It's Still Strictly Personal: A Continuing Nostalgic Movie Memoir of 1983-1991

By Eric Friedmann

It’s Still Strictly Personal continues Eric Friedmann’s journey through the movies during the nine-year period of 1983 to 1991. While he and the rest of the world embraced blockbuster motion pictures like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Die Hard, Batman, and Terminator 2, it was also alternative films like A Passage to India, Blue Velvet, Platoon, Do the Right Thing, and Cinema Paradiso that captured his attention and continued to impact his youth, while shaping a deeper and more meaningful insight to the possibilities of cinema.

Eric’s personal story about the movies is still told with great memory and affection, for those who still remember a time when movies continued to change, grow, and evolve into deep-rooted memories for all of us who loved sitting in front of the big screen and waited for the magic to unfold.

“Some movies we just watch. Others, we feel. Those that we can feel may not only tell us who we once were but perhaps who we have the potential to become.” ––Eric Friedmann

So, are you ready to go back in time again…and remember?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781648015304

Book preview

Let’s Spend the Night Together

Directed by Hal Ashby

(February 18, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

When I was fourteen years old in the fall of 1981, I wanted nothing more than to see the Rolling Stones live during their North American tour supporting their latest album, Tattoo You, though I didn’t entirely know why. At that time, my tastes in music were in limbo between the disco that was already dead and the classic rock I’d soon come to love. Softer artists like Daryl Hall and John Oates and Billy Joel were occupying my listening time right now, so legendary bands like the Stones were still alien to me. At best, I knew maybe five of their songs that included (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, the disco-charged Miss You, and their new hit, Start Me Up.

Their current tour, which included upcoming dates at Madison Square Garden in New York City, was all the rage and just about the only thing the so-called cool kids were talking about, so naturally, I had to try and get in on it. My parents, however, didn’t see it that way. They considered me still too young to attend a rock concert and all the late-night insanity it invited. By ’83, Let’s Spend the Night Together turned things around for me. Now I could not only experience (on-screen) what I’d missed out on before, but I’d also learn of the movie genre that was the concert film, something I’d missed out on in the ’70s due to my very young age. As luck would have it, the movie was playing at the local second run neighborhood theater in the next town over from Great Neck, Long Island, and my friends were hot to see it (some of them had seen the actual show at the Garden and wore their concert T-shirts to the movie).

From the start of the movie, I thought my parents had lied to me about why they wouldn’t let me go to the concert, one of their reasons being that it was late at night. The concert on the screen was in broad daylight. Not only did I feel like the victim of a parental swindle, but I also presumed that all rock concerts took place during the day—a misconception surely corrected as the movie progressed and day slowly turned to night. Despite my unfamiliarity with Mick Jagger, I could see how much he commanded the stage and enjoyed giving the fans a real good show. Regardless though, I felt I was suffering through this movie due to my Rolling Stones handicap. Song after song, I barely knew what I was listening to and grew impatient. Still, I reminded myself that I was at the movies with friends, and like or not, watching a Stones concert on-screen was a cool thing to be doing. If nothing else, I’d be able to take part in conversation about this show back at school.

Despite my reservations and mild cynicism toward the film back in ’83, it’s gotten stronger as the decades have progressed. Not that I don’t love the greatest rock and roll band of all time. Hell, I’ve seen the Stones three times in concert since their Steel Wheels tour in 1989. It’s just that by basis of comparison with other Stones’ concerts on DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as other theatrical motion pictures like Rollin Binzer’s Ladies and Gentlemen—The Rolling Stones and Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light, the late Hal Ashby’s film is not particularly the best way to experience the Stones on film. It’s also not the highlight of Ashby’s career, which include some extraordinary work like Coming Home and Being There. Not to suggest that Let’s Spend the Night Together is a bad or unwatchable film (really, how can you truly go wrong with the Stones?). It simply suffers from noticeable flaws when compared to more sophisticated material released years later. I’m of the opinion that something is visually lost when you film a band performing live during daylight hours (Live Aid from 1985 being the one exception, perhaps). If I’d actually been at the show filmed in Tempe, Arizona, I might have felt differently, but my perspective is that of the film viewer, not the concertgoer.

