The 1980s All-Hollywood Team

There’s a massive discrepancy between what the Academy recognized as great in the 80s and what has remained culturally relevant in our times. Ordinary People, Reds, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Out of Africa, Driving Miss Daisy are largely overlooked nowadays in favor of prime-Spielberg and big budget action/ sci-fi schlock, both of which dominated box offices during that decade. And rightfully so. Raise your hand if you’d rather watch Out of Africa over Die Hard. Simply put, the Academy was out of step during this time before course-correcting in the 1990s. So I should state at the beginning that there’s gonna be very few Academy Awards winners on this team.

Cinematography

First Team-Vittorio Storaro. Notable works: Reds, One From the Heart, Ladyhawke, The Last Emperor. (2x nominated. 2x winner). Stararo made a name for himself in the 70s working alongside sex pest Bernardo Bertolucci and later Francis Ford Coppola on Apocalypse Now, the latter of which won him his first Oscar. While I’m not a huge fan of the films he worked on in the 80s, that’s not Stararo’s fault. This guy could make a pile of dogshit look like a work of art.

Second Team-Jan De Bont. Notable works: Roar, The Fourth Man, Die Hard, Black Rain. (0x nominated. 0x wins). De Bont is the only man on this list to get his scalp ripped off by a tiger. That counts for a lot around here. But the lighting and camera work for Die Hard is probably the most under appreciated aspect to that film. Despite a lack of Academy recognition, De Bont deserves to be on this list.

Music Composer

First Team-John Williams. Notable works: The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, ET: The Extra Terrestrial, The Indiana Jones Series. (12x nominated. 1x win). There was only one option here. And spoiler alert, John Williams will probably win first team for the 90s as well. Get this unbelievable run though: from 1980 to 1982, Williams composed The Imperial March for The Empire Strikes Back, The Raiders March for Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the soundtrack to ET.

Second Team-Vangelis. Notable works: Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, Missing, Antarctica, The Bounty. (1x nominated. 1x win). Let’s just be honest. The only reason why anyone remembers Chariots of Fire is because of its electronic score. But Vangelis is much more than that. The Blade Runner soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time. And even though Vangelis is associated with more box office bombs than successes, you couldn’t blame the music for that. Hell, that was usually the best part of the movie.

Screenwriter

First Team: Lawrence Kasdan. Notable works: The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, The Big Chill, Silverado. (2x nominated). Star Wars AND Indiana Jones?! This selection is pretty self explanatory.

Second Team: Paul Schrader. Notable works: American Gigolo, Raging Bull, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, The Mosquito Coast, The Last Temptation of Christ. (0 nominations). Fuck you if you don’t like this pick. I’ve said before that Schrader is the greatest screenwriter of all time and he was at the height of his powers in the 80s.

Supporting Actress

First Team: Kim Basinger. Notable works: Never Say Never Again, The Natural, 9 1/2 Weeks, Batman. (0 nominations). Controversial pick. I get it. But there’s no easy way to put it. Despite James Cameron elevating women into big budget action leads in the 80s, supporting roles—especially the ones we remember most from the decade—were mostly blond damsels in distress. No shade at their ability however. Basinger would be recognized for her acting chops in the following decade. For the 80s, however, I feel that Basinger best demonstrated this blond archetype—one of the few, if not the only one—to do it for both James Bond and Batman.

Second Team: Geena Davis. Notable works: Fletch, The Fly, Beetlejuice, The Accidental Tourist. (1x nomination. 1x win). The great revelation of the 80s before her legendary run in the 90s.

Supporting Actor

First Team: Dennis Hopper, man. Notable works: Out of the Blue, Rumble Fish, River’s Edge, Hoosiers, Blue Velvet (1x nomination). Despite being around since the 50s and dropping off the face of the earth in 70s, Hopper came back in a BIG way in the 80s.

Second Team: Willem Dafoe. Notable works: The Loveless, To Live and Die in LA, Platoon, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning. (1x nomination). Probably the greatest actor of all time to never win an Oscar.

Best Actress

First Team: Meryl Streep. Notable works: The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Sophie’s Choice, Silkwood, Out of Africa, Ironweed. (6x nomination. 1x win). This was just the beginning of absolute domination by Streep in the best actress category. A dominance that continues to this day.

Second Team: Sigourney Weaver. Notable works: The Year of Living Dangerously, Ghostbusters 1 and 2, Aliens, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl. (3x nomination). Ellen Ripley alone catapulted Weaver into one of the greatest and most iconic leading ladies of all time.

Best Actor

First Team: Harrison Ford. Notable works: The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones series, Blade Runner, Witness, The Mosquito Coast. (1x nomination). Indiana Jones and Han Solo. Pretty self explanatory. He should have been nominated more than once.

Second Team: Eddie Murphy. Notable works: 48 Hours, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child, Coming to America. (0x nomination). Despite being the greatest stand up comedian of all time and dominating the box office in the 80s, this translated to 0 nominations. Shame, academy! Shame!

Best Director

First Team: Steven Spielberg. Notable works: Indiana Jones series, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun. (3x nominations). It was the 80s where Spielberg solidified himself as the ultimate box office director.

Second Team: Martin Scorsese. Notable works: Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ. (2x nominated). Oliver Stone could have taken this spot. He was the only director to win twice in the 80s. Except no one talks about his work anymore. They do talk about Scorsese’s though, and arguably Scorsese has had a much greater impact on cinema.

