – that’s the studio’s job. All it’s there to do is ‘reflect [American] society’, and in its angstiness about teen sex and relaxed attitude towards violence, in a country where three people are killed every hour by guns and abstinence is still part of many schools’ curriculum, one can easily argue that it succeeds at that.

‘The Americans have issues we don’t have, mainly from the Bible Belt, and so as a result out of all the films we rate we give about 30 per cent a different rating than they get in the US,’ David Cooke, director of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), explains in his plush office overlooking Soho Square, which feels more like the study of a grand literary editor than the workspace where the number of swear words and nipple counts in films are catalogued. Compared to the States, Cooke says, the BBFC is ‘more relaxed about sex – but we’re not as relaxed as Scandinavia!’. On the other hand, ‘We are a bit tougher on violence than they are in the States.’ Like the MPAA, the BBFC sees its role as being ‘in line’ with public opinion as opposed to leading it. Unlike the MPAA, it does this by surveying 10,000 members of the public every four years to gauge their opinions on what they do and don’t think is appropriate in films for varying age groups. It has been doing these surveys since 2000; before, film ratings were, Cooke says, ‘more capricious, more down to the whims of the [BBFC] president’. When Cooke looks back at movies from the eighties to check their ratings, he frequently thinks the ratings were too strict. In retrospect, they reflect how that decade in Britain was, as Sian Barber in
Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver Screen to the Digital Age
, sees it as ‘filled with heightened debates about childhood and children which emerged from [the Thatcherite] right-wing political agenda’.

These days, the BBFC takes context into account ‘as opposed to relying on an algorithm’ when looking at sexual content and swearing, which the MPAA does not as much. As a result, a film like
The Invisible Woman
, which depicts Charles Dickens’s adulterous affair, got a 12 in the UK but an R in the US, definitively proving that Americans are more likely to be led morally astray by the amorous adventures of a Victorian author than the Brits. There definitely hasn’t, Cooke says, been a hardening of attitude – by the BBFC or the British public – towards abortion. ‘There also hasn’t been much of a shift about what’s deemed acceptable for teenagers by adults. The only social issues the public have expressed greater concern to us about are teenagers harming themselves, the sexualisation of children and the glamorisation of drugs,’ he says. ‘So those are the issues we’re probably tougher on now than we were in the past.’

While attitudes towards teenage sex in the UK have fluctuated a little over the past thirty years, there has been nothing like the big waves of hysteria that one sees in the US. The British government has never funded any abstinence-only sex education: ‘Occasionally a Conservative minister will promote the idea, but they need to provide evidence that this would be beneficial and none has been provided. If anything, the opposite is repeatedly proven,’ says Lucy Emmerson from the Sex Education Forum. For the past forty years in this country, contraception has been relatively accessible and – crucially for young people – free, especially since 1974 when what were then called Family Planning Clinics were allowed to prescribe the Pill. Despite occasional comments by various Conservative ministers, legalised abortion is generally accepted as a right. America is a much more conservative country than Britain because it is a much more religious one. But this does not mean British teenagers are immune to the changing winds from America. After all, the vast majority of their pop culture comes from that country.

When there was talk at the beginning of the twenty-first century of remaking
Dirty Dancing
, Bergstein wondered how the studios would deal with the abortion plot in the film, especially as she owns the rights to the script. After all, when
Fame
was remade in 2009 the abortion plot was simply dropped, which also happened when the 1966 film
Alfie
was pointlessly remade starring Jude Law and Sienna Miller. In the end, it became a moot issue because – perhaps unsurprisingly – the remake never happened. Instead, Bergstein turned the play into an international stage musical mega-hit and oomphed up the abortion plot, emphasising the risks Baby’s father, Dr Houseman, took by helping Penny, endangering both his medical licence and his freedom. People, Bergstein says, need to remember what it was like before, and what it could all too easily be like again:

My feeling has always been that people who are anti-abortion are anti-sex and anti-pleasure for young women, and that’s why I wanted to make a movie about both. That’s why Baby and Johnny’s first love scene comes after they’ve seen Penny nearly drowning in her own blood as a result of sex, and the song on the record player is [Solomon Burke’s] ‘Cry to Me’. It’s not an idealised romantic scene, it’s a scene about loneliness and terror and sex. But I wanted to say if you plunge into the physical world and if you do it with honour and without fear, you will attach yourself to a moral world.