The five members of the band look like lost and confused insects on such a huge outdoor stage with little to no props, background vocalists, or stage effects on such a clear, sunny day filmed in such a wide angle with multiple cameras. We’re supposed to be getting up close and personal with Mick and the boys, and I suppose for its time, Ashby’s filmmaking manages to deliver that. Things improve a bit when it switches gears to the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey and we’re now indoors and in the dark, the way a true rock concert should be experienced, in my opinion.

The Stones keeps their sound and performance raw and edgy, and with a certain degree of speed (twenty-five songs performed in just a ninety-four-minute film) that almost reflects the punk rock sound that was very popular back in the late ’70s and early ’80s with bands like The Ramones and The Clash (sorry, but I never got into punk). I can’t help but wonder if this was what the Stones were deliberately trying to sound like during this tour in order to keep up with the here and now musical tastes of the time. Was this really the version of the Rolling Stones that longtime fan Ashby was seeking to capture? I suppose we’ll never really know. For myself, my reasons for the small appreciation I still have for this concert film is a purely personal one of a memory with friends at the movies and, in a small way, seeing rock and roll for the first time through young cinematic eyes.

I don’t regret that.

Flashdance

Directed by Adrian Lyne

(April 15, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

It was now six years since the phenomenon of Saturday Night Fever, and it was time for the Friedmann family to once again experience the heat and the craze of the hottest dance film on-screen all over again (no, I don’t mean Sylvester Stallone’s pathetic sequel Staying Alive). Flashdance, it seems, was everywhere. Not just in the media and radio’s top 40 charts, but also in my own home because my parents had seen the movie on their own when my younger brother Kevin and I weren’t looking, so to say. By the time we’d opened the family beach house in Westhampton Beach for the 1983 season, the soundtrack record was playing endlessly, echoing the summer of ’81 when the Chariots of Fire soundtrack also filled the house. Without having seen the movie, songs like Flashdance…What a Feeling and Maniac were flooding my senses, whether I liked it or not. By early summer, the movie made its way to the local Hampton Arts movie theater during its second run.

My mother, in what was considered a rare turn, announced that she wanted to see the movie again, with the entire family this time. She also cautioned me and Kevin, disclosing that it was filled with profanity and racy content. But because she considered us mature kids (that might have been a debatable point back then), she felt we could enjoy it for the dance sensation that it was. I believe my first response was something like, "Mom, you and Dad took us to see Saturday Night Fever when I was ten. How bad can this one be?"

I don’t recall her response, but my declaration didn’t deter her from her initial warning to her kids. Nonetheless, what did I care about profanity and racy content? By that time, I was sixteen, and as far as I was concerned, the more R-rated movies I could squeeze into my life, the better. But there was something far more important at work here, in my opinion. If my mother was expressing a rare enthusiasm to go to the movies, then I was eager to take part in it and use it to try and bring us closer on a level that I could relate to and understand (namely the movies).

Alex (played by a lovely girl named Jennifer Beals) was a girl I didn’t quite understand. She was very young, only eighteen years old according to the old woman she loved, and already living alone in a giant warehouse by day and dancing onstage at a bar at night. Perhaps it was just me being naive, but I thought that most eighteen-year-old girls were away at college, or perhaps it was just something I didn’t understand about girls who lived in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, when Alex danced, things got hot. The music pulsated throughout the theater, and I could often catch my mother flashing (no pun intended) a smile during some of her favorite dancing sequences, particularly Alex’s workout during Maniac. I suppose I enjoyed watching all this in as much as I enjoyed watching young girls dance with very few clothes on, though never fully naked (too bad about that).

When Alex wasn’t dancing, or dreaming of dancing with the Pittsburgh ballet company, she was falling in love with her boss Nick at the steel mill, who was older and more experienced, even married and divorced already. This was another highlight in my mother’s fascination with Flashdance, because she brazenly told us all how good-looking she thought actor Michael Nouri was. Nick’s presence in Alex’s life seemed not only sweet, but even necessary, because it was he who reminded her how important it was for her not to give up her dream of dancing. As he so perfectly put it, If you give up your dream, you die.

