Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Nostalgia

’84 Summer Nostalgia Indy Ghostbusters and Growing Up

Despite the sporadically hot weather, somehow the summer has really crept up on my me. But then, time moves very quickly anymore. I spoke with my college-age nephew on Tuesday and he had just completed the last of his final exams. I’d forgotten how long college summers were! And then yesterday, while scrolling on Facebook, I saw that somebody noted that it was 40 years to the day since the release of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” I don’t know why this hit me with such force. I am a nostalgic person by nature, so I am very much aware of the passage of time. But I guess since 1984 was really my last summer of uncomplicated freedom, it carries a little more significance than usual.

Looking back, movie-wise, that summer turned out to be the last and least of our high school summers, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t go to the movies all the time and that I wasn’t entertained.

Funny, looking at a list of the releases now, I realize what a weak summer it was, next to those of the earlier ’80s. Indy will always be closest to my heart, of course, although this one was the shakiest of the ’80s trio. It’s still like “Citizen Kane” next to “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” proving that even the disappointing movies back then were better than anything being made now! And John Williams’ music, as it so often was, was the soundtrack to my summer.

It was also the summer of “Ghostbusters,” of course, and “Splash” was fun, if slight. I was really looking forward to “Greystoke,” which was entertaining (it was beautifully mounted and Ian Holm was great), but it seems like someone must have edited the hell out of it. I’m not a fan of “directors’ cuts,” but this one could have really used one. Again, “Gremlins” was entertaining, but even then I knew it was slick, sick trash. By then, the Spielberg formula was well-worn, and this one skimmed very close to the surface. (It should be noted that this was the summer that led to the PG-13 rating, due to the mounting intensity of movies marketed to the young.)

“Star Trek III,” though a step down from “Khan,” on which it heavily relied, got the job done. Poignantly (and all-too-appropriately, with the frontiers of youth dwindling), the Enterprise goes down in flames. “Buckaroo Banzai” was self-consciously hip, and again entertaining, but not all that it could have been. “Romancing the Stone” (actually released in March) was okay. Again, entertaining, but pretty disposable. I’m glad it gave Zemeckis a boost, but it was no Indiana Jones. At least it took a different approach (and to be honest, it was more consistent than “Temple of Doom”).

But of course it was the off-screen adventure and romance that really resounded. It would be our last hurrah before the old gang was disbanded, our American Graffiti summer. People continued to return from school for holidays and for a good portion of the summer of ’85, of course, but soon other opportunities, interests, and friendships began to present themselves, and we saw one another less and less, and then everyone started to get jobs and get into relationships and gradually disappear from our Neverland. Believe me, I extended my childhood as long as any person possibly could. But there was much weight on my heart back then, nostalgia and longing and melancholy, and much torment in my soul, if I ever tried to rewatch the movies I’d watched during my school years or revisit the stories I’d written.

Of course, my mother was still alive and the house continued to function pretty much as it always had. Hard to believe that we moved in only in the summer of ’83, before my senior year of high school. But I returned to it whenever I could, on weekends and holidays, through the time I opened my own business and started working at the radio in 1995.

After that, my attic bedroom gradually became a storage space, a dumping ground for old clothing, curtains, bins of wrapping paper, boxes of photos. To revisit now is like taking a submersible through the wreckage of the Titanic, everything perfectly preserved under layers of sand and coral. I need to finish cleaning that place out. I’ve already retrieved some of my most valued items, but I’ve even got shoes and clothing up there from back-in-the-day, which really should go. Do I have the heart to get rid of it? Every piece of bric-a-brac is loaded with memory.

I know I said much the same thing a couple of years ago, when recollecting the summer of ‘82, but when I die, if there’s a heaven, and they let me in, I hope it’s an awful lot like the early ‘80s.

May 9, 2024
Attic Treasures A Summer of Martian Dreams

After years of living in rentals, and at my grandparents’, I was excited to finally be moving into our own house. Not that those other places weren’t homey. There was always a lot of love and security and freedom from strife (after early childhood). But this was a real house, constructed in 1930, and it was ours.

