INTERVIEW: HDNet Movies celebrates 1980s with movie marathon
Photo: Courtesy of HDNet Movies / Provided by network with permission.
The 1980s are more popular today than they were in the 1980s. One only has to look at the continued success of Stranger Things and the repeat (and repeat and repeat) viewings of such classic films as The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire and Repo Man for any kind of evidence.
HDNet Movies has decided to celebrate this influential decade with a summer movie marathon, which kicks off Monday, July 22 at 8 p.m. and continues until July 27. Icon Lea Thompson, star of such ’80s films as Back to the Future and Howard the Duck, will host the weeklong celebration, and she will be interviewed by ’80s film expert Tara McNamara.
“I am fascinated by ’80s movies,” McNamara said in a recent phone interview. “I love ’80s moves, and I kind of love them as a portal into history and into the behaviors that we exhibit today. … I think the ’80s are either a time capsule of what was going on, or you can see how it influenced the way people may even still act. That’s why I love it. I got attached with HDNet Movies. I am such a fan of the network, and I love that they run a lot of ’80s movies. And I like their theme programming, and I saw a couple years ago where they had done an ’80s movie marathon with Judge Reinhold. And I reached out to them and let them know that I was a fan of it, and that’s how we connected.”
The movie marathon this time around features such classic films as Some Kind of Wonderful, St. Elmo’s Fire, My Stepmother Is an Alien and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Simply look at the programming for Wednesday, July 24 to see how dedicated the network is to the decade. That evening they will show Harry and the Hendersons, Short Circuit, The Toy and Three O’Clock High.
In between the film screenings Thompson and McNamara will talk about the films and this memorable decade.
“It’s an interview with Lea Thompson where we talk about the films that are in the iconic ’80s week movie marathon, and also I just talk to her about what it was like to be an actress in the ’80s,” she said. “She’s amazing. She’s so generous with her answers, and she’s really honest. … A lot of times actors can be very guarded about their answers, and I found her to be really insightful and helpful and honest about the things that she saw and experienced.”
McNamara, who runs the website 80sMovieGuide.com, said that Thompson was the perfect actor for hosting duties because her on-screen portrayals always exude that “every girl quality.”
“I always like that she’s the girl that we wanted to be,” McNamara said. “You can be bad, but she has this innocence to her. I think as a female you can kind of connect with that.”
Of the many films that will be showcased on HDNet Movies, McNamara is particularly interested in catching the showing of Xanadu, a guilty pleasure movie musical for so many people. The Olivia Newton-John film was ripped apart by critics when it was first released, but in time it became a cult classic and even inspired a Broadway musical.
“I love Xanadu,” she said. “I fell in love with Xanadu when I was 10 years old, and I think so many people did. It’s so interesting that this movie that’s known to be terrible — and it really is bad — and yet there’s something so unbelievably magical and wonderful about it. And I absolutely love it, and it’s rarely on TV. So I’m excited that we’re showing that. St. Elmo’s Fire I’m really glad is a part of it. That’s the film that launched the term the Brat Pack, so I think that’s great. And I love that we’re running Some Kind of Wonderful because actually Lea Thompson and Howard Deutch’s 30th wedding anniversary is July 23, so the day after we air the film is their 30th wedding anniversary. Of course, you knew Amanda Jones was going to get the guy she really wanted, and who she really wanted was the director.”
Deutch, in addition to being Thompson’s real-life husband, was the director of Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. Both films helped to advance the term the “Brat Pack,” which defines a group of actors who came together and made a number of successful films about teenage life; many of these flicks were directed by John Hughes.
Hughes’ filmography is almost too long to list, but here are some of the classics: She’s Having a Baby, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Uncle Buck, among many others.
For McNamara, the success of the Brat Pack comes down to the fact that teenagers were rarely seen authentically on screen, and Hughes and his contemporaries changed that perception.
“I think what’s interesting about the Brat Pack — and Lea Thompson and I talked about this — is we were given this crew of young actors in film after film after film,” she said. “And they had the chemistry, and part of the reason was before the ’80s there really weren’t these teen films. They weren’t really being made, and there wasn’t a big pool of actors to choose from. So these guys saw each other regularly at auditions. They all knew each other, and they all already had a chemistry. And then when they make film after film after film, of course, they were hanging out together. They were in the public eye, and then you had all the Teen Beat-type magazines. So we really start to feel a draw to these certain actors.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Iconic 80s With Lea Thompson movie marathon will run July 22-27 each night starting at 8 p.m. on HDNet Movies. Click here for more information.