My mother was impressed with that line (a point of hypocrisy at the time because as a parent, she was hardly supportive of my dreams when I was growing up, but that’s another matter entirely). To this day, it’s a piece of movie dialogue I’ve never forgotten and words I still try to live by. Dreams, and what it took to achieve those dreams, was a big part of Flashdance, whether it was dancing, skating, or even trying to make it as a night club comedian in Los Angeles (the cook Richie was not funny). By the movie’s end, Alex achieved her dream with a successful dance tryout, and Nick was there waiting with love and roses. The freeze-frame image of Alex giving Nick a rose was a memorable one, and again my mother smiled at the thought of love’s triumph at the movies.

This is what Flashdance was during the golden age of MTV and music videos (back when that damn channel still played music videos). Many of the film’s sequences are shot in the style of the music video and likely went on to influence other music-based films of the ’80s like Footloose, Purple Rain, and even Top Gun. But as Jim Morrison of the Doors once put it, When the music’s over and the heat from the dancing has simmered down, what are we really left with from director Adrian Lyne’s efforts except a high-gloss ninety-seven-minute music video with some dialogue in between songs?

Continuing the questions I asked myself back in ’83, just who is Alex? The girl has no backstory, no past, and no relatives. (Is the old woman Hanna her paternal grandmother or merely a surrogate? We’re never told.) We know she wants to dance, and we know she has no formal training. But even that dream never fully takes shape, because even as she’s dreaming her big dream, she lacks the courage to do much about it until the very end. Even her climactic audition doesn’t seem credible because I can’t fathom how a single phone call between two old friends results in an audition invitation that should otherwise be very difficult to achieve, even with years of dance training and education. Is this panel of cold and serious judges really willing to give an unknown like Alex a shot at such an impossible dream? Flashdance wants us to believe it’s plausible because that’s what movies are designed to do—enable us to believe the unbelievable. At closer study though, it’s Nick Hurley that intrigues me more than Alex. Without revealing too much, we come to understand Nick’s past mistakes and his longing to correct them by taking risks and overcoming his fears (I took a deep breath and jumped—another memorable line). He longs to understand Alex (when the rest of us perhaps cannot), even when she tests and pushes his patience to the limit. We can only believe that he truly loves her through his kindly gestures, his long-stemmed roses, and the film’s closing moment. Reality suggests he’s merely sowing his rediscovered youthful oats with a hot young girl who’s not afraid to confess in front of his ex-wife that she fucked his brains out after seducing him with pieces of lobster in her mouth (yes, Nick, we understand the male fantasy taking place here, and we’re behind you all the way).

Despite its huge box office success, its cultural phenomenon, and the MTV heat it generated, Flashdance may only leave us wondering just who and what the film was ever really about in the first place. For myself, it’s more about the personal memories of my mother and her love for a little movie that managed to turn her on for one summer. It also gave her the courage to do her own dancing to the song Maniac in the middle of the beach house living room with windows on either side facing the neighbors—courage for her, but embarrassment for me, Kevin, and my father.

Many decades later, perhaps the most effective manner in which I’ve chosen to remember this film was during the speech I made to my son on the day of his bar mitzvah in April 2019, in which I told him before a large crowd of family and friends, "Sam, go forth and aim for the skies…and in the words of the poster tagline from the popular ’80s movie Flashdance, Take your passion…and…make…it…happen!"

Blue Thunder

Directed by John Badham

(May 13, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

What exactly is it about me and helicopters? I’ve always been fascinated with them. To this day, one of the most enjoyable moments for me in The Towering Inferno is the extended helicopter flight during the opening credits. I love that King Kong was battled by modern helicopters in the 1976 remake. It’s the additional love of air combat on-screen that allowed me to enjoy what little I did of Clint Eastwood’s Firefox. It was, in fact, that 1982 dud that sparked my interest in Blue Thunder a year later, a movie supposedly much like Firefox, but with helicopters instead. This was to be a high-flying thriller with Roy Scheider, the man who defeated the great white shark in two Jaws movies and also the man I’d seen alongside Gene Hackman in The French Connection when it aired on TV. The man certainly knew how to play a cop in the movies, and personally, I’d take Martin Brody and Buddy Russo flying a helicopter over Dirty Harry flying a Soviet jet any day of the week.