As if that weren’t exciting enough, I was to have the entire attic to myself, as my bedroom, which I could adorn with all my “Star Wars” and Marx Brothers paraphernalia and have my own phone and a turntable and a bookcase and a comfy chair.

Of course, it was rather late in the game. By then I was already turning 17. In a year, I’d be caught in the inexorable pull of last-minute college preparations. But time was different then, and the days were long.

Also, I tend to be a bit like chewing gum: once I get stuck on something, I’m difficult to get rid of. I may have been less than a year from high school graduation, but I would attend college only about 90 minutes away, and until I finally opened my first book shop in 1995 – the same time I was hired at WWFM, as a matter of fact, making for a seven-day work schedule – I was home as much as possible, on whatever weekends, holidays, or summer breaks I could get. So it remained “my room” for a decade or more.

After 1995, the shift was gradual but inexorable, as the space metamorphosed into more what you might expect of an attic. It became a storage space in which my parents piled up old clothing, boxes of photos, luggage, wrapping paper, household accessories, plastic bins, and bric-a-brac, much of which probably should have just been tossed. It got to the point where they were simply piling things on and around the furniture.

Now that my stepfather is in his 80s, it’s something I realize I need to address with greater industriousness. So I’ve been up a few times to retrieve some of my old belongings and to take stock of what should be bagged up and carted off. It’s an uncanny feeling to return to that space and still sense the room that once was, more or less preserved under decades of mummy dust or grown over with coral. For a room that has not really been temperature controlled for decades, it’s amazing how well-preserved are many of my toys, albums, books, magazines, comics, and films. But there are so many strata of coats and cardboard boxes and Christmas decorations. It’s a major excavation to get to anything.

Be that as it may – I realize that it sometimes takes me a while to get to the point – in the summer of ’83, 40 years ago, I was charged with the painting the house, prior to our moving everything in. Unfortunately for my folks, it was around the same time that I purchased Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian novels – you know, the ones featuring John Carter and his progeny – in the paperback editions with the Michael Whelan cover art. So I’d paint one wall, and then I’d reward myself with the reading of a chapter. Eventually, my mom started to wonder why it was taking me so long to finish the project.

In a letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul famously wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Evidently, he was unfamiliar with the escapist adventures of John Carter, Tars Tarkas, and Dejah Thoris.

I am happy to say, I have always retained my appreciation for childish things, whether at 5, 10, 17, or 56. Reflecting back 40 years, on the summer of ’83, is giving me a powerful thirst for Barsoom.

June 13, 2023
Time Travel Temptation Would I Go Back

If someone showed up in a time machine and offered to take me back, I often wonder if I wouldn’t go.

By the way, if you really want to feel old, 50 years before 1973 was 1923.

January 28, 2023
Chitty Postponed Kong-a-Thon Nostalgia

Once upon a time, before 1700+ cable channels set to work eroding our collective intelligence, there used to be three networks, a few independent stations operating out of Philadelphia and New York, PBS, and the odd UHF channel.

During the holidays, once everyone’s stomachs were distended, and the adults were engaged in conversation in the kitchen or dining room, the kids would find somewhere in the house to huddle around a special broadcast of “The Wizard of Oz” or “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

A reminiscence of those halcyon days was to have been an important component of our discussion of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968) on tonight’s Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Unfortunately, the program has had to be postponed. I blame the Child Catcher and those infernal lollies!

I hope you’ll join us now on SUNDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EST. Bring the last of the leftovers to the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, and elsewhere! We apologize for the inconvenience.

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

Now I’m off to fill the evening with the 1981 WOR-TV Thanksgiving Kong-a-Thon, a copy of which was kindly sent to me this week by Jon Haag.

November 26, 2022
1982 Summer of Movies A Nostalgic Look

Was 1982 the Summer of Fun?

Projecting myself back 40 years, on the cusp of Memorial Day weekend, I was already caught in the gravitational pull of summer. Sure, school was still on its molasses creep toward final exams and their denouement, the padding of allotted days in hot classrooms until the final bell.