More than that,
Dirty Dancing
taught my generation of women, and continues to teach generations of younger women, about their moral compass. We came for the sex, but we have stayed because it shows us something even more real and scary. It teaches us something about ourselves and the world. And, as Baby learns, only the best kind of sex can do that.

THE TEN BEST POWER BALLADS ON AN EIGHTIES MOVIE SOUNDTRACK

10 ‘Up Where We Belong’, by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, from
An Officer and a Gentleman

Technically, a love song, yes. But a Cocker-ishly POWERFUL love song.

9 ‘Glory of Love’, by Peter Cetera, from
The Karate Kid II

Say what you like about
The Karate Kid II
(it’s rubbish, for starters), but this song is grade A singing into the hairbrush material.

8 ‘Shooting for the Moon’, by Amy Holland, from
Teen Wolf

The end scene when this song plays is so satisfying that I didn’t even notice the first 10,784 times I saw it that an extra in the background drops his trousers at the camera.

7 ‘Let the River Run’, by Carly Simon, from
Working Girl

Total singing in the shower fodder, and that’s the best kind of fodder.

6 ‘St Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)’, by John Parr, from
St Elmo’s Fire

John Parr tries as hard to get a St Elmo’s reference into his song as the characters do in the film, and God bless them all for trying.

5 ‘Flashdance – What a Feeling’, by Irene Cara, from
Flashdance

The movie that made Hollywood decide to knock out films that look like movie videos. And this is the song that convinced them.

4 ‘Purple Rain’, by Prince, from
Purple Rain

I’ve seen this film hundreds of times, and I still have no idea what this song is about.

3 ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’, by Tina Turner, from
Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome

TIIIIIINAAAAAAAAA!!!!

2 ‘If You Leave’, by OMD, from
Pretty in Pink

The ultimate prom song, one that manages to combine Ducky’s heartbreak with Andie’s romantic triumph. No filmmaker understood better the power of synth music than John Hughes.

1 ‘Holding Out for a Hero’, by Bonnie Tyler, from
Footloose

Nobody does power ballads like Bonnie does power ballads.

The Princess Bride
:

True Love Isn’t Just About the Kissing Parts

It feels downright inconceivable
^fn1
to devote only one chapter in a book about lessons gleaned from eighties movies to
The Princess Bride
. Why, just off the top of my head, while standing on my head, I can name five life lessons that this movie teaches you that you don’t learn anywhere else:

1. ‘Never go against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!’
   
2. ‘Love is the greatest thing – except for a nice mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich when the mutton is nice and lean.’
   
3. ‘Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.’
   
4. Eventually, you learn not to mind the kissing parts.
   
5. And most importantly, ‘As you wish’ = ‘I love you.’
   

Such is the depth of wisdom in this film that in 2013, twenty-six years after its release, BuzzFeed devoted a list
^fn2
to the lessons gleaned from it. A BuzzFeed list! Who needs the Oscars,
Princess Bride
, when you have that ultimate of modern-day accolades?