Blue Thunder was a welcomed movie break during my time of intense studying for the tenth-grade Regents exams. Just me, Kevin, and my father (my mother didn’t go for thrillers much, even when she could be talked into going to the movies). Even before I was settling into enjoying Roy Scheider in his newest movie, the first thing I noticed was the same actor who played Cyril in Breaking Away now played a guy called Lymangood (funny name), a helicopter pilot and a cop. Definitely a different sort of role for a guy who’d previously struck me as being goofy. The second thing I noticed was the awesome cinematography of Los Angeles at night from the helicopter’s perspective in flight. This sort of police patrol seemed alien to me, because as far as I knew, the police didn’t do this sort of thing in New York City or on Long Island. The thought of such men flying outside our windows and peeking inside seemed unlikely in the reality of my own world.

As Frank Murphy, Scheider was a gifted cop, but considered unstable. Nonetheless, he and his partner Lymangood were selected to pilot the world’s most advanced helicopter prototype, nicknamed Blue Thunder, which was a military-style combat helicopter intended for police use in surveillance, civic unrest, and terrorist situations. With its powerful armament, stealth technology, cameras, and microphones, this machine could fly virtually undetected as a tool in the war on crime in the city. But there were men who also wanted to use the helicopter’s technology to spy on American citizens (that sure didn’t seem right to me).

Admittedly, I didn’t quite follow all the intricate and political themes behind Blue Thunder when I first saw it. But then again, at that age, I was hungry only for helicopter chases. When they finally arrived, they came without mercy. There were air battles and showdowns high above the city that were nothing short of a feast for the eyes and the senses. Whatever impressive reactions I’d had toward the air battles in Firefox were put on the back burner of my mind with these new spectacular air battles. In the end, Murphy was able to win the day by achieving an awesome 360-degree loop with the helicopter’s powerful turbine boost and finally destroy his enemy. In his final act of defiance against those that would do us harm with advanced and dangerous technology, he set Blue Thunder on the railroad tracks to be destroyed by the oncoming train.

If you’d asked me back in high school what my favorite thriller was, I would have gladly told you it was Blue Thunder. Ask me again today, and I’ll gladly tell you it still holds a very high place on my list of great thrillers. My fascination with helicopters and their awesome power in flight hasn’t deterred much over the years. In the film’s opening credits, we’re told, "The hardware, weaponry and surveillance systems depicted in this film are real and in use in the United States." Was that for real, or just something to entice its entertainment value? I can only say from experience that other than the short-lived 1984 ABC TV spin-off, I never saw Blue Thunder technology again. It’s all, of course, awesome to admire, but it also reminds us of its potential dangers in the hands of the wrong people who want to use if for acts against Americans that would be considered unconstitutional. This is eighteen years before the events of 9/11 and its aftermath of questioning the values and morality behind what is considered true privacy and what should be seen by those in governmental power. In 1983, that power was in the hands of a high-tech helicopter. Today it’s in the hands of our own home computers and smartphones.

Where’s a hero like Roy Scheider today when you need him?

Wargames

Directed by John Badham

(June 3, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

Not before and not since the summer of ’83have I ever known two films to come from the same director and released during the same season. John Badham was clearly on fire, and he was indulging in the world of modern technology to tell his stories, a far cry from the spirited dance floor of Saturday Night Fever and the evil, dark environment of Dracula. For me, however, what was more important as an incentive for me to see this movie was the concept of being able to change one’s high school grades with a computer. I never liked school and my grades were often less than exemplary. To indulge in such a fantasy, even on the movie screen, was tempting in itself. Once again, it was the family at the movies, minus my mother. This time though, my father had little interest in this one. But until I got my driver’s license in a couple of years, he was still occasionally stuck with the duties of driving and accompanying his boys to the movie theater (bless him).