Move over citizen Kane

Why do we watch movies?

I don’t have an answer here, I’m genuinely asking why do we watch movies? Is it to think? Feel? Be entertained? Be turned on? To mindlessly pass the time? I really wanna know. I’m asking because I’ve come across a startling problem. Well, it’s not so much of a problem per se as it is something that we as a society have overlooked. And not just the average movie goer either. Critics and the film intelligentsia have long disregarded what they have known all along—Raiders of the Lost Ark is the most competent movie ever made. Of course, the AFI continues to acknowledge this. It remains ranked in the top 100 movies of all time. But somehow I feel it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Like, we know it’s great. We just can’t comprehend how great.

I’ve racked my what little of my brain is left trying to address why that is. Raiders came at a time when Steven Spielberg was shitting out hit after hit. First came Jaws. Then came Close Encounters of the Third Kind (let’s forget 1941 for the moment). A year after Raiders, Spielberg released what some might call the pinnacle of his blockbuster era, ET. Meanwhile, George Lucas was in the middle of producing the OG Star Wars trilogy staring Harrison Ford, who was in the midst of cementing himself as the greatest leading man in Hollywood history. So we had three great minds at the height of their creative powers converging on one project. And it worked. It worked so well that we’re still struggling to understand it.

First the casting of Harrison Ford. As is well known, Tom Selleck was originally selected to play Indiana Jones. No doubt, he would have been good. But I implore anyone reading to go watch Selleck’s audition tapes. He’s intense. A little on edge. Kurt Russell gave a similar reading for Han Solo. When you compare Russell’s audition to Ford’s, you realize what an inspired choice it was to roll with Ford. Why? Because Harrison Ford looked liked he couldn’t have given less of a fuck. And that’s part of his charm. Lesser filmmakers, perhaps even filmmakers that many would consider great, might have gone with Kurt Russell or a more intense “actor’s actor”. But Lucas and Spielberg didn’t and their careers were rewarded because of it.

But something that always bothered me about the movie was its conclusion. If you recall, Indiana Jones was dispatched to find the Ark before the Nazis did. After some back and forth in Egypt, Jones secures the Ark in the greatest action sequence of all time and then stows it away on a ship. While in the Mediterranean, the Nazis intercept the vessel, take the Ark, and bring it to an isolated island with Indiana Jones secretly in tow. Jones is caught and is forced to be present when the primary antagonist opens the Ark, which unleashes the wrath of God, killing all the Nazis on the island and leaving only Jones and Marion alive. So if you think about it, Indiana Jones didn’t do much to save the day. IN FACT, it would have been better for the United States to not dispatch Indiana Jones and let the Nazis find the Ark for themselves to presumably open it in Hitler’s presence where he and all of the other high ranking Nazis would have been violently killed. So had US officials done nothing, World War II would’ve never happened. In other words, Indiana Jones started World War II.

But the important thing here is that none of this matters. Your brain didn’t notice this wild act of incompetence because writer Lawrence Kasdan tried to tell you this would happen in the opening scene. When we’re introduced to Indiana Jones, he’s in the middle of a South American jungle trying to steal a golden idol. After surviving numerous threats to his life, he achieves this only to have it pried from his hands by a rival archeologist. This sequence of events establishes Jones as an incredible archeologist in addition to being a scrappy survivalist, but in the world of Raiders, the field of archaeology is filled with treachery and avarice. So Indy can’t win em all. Even though Jones ultimately ends up with the Ark, it is pried away from him by higher powers, allegedly to be studied by “top men.”

And that’s the genius of this film. It begins as it ends. Where many might see a mindless, albeit well executed action/adventure movie, is actually quite well thought out. It’s little pieces like this that make Raiders of the Lost Ark the most competent movie ever made.

a greek trajedy

The family’s been sick all week. I was the only one that got the shits.

What’s up with that?

But the most tragic news of the week has been the firing of Jack Easterby. I’m quite surprised because I figured that Cal McNair was dumb enough to keep this charlatan on the payroll. But it’s just not everyday that you hear about one man’s Machiavellian climb to the top of an NFL franchise.

So I really hope that another Christian sports owner gives this guy a shot. Because if there’s one thing I know about Easterby, it’s that he knows his ABG’s:

Always Be Grifting.

In happier news, the 1996 Jan De Bont classic Twister is getting a sequel:

https://deadline.com/2022/10/twisters-sequel-forecast-spring-start-universal-amblin-finalize-director-1235147353/amp/

The major obstacles in this production, so far, has been the deaths of Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Producer Steven Spielberg has gone on record as saying, “of course it would be fucking stupid to make sequel without Bill and Phil,” he said, “so naturally we’ll CGI them into Twister 2, just like they did to Grand Moff Tarkin in that Star Wars movie. Everyone seemed to have liked that. And besides, that’s a hell of a lot cheaper than hiring actors! Fuck that!”

While Deadline has reported that climate change will be a major focus in the film, it has also been stated that the plot will be centered on the daughter of Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt who has become a “climate change denier” that claims tornadoes are actually a “divine wrath from God” on the the state of Oklahoma.

So I don’t know guys, this seems like another strange decision from Hollywood. Nevertheless, I am quite excited for this long awaited sequel.