When I hear the words “Forever Young” a lot of things immediately jump to mind and none of them are the 1992 Mel Gibson weeper of the same name. “Forever Young” is a song from the 1974 Bob Dylan not-a-classic album Planet Waves. Old Bobby Z must’ve been really feeling that tune because he put it on the album twice. Like...in a row! Back to back, you dig? In 1988 Rod Stewart released a song called “Forever Young” that sounds absolutely nothing like Dylan’s to my tinnitus-ravaged ears. Dylan must’ve heard otherwise ‘cuz he made Rod the Bod give him a songwriting credit and a cut of the royalties. That song was a big ass hit that stayed on the charts for like 10 years so we ain’t talking chump change here. A crotchety, litigious motherfucker for life, that Dylan. Still dropping willfully obtuse 17-minute jams about the Kennedy assassination on us as he rolling thunders his way towards his 80th birthday. But hold up a hot second! Years before Rod’s tune we had the “Forever Young” by the 1980’s German New Wave band Alphaville (I’m surprised Dylan didn’t ask for a whiff of that one too). In fact, if you type “Forever Young” into Google the first thing that comes up is the Alphaville version. I’m thinking this might be due in part to the fact that Jay-Z re-recorded this song slash copied it outright and rebranded it “Young Forever” on his 2010 album The Blueprint Part 3, the second best of all of the Blueprint albums. If your head is spinning that’s cool ‘cuz mine is too. Hold tight, gentle reader, as there’s one last “Forever Young” we need to deep dive into!
In 1990 a young fella by the name of Jeff Jacobs Abrams (better known as JJ to y’all Star WarsTrekLost heads) sold the Forever Young screenplay to Warner Bros. for $2 million smackers. This relatively obscene amount set a record for the most dough ever thrown down for a screenplay until Joe Eszterhas’s profoundly obscene Basic Instinct screenplay came along a couple of years later. This makes sense--Forever Young is practically the same movie as Basic Instinct but with no exposed pubis and no mid-coitus ice pick murder. I decided to go ahead and check out the flick again, not because I want to, but because there’s a global pandemic haunting the land and VHS stores have been deemed non-essential businesses. Tsk Tsk. I figured I could at least make a drinking game out of trying to guess which versions of the song “Forever Young'' would be used in this film. Example: Bob Dylan is notoriously expensive to license for movies so the chances they’d use his tune are slim. If it does appear...take 3 shots. The Rod Stewart version is schmaltzy as shit so that’s the obvious choice. In fact, a reviewer for the Washington Post referred to this flick as “a pablum of schmaltz” which is totally the phrase I want engraved on my tombstone. So for Rod Stewart: take one shot. If you happen to hear the Jay-Z song while watching the movie, call 911 immediately and ask for the mental health department because that song was still 18 years away from being released! Also--maybe drink the entire bottle of whatever you’re drinking when you get off the phone.
What happens is this: we open at a California airfield in 1939. A crowd has gathered to watch People Magazine’s original Sexiest Man Alive and raging anti-semite Mel Gibson do loop de loops in his B-25 bomber. Mel accidentally puts the plane into a death spiral and has to try like a bastard to pull himself out of it so as not to deprive the universe of The Passion of the Christ. Luckily (for him) he does...and when Mel lands he’s applauded like an all-American war hero by the people on the ground...except there’s no war (for us) yet and he’s Australian. Mel is greeted by his best friend Harry, played by man who will never not be known as Norm from Cheers, Norm from Cheers. Norm is all “I figured out my thing! You know, my cycle?” Says he froze a chicken and brought it back to life. Mel says his girlfriend has a pot roast waiting at home and that he will have to hear about his zombie chicken another time. At home, Mel and his ladyfriend Helen (played by the considerably less famous Isabel Glasser) sit around and smooch and listen to Billie Holiday’s “The Very Thought of You'' (no shots). This song is just south of three minutes long yet it plays over the next ten minutes of the movie. Must be a club remix or something.
The next day they all head to a cookout, where Norm keeps laying out the details of his top secret cryogenics project and Mel keeps yammering on about how he wants to propose to his lady but is too (frozen)chickenshit to do it. Dude, turning people into popsicles is far more interesting than your relationship problems. Maybe be a pal and lend Normmy an ear, ya selfish prick. Mel decides he’s gonna pop the question over a slice of pie at their favorite diner...but when the pie arrives he just stares at his plate like Eeyore and Helen is all “look bro..I got tons of shit in my Netflix queue...I gotta motor.” She walks outside and is immediately struck by an orange (the fruit) truck, much like Don Corleone in the first Godfather. Ok maybe I’m remembering that wrong...but I know that the appearance of oranges were always a sign that something terrible was about to go down. Anyway, in the immortal words of Mr White, she’s not dying...but she’s hurt real fuckin’ bad. If only Mel had popped the question they’d be off doing the Electric Slide! Instead she’s laid up in a coma and he’s laid up in his apartment ripping filterless Lucky Strike’s by the carton, getting twisted on Bud Heavy. Norm comes around to give him a “time to get back on Tinder and find a new GF” pep talk but Mel ain’t hearing it. Then he just casually lets slide the fact that he’s graduated from freezing chickens to freezing human people. He also mentions that the guy he was supposed to put in the cooler is unusable because he gets too “sozzled,” which is defined by Webster’s as “drunk.” (I guess alcohol DOES take longer to freeze). Speaking of sozzled: have you ever heard the recordings of Mel Gibson going apeshit on his ex-girlfriend and demanding many hot tub blow jobs? Fucking....yikes, people.
