After bringing in sell out crowds last week with the John Carpenter Tribute, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica brought in another big crowd out to see director Savage Steve Holland talk about his two classic comedies from the 1980’s, “Better Off Dead” and “One Crazy Summer.” But the big attraction of the evening was indeed “Better Off Dead” which still has a huge following 23 years (jesus!) after its release in 1985. Like many movies of our youth, the movie was a flop at the box office and was eviscerated by critics. Siskel & Ebert gave it two thumbs down, and Peter Travers (the usually astute critic from Rolling Stone magazine) tore it apart limb from limb. But in the end, it found its audience like many other movies do, on video, cable, regular television, and eventually DVD. Now, you would be hard pressed to find anyone your age that hasn’t seen this movie and loved it.
Back in the 80’s, a negative review from Siskel & Ebert might have kept me from seeing the movie as I watched their show all the time. This was in part because I never got to go out to the movies much back then, and movie review shows like theirs were the closest I could ever get to it. Fortunately, my best friend from elementary school informed me that it was actually really good. So the following weekend, I rented it from the local video store, and my brother and I were laughing like crazy as we were watching “Airplane.” After all these years, “Better Off Dead” remains one of my favorite movies from the 80’s, and it has not lost any of its power to amuse. This was made clear by the response from the audience, many of which have seen this movie hundreds of times (10% of the audience there were watching it for the first time).
For those of you who haven’t seen it (where have you been?), “Better Off Dead” follows Lane Meyer (John Cusack), a teenager with an obsession for skiing and an even bigger obsession for his girlfriend Beth (Amanda Wyss). However, after to failing to make it on the high school skiing team, Beth dumps for the Captain of the team. Lane despairs of this and tries to kill himself in various ways, but never succeeds. Throughout the film, he has to deal with a crazed paperboy (“I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!”), his mother’s horrific ways of cooking, his dad’s insistence on doing something about his Camaro which has remained immobile on his front lawn, his kid brother who plays with real laser guns and gets books on how to pick up “trashy woman,” and with a lovely foreign exchange student who has the misfortune of staying with the dorkheads…ahem… The Smiths next door with Ricky, a terminal nerd if there ever was one.
People adore this movie so much, and I think it was influence on a lot of writers and filmmakers today. This can especially be seen when you look at one of the best comedies so far this year, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which has more or less the same plot.
After “Better Off Dead” was over and the end credits were finished, Savage Steve Holland was brought to the stage to an ecstatic applause from the fans there. Dressed in jeans and a white buttoned down shirt with a green baseball cap, he was ever so happy to see all the people who came out to see this movie he did so long ago. So thrilled with the response, he couldn’t have been a nicer or more happy guy to meet. Along with director Holland was Diane Franklin who played the French exchange student Monique Junot. Even though she’s now married and has two kids, she really doesn’t look like she has aged a day since the original release of the movie (seriously). Also along for the screening was actor Curtis Armstrong who plays Lane’s best friend, Charles de Mar. Curtis has worked a lot with director Holland, and he is also best known as Booger from the “Revenge of the Nerds” movies.
Savage Steve Holland said that the movie was indeed inspired by real life experiences of his own. Back in the day, he did have a girlfriend who dumped him for someone else, and he did think about committing suicide. One scene in the movie shows John Cusack tying an extension cord around his neck in his garage. Savage had talked about doing the same thing and attaching it to a pole in the garage while standing on a plastic garbage can. As he was doing this, he said that he became unbelievably terrified and couldn’t go through with it. Then the lid of the garbage can fell through and he fell into it, and the pipe above him broke, water came out, and he almost drowned in that same garbage can. His mother ended up coming into the garage to see what was going on, and she ended up yelling at him for breaking the pipe.
Savage had ended up making a short film regarding this subject in his life. It was intended to be serious, but it ended up getting the opposite reaction. People laughed, and they laughed hard at it. I’m sure we are as glad as he is that he didn’t succeed in killing himself, for then we would have been denied one of the funniest comedies many of us have ever seen.
