Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, a revised CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, Olivia Newton-John on rollerskates and Steve McQueen in a packed August 1980
Plus when is a Bill Murray movie not a Bill Murray movie?
The premise is simple, but the task is not. Every single movie released in the United States during the 1980s, reviewed in chronological order, published month by month.
Buckle up, because this is The Last ‘80s Newsletter You’ll Ever Need…
AUGUST
Jimmy Carter was nominated for the Presidency at the Democratic National Convention.
17000 Polish workers went on strike, kicking off the Solidarity movement.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono started work on their classic album Double Fantasy.
And in Australia, Azaria Chamberlain disappeared, an event which would directly lead
to Meryl Streep’s timeless proclamation: “A DINGO ATE MY BABY!”
The difference between the actual reviews and these monthly introductions is that I’m trying to keep the biography out of the individual reviews. It’s tough, though. The way my brain works, most of my memories are tied to movies in some way, and the era I’m writing about now is when my memory really kicks in.
It felt like school started much later in 1980, like our vacation would never end. Summer was still lingering, and we made another trip to Memphis to see my grandmothers. Whenever I visited Memphis, it turned into a non-stop movie free-for-all. Both of my grandmothers figured out early that the easiest way to connect to me was to take me to a theater, and my mom’s mother, Ruby, took me to my very first drive-in to see Close Encounters when the re-release happened. I had already seen the film several times, plus I owned the novelization and the making-of book and the Fotonovel, and I felt like I had the film memorized. Even so, I jumped at the chance to go see it again with new footage added to the ending and to experience a drive-in for the very first time.
Close Encounters may have been the perfect film to see that way, too. My first primary impression of the evening is the way the film bled off the edge of the screen, blending into the night sky around it, especially as the mothership landed at Devil’s Tower. It felt like the ships could fly right off the screen and join us in the muggy Memphis evening. The second big memory was the way the mosquitos ate us alive. My grandmother was ready to tap out about 20 minutes into the film, chalking it up to the right idea on the wrong night, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I sat there, absolutely mesmerized, letting them drain me and not giving a shit as long as I got to see what was inside that spaceship.
I don’t know how memory works for anyone else or what you retain versus what you forget. I remember the reactions of the people who took me to the movies. I saw Xanadu twice in the span of a week, once with my grandmother who didn’t like any part of it and once with my mother and my aunt, who both absolutely loved it. Movie stars were a big part of the decision-making when it came to what we saw first, which is why Xanadu was an event to share with my mom. Grease had been a defining movie moment for her, and if there was even a chance Xanadu would give her some of the same pleasure, then it was an immediate must-see. In 1977, the original Smokey and the Bandit was just as big for my family as Star Wars, and we saw both of them many times in theaters. It was clear that Burt Reynolds was one of their favorite movie stars overall, someone my mom and my dad could agree on even if they had very different reasons that they loved him. Smokey II was a no-brainer, both in terms of our decision to see it and the experience it delivered, and we all loved it.
It was a big month for seeing films with just my dad, though, which wasn’t always the case. He often was too busy with work to join us on our trips, so when he got to go, too, it was fun to maximize the time we spent together. There was one movie that I did not get to see with him, even though I made the case for why we should go together. I knew he liked Chuck Norris. I liked kung-fu movies and we had watched Good Guys Wear Black on TV together. There was a new Chuck Norris movie. That seemed like enough of a reason. No sale. I was told at the time that the film was “too grown up” for me. The idea that The Octagon is “grown up” in any way is absolutely hilarious.
I did manage to find several things that were declared “safe for Drew,” though, and one in particular stuck with me. Steve McQueen was squarely in the “Dad movie” camp, and by this point, I had seen a handful of McQueen’s films on television. At ten, I wasn’t aware enough to know that he was dying, but my dad definitely knew. They weren’t selling The Hunter as “His last movie!” but that’s exactly what my dad told me when we went to go see it. We talked about why McQueen was cool. We talked about his favorite McQueen movies. This was around the time my dad started taking me to see older films in the theater occasionally, movies like Red River or The Cowboys or, not long after we saw this, The Great Escape. When I saw this one, it felt like one of the more “grown-up” movies I’d seen in a theater so far, which is odd since it was rated PG. You never know what’s going to land or why.
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