I wish I could say I'm posting the above clip in memoriam of Jennifer Grey's old nose or to celebrate her well deserved win on Dancing With The Stars. [[And I am just self conscious enough to feel the need to point out that I've never watched a single episode of DWTS but I did watch clips of all of her dances on Youtube.]]
No I'm posting this because of the male in the clip. You know the guy that the whole internet and Hollywood gossip world has been talking about for 24 hours straight now? And yes I've laughed at much of what has come out of Charlie Sheen's mouth because it's insanely quotable but it's been a sad laughter.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off is easily one of my favorite movies of all time and has been since I first saw it. Nothing about it isn't perfect and with all due respect to its extremely talented lead cast in one scene Charlie Sheen stole the whole movie. Of course he stole it by playing a bad boy rebel in a leather jacket who was in jail for drugs, a role that even back then I'm sure he had no trouble drawing personal inspiration from. But that didn't change how dryly funny and painfully beautiful he was. You had no trouble believing that he could turn sour faced Jeanie into the giddy girl who almost falls down the stairs after kissing him. I fall a little bit in love with him every time I watch that scene even knowing that the character and the actor aren't the sort of guy you should give any part of your heart to or probably even hold hands with without ample protection.
I don't remember the Charlie vs. Emilio debate being quite as polarizing as the Mighty Battle of the Coreys that separated the girls from the other girls in the late 80s. Maybe because it was more a Mighty Battle Of The Young Guns cast and I separated myself more by being a Charlie girl in a sea of Kiefer acolytes than in picking Sheen over Estevez. I just know that Charlie Sheen was certainly on my List of Future Husbands for part of my pre-teen adolescence. Emilio was cute but Charlie was all dark hair and danger, a combination that attracted me even when the most dangerous thing I did was walk the couple of blocks home from my friend's house in our suburban neighborhood after dark instead of having someone pick me up.
While I was Team Feldman, Corey Haim held a special place in my heart because my heart was big enough and fickle enough for two Coreys. River Phoenix? Yeah he was on that future husband list. I saw Soapdish when I was 12 and added Robert Downey, Jr. to the top of the list. I'm 30 now, well past the age of obsessing over celebrities on quite that level and I still hope above many other more pressing worldly issues that RDJ stays clean.
I kept a poster of River Phoenix on my bedroom wall for a year after his death and am only a little ashamed to say I shed a few tears when Corey Haim passed away last year. It's irrational but it hurts to see people who meant so much to my formative years destroy themselves even though we're both grown-up now. What was bad boy cool to 11 year old me who had no concept at all of what those future husbands of mine were actually doing to themselves off screen is just sad and beyond pity now that I'm older and only really a little bit wiser.
I recently read Talking To Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield, one of my favorite authors to quote. The quote of the book that I had to put up on Facebook and Tumblr was
“A “girls’ artist,” whether it’s Depeche Mode or Neil Diamond or Duran Duran or Jeff Buckley or Luther Vandross or R.E.M. or the New Kids, commands a certain loyalty that never really goes away. An adult woman might have a slightly mocking, slightly ironic relationship to her teenage Duran-loving self, and yet she can still feel that love in a non-ironic way. And when adult women talk about them, they turn into those girls again.”
When thinking of the music I loved then and how I feel about it now I could only nod my head and think, "That is exactly right, Rob Sheffield." NKOTB still fill me with a certain amount of joy that will never die no matter how old or deep any of us get. But when I think about the actors I've loved it's a little bit different. Maybe it's because movies meant more to me than music during that time in my life or maybe it's because many of the actors that I've loved lived more of a rock n roll lifestyle than the musicians that I loved. All I know is that all I can think now is that watching Lucas is more of a sob fest these days than it ever was before.
This Youtube clip of the final scene is horrible quality and I still got something in my eye while watching sweet little Lucas get the slow clap he deserved. Time and tabloid reading makes it painful to look at Corey Haim, Charlie Sheen and even Winona Ryder then and the part of me that to quote Rob Sheffield turns into that girl wonders why they couldn't have stayed that way forever.