Even during the Ronald Reagan years of the early ’80s, the continuing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the potential nuclear destruction that loomed over our heads, was still alive and well. We all knew the possibilities of destruction were out there, but it might have been Wargames that reminded us of its connection to computers and the men responsible for turning the keys that would launch nuclear missiles. There was something very frightening about the opening scene in which we were temporarily led to believe that the real deal was about to happen. Even more frightening was the possibility of taking the men out of the loop and removing human intervention from all nuclear decisions and leaving it to the automated minds of machines.

The movie’s heavy introduction became lighter and turned to an ordinary high school kid named David Lightman. I didn’t know the young actor playing him, but I recognized him from another movie I’d seen him in a few months ago called Max Dugan Returns. When he actually broke into the school’s computer and changed his biology grade from an F to a C, I wanted to jump out of my seat and cheer (oh, the will and the potential to do such a thing). Were such a thing possible with me, I’d never be in trouble with my parents for bad grades again. Alas, it was only a fantasy for two reasons: My family didn’t own a computer, and even if they did, I knew nothing about them. As David and his friend Jennifer tried to find their way into a toy company to play their still-unreleased computer games, they soon came face-to-face with the option of playing Global Thermonuclear War. I swear, when the computer’s voice asked David, Wouldn’t you rather play a game of chess? I thought my heart was going to jump out of my skin. It was obvious that very bad trouble was on its way.

As the movie progressed, we learned just how serious David’s innocent computer skills became. The big computer known as the WOPR played the game with real intentions of launching our missiles against Russia as soon as time ran out. Like other great thrillers I’d seen, it was a race against time for our heroes in order for them to save the human race from World War III. But there was something more taking place here for me. As one who was ignorant in the world of computers (sometimes I still am), I was learning of the possibilities behind what a computer could not only do at the hands of its creators but what it may also learn to do on its own. Were we, as human beings, actually capable of allowing this planet’s greatest and hardest decisions to be left in the hands and minds of thinking machines? Were we that faithful to our own technology, or were we just that stupid?

These were questions I asked myself at the age of sixteen, despite the fact that I never thought too much about nuclear war. Today Wargames may be considered one of the most dated thrillers ever made. True, those that know what they’re doing may easily hack their way into the school’s system to change their grades, but our technology has surely advanced itself to a far greater level. Watching young Matthew Broderick insert an eight-inch floppy disc the size of a large floor tile into his IMSAI 8080 personal computer and set up his modem by placing his telephone receiver into an acoustic coupler is laughable by today’s standards. Still, computer geeks who came of age in the ’80s surely had their own reasons to wish they occupied the bedroom of David Lightman, as well as the fact that young Ally Sheedy was always in there with him.

Finally, what of the threat of nuclear power? Following the demise of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, our concerns about the nuclear threat not only eased, but practically disappeared entirely. After 9/11, our new deadly threat was terrorism on the ground and in the air. These changes to our world may very well question what our Wargames are today. It can be argued that terrorism begins on the Internet and our battles must ultimately be fought there. However, with a US president like Donald Trump, who, at one time, caused us to wonder just how close he had his finger to the button against a nation like North Korea, perhaps our real life Wargames haven’t changed too much.

Octopussy

Directed by John Glen

(June 6, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

I was, by this time, a James Bond addict, both on the big screen and television. Up until now, my only source of revisiting the movies I’d seen so far was to videotape them off of the ABC Sunday Night Movie on TV. This often meant the sweat and aggravation of repeatedly hitting the pause button on the VCR remote in order to avoid taping the commercials. When I wasn’t doing that, I was eagerly anticipating what would be my fourth Bond movie on-screen (the first one being The Spy Who Loved Me in the summer of ’77).

While my mother enjoyed parts of Moonraker and had a certain fondness for the past with From Russia with Love, Bond films were of no real interest to her or my father. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise because as a teenager, action and adventure films were probably best enjoyed with those who could appreciate them, or even by myself, if necessary. The night Kevin and I saw Octopussy in the town of Southampton in the summer of ’83 was one of those times when your parents want to go out to dinner by themselves and are more than happy to drop their kids off at the movies for a couple of hours. This was a movie theater I almost never went to as a kid, and it was just as well because it was notorious for not allowing underage and unaccompanied kids into R-rated movies. (definitely not what I needed during my teen years when I was looking to get into as many of those as possible.)