Mel perks right up and tells Norm that he wants to volunteer for the freezing program. He says to wake him up in after a year so he won’t have to go through the trauma of watching Helen die. OR...just my two cents here...you could sack up and keep a vigil by her hospital bed and confront grief head on like EVERYONE ELSE in the world who has ever lost a loved one. I mean, how is that gonna play with her friends and family at the funeral?? “Hey...what’s happened to Helen’s boyfriend Mel Gibson? Ahh...didn’t you hear? Dude is FROZEN! Yeah...I guess he REALLY hates funerals.” This is completely unrelated to what we’re talking about but remember when legendary Red Sox slugger Ted Williams died and his asshole son had him frozen...and then said son turned around and died of an extremely rare form of cancer at age 35, karma being, in this case, an actual bitch. There’s an unsubstantiated rumor that someone at the cryo lab accidentally dropped Ted Williams’ head and shattered it! Maybe you should’ve tipped your cap to the crowd after hitting a home run during your final at bat, eh Teddy Ballgame?? ANYWAY, Norm shoves Mel into some weird chrome locomotive from a Neil Young album cover and says sayonara, Riggs. Maybe you’ll sleep until 2016 and the world will have magically forgotten all of the crazy racist shit you said and you’ll get nominated for an Oscar again.
Cut to: the year 1992...where we meet The Good Son star and kid who I met twice at SXSW in 2006 Elijah Wood. Wood plays a 10 year-old only child living with his single mom who needs no introduction because she is Jamie Lee CURTIS! True Story: one day I was walking up Arizona Ave in Santa Monica and I walked by Jamie Lee Curtis and the guy next to me yelled “holy shit! It’s Demi Moore!” Cracked...me...UP! This means I have met two cast members from the film Forever Young! What do I win? Nothing? Ok...well Elijah Wood is just a kid minding his own...doing 10 year-old stuff with his best friend Felix, who looks like an Elijah Wood stand-in but with a longer mullet. One afternoon Felix’s older brother decides to take the kids on an errand to the local military base. While the older brother is busy doing whatever whatever the kids get bored and decide to break into the Movie Storage Warehouse Where Nothing Good Can Happen, where security non-existent. Eventually they come across Mel Gibson’s chrome dreams capsule, caked in dust and shunted to a dark corner of the warehouse and forgotten for the last 53 years. I mean, wouldn’t they have had to at least left it plugged in or something? The kids hop on the capsule and start twisting the knobs and levers and going vroom vroom like a couple of stupid ass kids. BAM! The friggin’ thing pops open and there lies Mel Gibson like we love to remember him: 36 years old...dead handsome...not yet publicly racist. The kids screw but Mel wakes up and fumbles his way out of the cooler butt ass naked. We get to see his tuchus. I wonder who showed more ass onscreen: Mel Gibson or Donny Sutherland? Certainly worth a google.
Mel isn’t about to let a half century in the ice box slow his roll. No muscle atrophy or bed sores for this Aussie! He heads straight to the nearest payphone and tries to dial up his pal Norm to try to figure out what the what. Failing that, he returns to the military base and tells a still unfamous Walton Goggins that he’s a frozen pilot from the year 1939. They’re all like “this way to your padded room, Air America.” He busts ass out of there and somehow manages to track down Elijah Wood and Not Elijah Wood. He demands to know what, if anything, he missed over the last 53 years. The kids give each other an “oh shit!” look, pour him a Zima, and then force him to listen to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” over and over. Seriously though--they bring him to the library and show him a bunch of newsreels on mircofiche. He’s thoroughly dejected. “I can’t believe Midnight Oil survived the 80’s and Men at Work didn’t!” he cries.
