Ever since I launched VHS of the Week three years ago I have used the Friday before Memorial Day to hit the pause button and pay tribute to the summer movie seasons of yesteryear. The years when you got your Oscar contenders around Christmas, your action blockbusters and sleeper comedies between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and little else worth watching the rest of the year. The days when I would be so sick with excitement over the arrival of my Entertainment Weekly Summer Movie Preview issue that I seriously considered faking an emergency so I could go home and check the mail to see what Owen Glieberman had to say about the box office prospects of The Rocketeer. Last spring I mentioned that the walls that once held these seasons intact evaporated years ago. There are still tentpole summer blockbusters but they are almost always reboots and superhero flicks. Everything else is shunted to streaming and dies anonymously. It’s no great mystery what happened: all of the talent went to television, where it’s possible to let the story of the Chernobyl disaster unfold over 8 hours instead of trying to shoehorn it into a two hour feature film. Again, why leave your house when one hour of Breaking Bad is better than any big screen drama from the last decade (and there are MANY hours of Breaking Bad to watch).
Still, as someone who grew up in a dark theater, eating popcorn and laughing and crying with hundreds of strangers, I have always felt...and continue to feel that there is something irreplaceable about a trip to the cinema. Even if that means going to see something you are less than excited about (I’m not sure how many times I checked my phone during Deadpool 2...but it was a lot) or taking in a screening of, say, Jaws at the local independent movie house, I believe that we should never allow moviegoing to become an antiquated curiosity for a niche audience. As I sit here writing, the list of summer 2020 movie releases is blank. Theaters across the country and all over the world have been shuttered for months due to the ongoing global pandemic. It remains to be seen when, if ever, people will be allowed to sit in an air conditioned room, pay $10 for a cherry coke, and scream in terror at A Quiet Place 2. At this point I would give just about anything to see something...ANYTHING...on the big screen. I’d even see one of those Star Wars deals! It’s my life’s blood and I continue to be devastated without it.
Last year I talked about the summer of 1989, which I still believe to be the greatest movie summer on record (Batman, Indiana Jones, Parenthood, Do the Right Thing, Uncle Buck...shit...Vampire’s Kiss with Nicholas Cage!). The summer that I frequently mine for material, though, is the summer of ’91. This was the year that I made a pact with myself that I was going to try to see every single film that opened in Worcester’s four multiplexes (most of them only had 3 screens...so isn’t that a tri-plex?) I was 12 years-old and (kind of) old enough to go to the flicks alone. I also had a mildly willing co-conspirator in my dear 81 year-old Great-Grandfather Fred. I made him take me to EVERY film that was released on Memorial Day weekend...the true gateway to the summer movie season. Between Friday and Monday we saw Backdraft, Thelma & Louise, Hudson Hawk, and Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken. Two of those films are incredible and I’ll let you guess which ones. Old Fred was a super good sport...even when he was aggressively opposed to my choice of film. I don’t know how many other “white 7th grader and his octogenarian great-grandad” combos were at the opening day matinee of Boyz n the Hood...but I’m gonna say the number was one. Fred might’ve said he hated Boyz afterwards but he was totally crying when Ricky got smoked too. We all were!
The summer of 1991 came with a pre-programmed apex. That film is, of course, Terminator 2: Judgement Day...or T2 if yer hip. I was so riled up about that movie I would slip into a dissociative state during family dinners and start mumbling in a mangled Austrian accent. It didn’t help that I spent all day every day watching MTV, which showed Guns N’ Roses’ “You Could Be Mine” video, starring the T-80 himself, every hour on the hour. It was the #1 video all summer long. I kinda started to feel bad for Skid Row, destined to reach no higher than the #2 spot with their “Monkey Business.” I saw T2...and it was predictably awesome. I bought a Schwarzenegger poster for my wall and a box of T2 trading cards. From there, though, things started to go shithouse awfully quick. I continue to ride hard for Michael J Fox’s Doc Hollywood and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. But then there was Pure Luck...and Body Parts...and Mobsters...and the unbelievably depressing Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor “comedy” Another You. What a lousy way to go out, dudes.