Six years had passed since I first saw Spy, and in all that time, I didn’t always follow the underlying plotlines of James Bond movies. Moonraker was easy enough for a kid raised on Star Wars and the rest of those copycat outer space adventures of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Octopussy, for all its traditional Bond excitement, action, and adventure, was a difficult film to follow in terms of its political theme. The Russians were still considered our enemies, and I understood that well enough living in a time of the Reagan years when the Cold War was still lingering between the US and the Soviet Union. For the life of me though, I simply couldn’t understand the meaning of the priceless egg with all the jewels on it. How an egg and jewelry-smuggling fit into the scheme of the threat of nuclear missiles went completely over my head.

However, one of the traditional Bond elements I was happy to see still existed was the so-called Bond super villain, or the criminal with an odd sense of strength and power, not too unlike Jaws or Oddjob. In this movie, he was a very large Indian man wearing a turban who persistently stared at James Bond, whom he always considered a threat, and could easily crush a pair of backgammon dice with his fist. As the main Bond villain, the character of Kamal Khan was nothing too special. Compared to other villains like Dr. No, Goldfinger, and even Hugo Drax, he seemed rather lame in comparison, without achieving any real sense of menace or danger, despite his evil intensions of mass murder through the use of a nuclear bomb inside a circus tent in Germany that would kill thousands of innocent people. Still, there was something charming about Kamal nonetheless, and I’d learn years later this was due to the sort of actor Louis Jordan was. In retrospect, the most impressive villains in this movie were the circus twin brothers who were deadly with knives.

Even while I sat in my theater seat both in awe and being somewhat critical of Octopussy, I occasionally looked over at Kevin to see what his reactions were. At best, they were lukewarm. He looked like he was enjoying a good James Bond movie well enough, but I also sensed he would’ve been just as happy staying home that night and watching a rerun of The Muppet Show on TV. I never knew for sure and I never asked him. Close as we once were as children, we almost never discussed movies (not beyond the thrill of Star Wars anyway).

Little has changed since then, in my opinion. As a Bond film of action and suspense, Octopussy delivers as well as many others before and after it. The opening, as well as the final climax, offers both wild stunts in the air and concludes with the classic explosion that our hero always manages to survive. It falls into the period of the ’80s that I affectionately refer to as the John Glen period of Bond films, which, as it happens, comprised that entire decade from For Your Eyes Only in 1981 right up to License to Kill in 1989. It’s impossible not to consider and appreciate the changing times of the decade that Glen had to take into account to keep Bond as up-to-date as possible with modern times and the modern audience.

Looking at Octopussy now, I understand and appreciate it as one of the most politically charged Bond films since From Russia with Love, though it’s permitted too much cheesiness and silliness, just like the rest of Glen’s films starring the late Roger Moore. Most notable in this one is the ludicrous jungle manhunt sequence (which I suppose pays some homage to The Most Dangerous Game) that includes Bond avoiding attack by a ferocious man-eating tiger by simply commanding it to "sit," as well as that ridiculous Tarzan yell. However, despite the James Bond balance sheet of what works and what doesn’t, it’s important to remember that in a world of Bond films that occasionally sacrifice viable story content for cheap thrills and laughs, Octopussy succeeds in staying true to a period of political history that still gave Americans cause to fear the bomb and the horrible repercussions of the nuclear threat. Of course, when it’s done in the style of James Bond, it’s all still a whole load of fun. Roger Moore’s films may not have been as popular as Sean Connery’s or Daniel Craig’s, but they were, in my humble Bond opinion, the most fun.

How can you go wrong with that?

Trading Places

Directed by John Landis

(June 8, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

48 Hrs. might have been Eddie Murphy’s only previous film under his belt, but his years on Saturday Night Live and his HBO comedy special Delirious solidified him as a major star of 1983. Beyond the promo spots on TV, I didn’t know what his new movie Trading Places was about, and I didn’t care. It was Eddie Murphy, for crying out loud, and I needed no other reason to get my butt into the theater as soon as possible to enjoy more of his wild and vulgar antics.