“Better Off Dead” had ended up doing so well in test screenings that Warner Brothers (which had released the movie at that time) ended up giving him a whole lot more money to Savage so that he could make his next big movie, “One Crazy Summer.” The studio was so convinced they had a big hit on their hands, and they wanted to seize on the next opportunity to work with this young director. Unfortunately, “Better Off Dead” did not do well in its initial release, and while he did get the opportunity to make “One Crazy Summer,” Savage said that he was soon confined to “movie hell.” This was the place where you go where if your movie doesn’t do well on its first week let alone, all those friends you thought you had in Hollywood stop calling you and stop taking your calls.
One fan asked Savage what the difference was between the making of “Better Off Dead” and “One Crazy Summer.” With “Better Off Dead” he said, he had total creative freedom in making it and had no one looking over his shoulder. This made it the best experience he has ever had making a movie, and he has never had that same experience ever since. With “One Crazy Summer,” it was much different because he had a lot more money involved in making it, and the studio executives were on the set watching his every move. This may have been primarily a result of their initial response of when Savage first screened “Better Off Dead” for them. They apparently came out of horrified at what he did as though he made a sequel to the John Water’s cult classic “Pink Flamingos.”
Diane Franklin, as it turns out, is not actually French. After all these years, I was convinced that she was. She said that her father is in fact German, so that may account for her looking like she is from another country. As for the French accent, she said that she did take French back in high school and was very good at, and the accent itself came to her very easily. When she came in to read for the movie, she was actually up for both Beth and Monique. Diane’s daughter was in the audience (and foolishly tried to convince the audience that she was not actually related to her mother), and asked her if she was more interested in the part of Monique or Beth. I think the answer was pretty apparent when she said that she came into the audition as a French actress trying to master an American accent. She said that making “Better Off Dead” is still the best experience that she has ever had as an actress. On Savage, she said that he did a great job of creating a fun and comfortable atmosphere for all the actors to work in, and that he gave everyone a lot of freedom to play around with the characters.
One person had commented on another movie Diane had done called “The Last American Virgin,” and how the ending of the movie was one of the most depressing that he had ever seen (haven’t seen it, so I can’t possibly spoil it for you). Diane said that she had heard about a screening of that film at a drive inn movie theater, and how the audience members ended up throwing their popcorn at the screen and cussing out her character when she did whatever she did. It’s safe to say that she has had a more than memorable career in movies. Aside from “Better Off Dead” and “The Last American Virgin,” she also was in “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” where she again did her flawless French accent.
Diane also confirmed that it was a woman who did the skiing sequences in the movie for her, and not a man as many had assumed. Savage noted that her stunt double actually looked almost exactly like her, and the only thing separating the two of them was the stunt double’s tan.
Also up for the roles of Beth and Monique was Elizabeth Daily who appears during the scene at the school dance singing the title track to the movie. But in the end, it was determined that Elizabeth was just “too hot” for either role.
Curtis Armstrong, who has been a regular in a lot of Savage’s films, came up with some of the more memorable aspects of the character he played. The scene where that bastard ski captain asks what Beth’s name is, and he quickly replies “Charles de Mar” was all his. That did a get a big laugh from the audience at the screening that evening. Curtis also came up with the top hat that Charles de Mar wears throughout the movie, and he said that it was inspired by his love for The Beatles and (in particular) George Harrison. Those familiar with The Beatles may very well know what he means. Armstrong also came up with the idea of bringing along that jar with the dead pig in it (I always wondered what that was). Curtis however could not take credit for one of the very best lines that Savage wrote for him in the movie:
“I have been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy!”
Curtis also talked about this brief conversation he had with the actress who played John Cusack’s mother in the film, Kim Darby. At one point while the both of them were on a break from filming, Kim came up to Curtis in his trailer, took him by the shoulders and told him:
“Watch out! They’re trying to destroy you!”
After that, she left his trailer and never spoke to him again. What the hell?
Savage also alluded to some deleted scenes that were taken out of the movie. Among them was how Lane’s mother Jenny (played wonderfully by Kim Darby) actually belonged to the cult of Gumby, and one scene showed her at the airport collecting money for the cult. Test audiences found that scene much too weird, so it was cut. There was another deleted scene that I would love to have seen where Lane’s father Al (the priceless David Ogden Stiers) comes home to find his wife vacuuming the lawn. One other cut out scene shows Lane trying to practice the theme to the TV show “Flipper” among the saxophone, and there is a seal there that ends up applauding another person when they do a better job of performing it than Lane does. Also, the scene of the paperboy falling off the cliff actually lasted a lot longer as Savage had about three minutes of that moment in the film. However, it gave the test audiences a rather sickened reaction, and the length that it ended up at in the film is just right as it is.