While Mel is watching his brain leak out of his nose after listening to every Beatles record for the first time in one sitting, Elijah Wood wanders off into a subplot wherein he develops an impossible crush on one of his classmates. That’s all well and good except they are 10 year-old CHILDREN! What’s he gonna do, take her to Spago? Elijah Wood agrees to take Mel home and let him live in his treehouse on the sly like an 80’s buddy alien (but with severe anger management problems). It doesn’t take but a minute until Mel spies Jamie Lee being roughed up by some asshole ex-boyfriend. Mel rushes into the house and tunes the dude up with his 30’s style boxing moves. Jamie Lee calls the police and has both of them PC’d. Just Kidding! She lets this complete stranger who busted into her kitchen and beat the shit out of a dude stay on her sleeper sofa! No questions asked!
Back at the military base the military dudes find the empty capsule and realize they done messed up bad and put an APB out on Mel Gibson, last seen sporting a mullet (and showing his ass) in the 1990 action comedy Bird on a Wire. Mel mostly wanders around town desperately trying to get in touch with Norm using 1992-type methods; writing letters, cold calling people out of the phone book, trying to make things materialize by thinking hard about them. I’m thinking this Norm cat had to be about 40 years old 325 pounds in 1939. Has he never stopped to consider that the dude is probably/most definitely DEAD!? Although I’m happy to report that real life Norm (George Wendt) is very much alive as of this writing. It’s cool though ‘cuz Jaime Lee is in no rush to turn this dude out onto the streets ‘cuz look at those baby blues!! Swoon! Mel makes breakfast and plays Jamie Lee that same goddamn Billie Holiday song from earlier in the movie. My shot glass remains empty. Mel even helps Elijah Wood with his relationship problems...by telling him that he’s way too friggin’ young. Still, the dumb ass kid crawls up into a tree outside of the girl’s house (I’m not sure this character even has a name) and sings “You are My Sunshine” to her. Her dad chases him off. Maybe just try to Skype her next time, bro.
Mel starts to come down with some sort of illness that involves him grasping his arm and moaning. I’m really hoping he’ll turn into a cyborg and kick this shit up a notch. But no--instead we are treated to a scene where Mel teaches Elijah Wood how to fly a bomber. Not in an actual airplane, mind you, but in the family garage...where there are no airplane-related materials of any kind. “OK now yer comin’ in for landing! Decrease speed and put the flaps down!” he shouts to the kid as the camera tilts from side to side and the dramatic orchestral music swells in the background. It’s just like being on an actual plane except not at all. If you don’t think this kid learning how to fly is going to come up again later in the movie then you have never seen a movie.
One afternoon Mel just straight up collapses and they rush him to the hospital. The doctors tell him he’s aging faster than Joe Pesci in The Irishman and that the aging, like most aging, is irreversible (unlike Joe Pesci in The Irishman). Dude’s got a half century coming at him with the quickness! The FBI finally have a bead on him too. They’ve dispatched Joe Morton directly from the set of Terminator 2 to help capture this aging wonder. BUT WAIT! They finally have an address for Norm!! Jamie Lee breaks Mel out of the hospital and they head to Norm’s crib and of course he’s dead! They meet Norm’s daughter...who explains that Norm died in a chemical explosion back in ’39 and the military simply misplaced Mel’s ice capsule. Dudes, we aren’t talking about a goddamn motherfuckin’ set of car keys! This is a giant machine with a living man in it! Be more careful next time, military people! Norm’s daughter also tells Mel that Helen eventually woke up from her coma and is STILL ALIVE!! Who feels like a dickhead now, dickhead? Mel is excited...and I’m excited too because this means the movie is almost over.
Jamie Lee races Mel to the airfield so he can fly his bomber to Helen’s sick oceanfront pad. The police and the FBI give chase and pull them over but Mel calls the cop “Sugar Tits” and they let him go. At the airfield Joe Morton introduces himself as the new freezing people guru. They give him Norm’s notes from the 30’s and he all like “WOW! Norm knew more in the 30’s then we have learned in the 50 years since!” Friggin’ dummies. They decide to just let Mel go do his thing. Once he’s up in the air he discovers that Elijah Wood has stowed himself away on the plane. Like..whyyyy would he do that!? They got no more business together! Oh right--Mel is gonna shit his depends and Elijah Wood is gonna have to fly the plane....because he learned how to fly a plane...in the garage. Right. Mel starts aging fast as shit. Suddenly he’s Lethal Weapon 4 Mel...then he’s mugshot Mel...then failed comeback The Beaver Mel. Then he winds up looking kind of like Joe Biden. In other words: old. As balls.
The kid lands the plane at Helen’s place and, sure enough, she’s out back picking flowers. Mel is all “sorry...lol...thought you were gonna die..couldn’t deal so I froze myself...sooo can I get a Mulligan or what?” She’s like “wow...an 89 year old man just the shirt on his back?? Sign me up!” They smooch. The movie ends. And then....AND THEN....NO FOREVER YOUNG!!! The credits roll and it’s just that same Billie Holiday song for the THIRD time!! They only licensed one song for this entire movie and it was not “Forever Young”. Nothing but tears in my empty shot glass. The end.