But I had already seen “Conan the Barbarian” (with a hilarious weeknight audience in a mostly empty theater), I was reading Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” in anticipation of the release of “Blade Runner,” and on top-40 radio “Chariots of Fire” was sharing air time with “Ebony and Ivory.”

There was war in the Falkland Islands, and “Jane Fonda’s Workout” was everywhere, but on the whole, for a high school student in the U.S., summer was about to crest and life was good.

Here are just some of the popcorn movies that were issued in the summer of ’82, with their release dates, and in parentheses, their composers.

“The Sword and the Sorcerer” (David Whitaker), April 23
“Conan the Barbarian” (Basil Poledouris), May 14
“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” (Miklos Rozsa), May 21
“The Road Warrior” (Brian May), May 21
“Rocky III” (Bill Conti), May 28
“Poltergeist” (Jerry Goldsmith), June 4
“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (James Horner), June 4
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (John Williams), June 11
“Blade Runner” (Vangelis), June 25
“The Thing” (Ennio Morricone), June 25
“The Secret of Nimh” (Jerry Goldsmith), July 2
“Tron” (Wendy Carlos), July 9
“The Beastmaster” (Lee Holdridge), August 20

I would come to own most of the soundtracks for these movies. In fact, the only three missing from my collection are “The Secret of Nimh,” “Tron,” and “Rocky III” (not that I want it).

And these were just the foil on a roll of SweeTarts, the tip of a bottomless box of Nonpareils. There were interesting and diverting movies released all summer long, many of them quite good – among them “Fitzcarraldo,” “Annie,” “Gregory’s Girl,” “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy,” “The World According to Garp,” “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Night Shift,” “Pink Floyd: The Wall,” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

On July 4, I was 16 years-old, I could legally drive to a movie theater, and the world was my oyster.

Were all of the movies good? Not all of them were on a level with “E.T.” or “The Road Warrior” or “Fitzcarraldo,” but most of them have endured fondly in memory, as pop cultural touchstones for a certain generation, or at the very least as guilty pleasures. (There’s a reason I’ve included “The Sword and the Sorcerer,” even though it opened in April.)

Going by film scores alone, I often cite 1982 as Hollywood’s Second Golden Year – the First, of course, widely accepted as 1939. Few of the movies were of the caliber of those released at the time of “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone with the Wind,” among many, many others, but the music for even the weakest of ‘82 was generally of a very high quality.

By 1982, the “summer movie” was a well-oiled machine. There may have been no “Star Wars” and no “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but man there was a lot of fun and fantasy to be enjoyed in an air-conditioned theater.

“Jaws” may have given rise to the modern summer blockbuster in 1975, but it wasn’t until “Star Wars” – released on May 25, 1977, a Wednesday, on the week leading up to Memorial Day – that the industry was codified. That’s when the studios figured out that the lazy days of summer were being underutilized as a dumping ground for low expectations and undemanding fare. The old thinking was, it’s summer, right? People are busy. They’re on vacation. Who’s going to go to the movies?

Now of course the summer movie mentality is year-round, whenever they feel like dropping another Marvel movie. But the magic that so indelibly marked the summer moviegoing experience from the mid-‘70s through the mid-‘80s seems to have entirely dissipated. Who knows, maybe it’s my age. But I think I am correct in observing that commercialism has long since outstripped creativity, if not craft, and a lot of the soul has been superseded by breakneck editing, refinery noise, and computer-generated nightmares.

Alas, the change of seasons now holds little significance for me, in terms of entertainment. Going to the movies in the summer is no longer a part of my routine. Gone are the days when I would actually create a countdown calendar in anticipation of the next “Star Wars” sequel, or that I would leaf through the movie ads, with their alluring artwork, in the Friday newspapers.

I guess to some extent I’ve put away childish things. (Don’t you believe it!) But it’s not because I’ve abandoned the movies. Rather, it’s the movies that have abandoned me.

When I die, if they let me into Heaven, I hope it’s a little bit like 1982.

May 26, 2022

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