My dad took me to see it, though I honestly can’t remember if Kevin was with us or not. I do know that I wasn’t driving yet and the movie theaters in Westhampton Beach didn’t offer daytime matinees unless it was a bad weather day. I needed my dad, if for absolutely nothing else, a ride into town. Although he’d taken me to see Animal House when I was a kid (also a John Landis movie), I don’t think he had a particular fondness or appreciation for comedies with vulgar content, but was still willing to accompany his son for a night at the movies during the summer.

This was, I think, the first time I’d seen the city of Philadelphia on-screen since three Rocky movies. There were the same landmarks to look at like the Liberty Bell and the famous museum steps that made Rocky Balboa so famous. This time, the camera focused on sections of the city that defined the wealthy and successful, including Dan Aykroyd’s character of Louis Winthorpe III as a spoiled rotten and prissy little man who couldn’t even get dressed in the morning without the help of his faithful butler and servant, Coleman (I recognized him as Marcus Brody from Raiders of the Lost Ark). I was actually surprised to see that Louis had a job requiring him to show up to work every morning. I suppose that was part of what made him a funny guy.

Just the same, I wanted Eddie and I wanted him now. When he arrived, he was just as insane as he ever was, pretending to be a blind man with no legs. There wasn’t just some good physical comedy happening here, but also the spontaneous dialogue spitting out of Eddie’s mouth when he was busted by the police. Listening to him rant and rave about how happy he was to have his sight and the use of his legs back was laughter that even my father couldn’t resist. Before any of us knew what was happening, Winthorpe’s encounter with Eddie’s character Billy Ray Valentine resulted in Winthorpe being arrested for a theft he didn’t commit, and Billy Ray getting sucked into the rich life once belonging to Winthorpe. The two of them were now unwillingly part of a one dollar bet and experiment made between the two wealthy Duke Brothers to see what would happen if Winthorpe and Valentine’s lives were switched, and what would happened to each of them.

As we could’ve easily expected, a street hustler like Valentine took to his new life of money very quickly and easily. He also became a better and more honest human being as time went on. Winthorpe, on the other hand, became more of the criminal type who’d stop at nothing to prove himself innocent against everything that happened to him. He also got help from Jamie Lee Curtis, whom I’d never forget from the first two Halloween movies, now playing a hooker. I also got to see her topless for just a brief moment (no complaint about that). Turns out she could be a funny woman, as well as the queen of scream too.

Trading Places was one of the earliest comedies in which I learned about the art of cliché in the movies. After watching it for some time, it became pretty obvious how things would turn out. I wasn’t surprised when Dan and Eddie realized what was happening to them and decided to team up to get even with the Duke Brothers. I wasn’t surprised to see that their plan to get rich while putting the Duke’s in the poor house was an easy and welcomed success. I wasn’t surprised to see that Dan and Jamie ended up together on a tropical island in the end after he was dumped by his fiancée Penelope, who was all-too-ready to disbelieve his innocence and leave him forever (perhaps I also learned about the realities of human loyalty from this movie, as well). I’d say the real surprise of this movie came five years later with another John Landis / Eddie Murphy comedy, Coming to America, when we were reunited with the Duke Brothers, still living on the streets in poverty.

I’m reminded that Trading Places was the second Dan Aykroyd film released after he lost his best friend John Belushi in March 1982 (the first was a dud called Doctor Detroit). His return is refreshing in a way because it displays his genuine joy toward comedy that one would expect from Aykroyd from his years on SNL, as well as his screen work. The interplay between himself and Eddie Murphy not only serves up the good laughs, but also makes for entertaining social satire with a good heart, as well, despite any signs of character stereotype it displays (successful comedy has no rules, or at least it shouldn’t have any rules). The skills of these two young actors is both quirky and odd, defining each of their personalities and telling us who they truly are. It’s because of who they truly are as opposites that makes them so funny, I think. This is a film that easily echoes an old black-and-white classic like Preston Sturges’s 1941 film The Lady Eve, in which opposing identities also conflict with each other, resulting in comic outcomes, if not genius.

National Lampoon’s Vacation

Directed by Harold Ramis

(July 29, 1983, U.S. Release Date)

In August 1983, I went to summer