The Princess Bride
is so adored that it’s probably
^fn3
now a clichéd response on internet dating websites: walks on the beach, an open fire, sunsets and
The Princess Bride
. And yet, despite this, love for
The Princess Bride
is not seen as desperately hackneyed or cheesily safe.
The Princess Bride
is what you’d need a prospective love interest to cite as their favourite movie for the relationship to progress,
^fn4
it’s the one film that would make you rethink a lifelong friendship if you found out your best friend ‘just didn’t get it’ – not that they would ever say that because I honestly don’t know a single person of my generation who isn’t obsessed with this film. And not just my generation: in his very enjoyable book about the making of
The Princess Bride
,
As You Wish
, Cary Elwes – who played Westley the farm boy, of course – recounts being told by both Pope John Paul II and Bill Clinton how much they loved the movie, proving that
The Princess Bride
appeals to saints and sinners alike.
^fn5

Now, having said all that, I have a confession to make. I was not the big
Princess Bride
fan in my family when I was growing up. That title instead went to my sister, Nell. Our mother took us to see it at the cinema when I must have been nine and Nell was seven and even though the film was – incredibly – something of a commercial disappointment when it came out, the cinema was absolutely packed with kids like us. In my mind, everyone in the audience was utterly in thrall to this tale of Buttercup (Robin Wright), her true love Westley (Elwes), and their battles against Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) and Count Rugen (Christopher Guest) and their eventual assistance from the brave swordsman Inigo (Mandy Patinkin), the giant Fezzik (the professional wrestler known as André the Giant) and Miracle Max (Billy Crystal).

Afterwards, we stood in the cinema atrium as our mother bundled us back into our coats.

‘Did you girls like it?’ she asked.

Standing there in her corduroy dungarees and T-shirt, Nell looked in a state of semi-shock. ‘I LOVED IT. I WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN RIGHT NOW!’ she practically shouted.

Now,
The Princess Bride
is wonderful, but in order to understand how unexpected this proclamation was, you have to know a little bit about my sister. Ever since she was old enough to throw a tantrum, my sister refused to wear dresses. She never played with dolls. She refused to let my mother brush her hair, and had apparently no interest in her physical appearance. She did not like mushy stories – she didn’t even like reading books. In other words, she was the complete opposite to me. How much of that was a deliberate reaction against me, a younger sibling defining herself in opposition to the older one, and how much of it was simply an innate part of Nell was already a moot point when we went to see
The Princess Bride
: Nell’s parameters were so firmly set by then that her nickname in our family was ‘the tough customer’. She would only consent to drink one kind of fruit juice (apple), and only by one brand (Red Cheek), and only if it came out of a can (never a carton), so there was absolutely no negotiating with her about mushy princesses. Lord only knows how my mother got her to see the movie in the first place. She must have hidden the title from her.

And yet, like the grandson in the film, Kevin Arnold,
^fn6
Nell found that, against all odds, she did enjoy the story, just as Kevin’s grandfather, Columbo,
^fn7
promises. I think Nell made my mother take her to see the film at the cinema at least three more times. As she wished.

When it came out on VHS, we bought it immediately and it was understood that the video cassette was officially Nell’s, just as the video cassette for
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
was officially mine. When she found out that the film had originally been a book by William Goldman, who also wrote the screenplay, she asked my amazed mother to buy that, too. Nell read it over and over until the pages fell out, so she stuck them back in and then read the book again.
The Princess Bride
was the book that taught her to like books, as much as the movie taught her to relax some of her other rules. She developed a lifelong crush on Westley and, not long after, she started wearing dresses, too.

The reasons why Nell loved this film so much exemplify, I think, why it is universally adored in a way that, say, the vaguely similar and contemporary
The Never-Ending Story
, is not. It’s a fairy tale for those who love fairy tales, but it’s also a self-aware spoof for those who don’t; it’s an adventure film for boys and – for once – girls, too, but without pandering to or excluding either; it’s got a plot for kids, dialogue for adults and jokes for everyone; it’s a genre film and a satire of a genre film; it’s a very funny movie in which everybody is playing it straight; it’s smart and sweet and smart about its sweetness, but also sweet about its smarts. It’s a movie that lets people who don’t like certain things like those things, while at the same time not betraying the original fans. But most of all,
The Princess Bride
is about one thing in particular: ‘
The Princess Bride
is a story about love,’ says Cary Elwes. ‘So much happens in the movie – giants, fencing, kidnapping. But it’s really a film about love.’