As for a special edition of the DVD release, there was no clear answer as to whether that will ever happen. Paramount did release the movie on DVD for the first time several years ago, but aside from showing the movie in widescreen, there were no special features of any kind. There wasn’t even a trailer for the movie on there either, and you’d figure that Paramount would at least have the decency to put that on the DVD release, but I guess they were unaware of the cult following this movie has. Shame!
If there is anything that seriously dampens the moods of all the fans of “Better Off Dead,” it is the rumors that the star of the movie, John Cusack, hates this movie. Savage responded that he got along great with John while they were making the movie, and that he really wanted John to like the movie as much as he did. Before they began shooting “One Crazy Summer,” Savage got the cast members of the film to hang out with each other in Cape Cod so that they could become comfortable with one another. During their time there, someone did a screening of the movie which they all went to. Twenty or so minutes into the screening, John walked out of the theater. Savage figured that he had to take a call or something, but he never did come back to the screen apparently. Savage later caught up with John to see what the problem was, and John told him that the movie was horrible and that it didn’t work at all. To this day Savage said, this is really a sore point for John that he is increasingly reluctant to acknowledge. This really brought the crowd down as John really did some of his best work as teen actor here.
Someone else from the audience also asked how Rupert Hine came to score the movie. One of the companies involved in the making of “Better Off Dead” was A&M records, and they also had worked on soundtracks for other films of the time like “The Breakfast Club.” Rupert was a featured performer on that soundtrack, but had never actually done a score for a film before. “Better Off Dead” was his first effort as a film composer, and the resulting soundtrack release from the film is awesome indeed. Right now, it appears to be out of print, so you will have to look especially hard for it. I still have my vinyl and CD copies of the soundtrack, and I am never getting rid of them, ever!
This evening was a lot of fun for everyone involved, and it says a lot about movie that lasts in the minds of many people decades after its release. All the fans who asked questions made it clear that this movie is one of their all time favorites, and that they still love watching it from time to time. One fan proudly proclaimed that this film is “bar none, the greatest movie ever made.” Such a fan this guy was, he got the director to sign an authentic air filter for a 1967 Camaro, just like the car that is prominently featured in this movie. Along with that, this diehard fan also had the original vinyl release of the soundtrack with him, as well as the original script of the movie. Can you dare to doubt this man’s love for this movie?
By the way, this same fan also pointed out that there is actually a website dedicated to the 1967 Camaro from the movie called Better Off Dead Camaro (
http://www.betteroffdeadcamaro.com/). The site details the history of that specific Camaro used in the movie, and it even has details on how to restore the car to pristine condition.
Savage, Diane, and Curtis stayed around the Q & A was over to sign autographs for all the fans, and they even stayed for the second feature of the evening, “One Crazy Summer,” which was made right after “Better Off Dead.” While not as good as “Better Off Dead,” “One Crazy Summer” still does have its moments of sheer hilarity that had us laughing like crazy. The movie is especially notable for the scene stealing performance of Bob Goldthwait who ends up getting himself stuck inside a Godzilla costume and running around like crazy when someone accidentally throws a lit cigarette into the top of the costume.
Ever since the box office failures of “Better Off Dead” and “One Crazy Summer,” Savage Steve Holland has been relegated to working in television on shows like “Shasta McNasty,” “Zoey 101,” and “Lizzie McGuire” among others. However, it looks like he is about to make his comeback in films as he is currently directing the film “Legally Blondes.” This film does not feature Reese Witherspoon or the character she played in the last two movies, but actually focuses on two blonde girls and the things that happen to them. Savage promised us that it would be “really sweet.” Also, he has been hired to write “Howard Stern’s Porky’s,” and there should be no doubt that Howard will make this version all his own.
“Better Off Dead” more than deserves its place as one of the best comedies to come out of the 1980’s. This is a movie that John Cusack should really proud of alongside his other 80’s movies like “Say Anything.” Seeing it on the big screen at the Aero Theater with a packed audience gave me one of the best times I’ve had at the movies this year. What else can you say about a movie in which Steven Williams utters one of the most famous lines in cinema history?
“Now that's a real shame when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white boy like that.”
The article’s over… You can go home now.