But there was also Point Break...and Point Break is one of the greatest films ever made. Of any stripe! I mean...its reputation precedes it at this point. It’s a true cult phenomenon. I really had no desire to see it when it came out. I saw it ‘cuz I was in the business of seeing all the movies. And I fucking flipped my shit over it. It gave me all of the feels. It made me want not one but TWO meatball sandwiches. What did the poster say? 100% Pure Adrenaline?? That’s how I felt! I saw it again...and again...and again and again (I think that’s 5 times total, right?) I didn’t want to admit it...DIDN’T admit it...but I liked it WAY more that T2. I mean T2 is still the shit...but it was supposed to be. The Point Break VHS box has a pull quote from Roger Ebert that reads “people will have a hard time finding a more entertaining thriller.” And you know what? He was right. I have spent the last 29 years of my life having a hard time finding a thriller that is more entertaining than Point Break. It’s like...I walk into the local AMC and say “excuse me...are you showing something more entertaining than Point Break?” and they say “we have only Fast and the Furious Part 9 and it is 4 hours long” and I say “nothing for me, thanks.”
This is typically the point where I would spend another 3000 words explaining the plot of the movie and try to tell a few jokes. There’s no reason to do that; you’ve all seen Point Break...and it is NOTHING TO LAUGH AT!! I know there was a remake that came out in 2015 but I absolutely refuse to acknowledge that it exists. If you mention the words “Point Break” and “Gerard Butler” in the same sentence in my home you will be asked to leave. What I’m thinking, though, is that the 30th anniversary is next year. What better time for a proper sequel!? And I know how they can pull it off too! Because there’s a scarcely identified fulcrum on which the entire film rests. And that fulcrum is Anthony Kiedis’ character!! (Note: did you know the character’s name is TONE?? As in Loc? Oh brother...just when I thought I knew it all!) If we’re talking Red Hot Chili Peppers it was Flea who got all the primo acting gigs. Every other hipster indie flick from the late 80’s/early 90’s had an appearance by Flea: Dudes...My Own Private Idaho...The Big Lebowski. But it’s Mr shama lama ding da ding de dong dong CALIFORNIA who just kills it in Point Break. He has just three lines and they ALL eminently quotable. “Oh shit shit we’re FUCKED!!!” So check it out: it’s 30 years later and Kiedis and his gang of cats who “only live to get radical” are about to be released from prison. Kiedis hooks up with surviving gang member Lupton Pittman, aka Warchild, and they decide that robbing banks looked hella fun...so they start a gang called the Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers Guitarists! There could be up to five (and yes John Frusciante counts as he has quit and returned twice). I can just hear that 911 call “help...I’m being robbed by a man in a...umm...Josh Klinghoffer mask??” No one can figure these dudes out until the FBI notices that the gang leader (Kiedis...wearing a Dave Navarro mask) is missing his right foot and ends every sentence with “skee bee don don Cali-forn-I-A!” Meanwhile in Bells Beach, Australia Johnny Utah is still hanging around doing fuck all. Life is good for him...except every time he looks in the mirror he sees Gary Busey’s reflection and not his own (if Busey dies before production simply replace him with Jake Busey). The ex-Chili’s decide to come after Johnny ‘cuz Kiedis is still sore about the loss of his foot and Warchild is still butthurt that Gary Busey called him “squid brain.” Johnny Utah doesn’t want to get involved...but he’s JACKED from making all of those John Wick movies. First he has to go down to the beach and see if he can find that badge that he tossed in the water back in ’91. While he’s walking up and down the beach with his metal detector he sees Bodhi emerge from the surf. He’s like “Duuude...what the fuck, brah??” and Bodhi is all “Yeaahhh...remember when I said ‘what do you think i’m gonna do? Paddle to New Zealand??’ I totally paddled to New Zealand.” Johnny Utah and Bodhi agree to let sleeping dogs lie and become partners in the fighting of crime. I realize that Patrick Swayze has been dead for...like...a wicked long time...but have you seen what they can do with holograms these days??
I would TOTALLY watch this movie. Totally...