BEACHES (1988)

BEACHES, from 1988, doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it’s a tearjerker. Right from literally the very first scene we see that singer C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) is popular because she’s doing a soundcheck at the famous Hollywood Bowl (seating capacity: 17,500) when she gets a note informing her that her childhood friend Hillary (Barbara Hershey) is all fucked up and about to evolve into a skeleton. She splits the joint and drives all night to be with her friend. During this drive she thinks back on her lifelong friendship with the boring Hillary.

They met on a beach as kids and became pen pals. C.C. was raised by a demanding stage mother and Hillary lived in some lame silver spoon world. Yadda, yadda, yadda, they grow up and get an apartment in New York City. C.C. becomes a Broadway star and Hillary marries some rich douche who cheats on her. Blah, blah, blah, they have all kinds of ups and downs and through it all C.C. is the only one that is interesting while Hillary remains boring for her entire life. Eventually the long-awaited sad scenes show up…and they’re not sad at all.

When I sat my incredibly chiseled buns down to watch BEACHES I honestly thought it was going to be for the first time, but as I was watching it, it really felt like I had seen it before. So, either I had or the script was so goddamn predictable that I just felt like I had experienced it before. Either way, BEACHES is an okay film. I’d probably give it a 6 / 10. Mainly based off Bette Milder’s performance. She was great and a real joy to watch. All the scenes without her though are snoozers. Fun vintage clothing, totally predictable story, uneven editing that I found distracting, average acting by everybody except Bette, emotional scenes that fall flat, a few outdoor NYC street scenes that look like they might really just be a set, boring camerawork, multiple bars/clubs with the same pinkish-purple lighting, unsympathetic character (Hillary) that we’re supposed to be crying over but yet she never seemed to be a good friend to C.C. ever. She should have stopped hanging out with her 20 years ago! Also, maybe I'm a big dummy, but I could never figure out the level of C.C.'s fame.

There was a rumor (created by me in about 3 seconds) that there was a script for a BEACHES 2, written in 1990, where Hillary’s young daughter, Victoria, who was adopted by C.C., grows up and becomes addicted to opioids and joins a Manson-like 2.0 cult that preys on social media influencers. Sadly, the script was never picked up for production due to legal threats by the powerful Ed Wood estate dealing with a subplot about a cross-dressing assassin that appeared to be borrowed from Wood’s 1965 novel “Killer in Drag”. There was also the problem that audiences would have had no idea what the fuck social media influencers were back in 1990.

SLACKER (1990)

Filmed in an almost documentary style, SLACKER is the story of a lonely movie camera that wanders around Austin, TX in search of an interesting conversation. Sadly, the camera never finds anybody worth listening to and finally, at the end, an unnamed person picks up the camera and tossed it off Mount Bonnell…where mostly likely it landed on somebody breaking into a car in the parking lot.

From a filmmaking point of view, SLACKER is very interesting. I enjoyed the seamless way the camera glided from person to person. But from an entertainment point of view, I was floundering. First off, every goddamn conversation sounded like the last one! I mean, I’ve lived in this town since the mid-Pleistocene epoch, so I know the whole fucking place is full of mindless fart-sniffers too scared to have an opinion, but this is a work of fiction! Make some shit up! Whatever, it’s not my movie, maybe the writer intended everybody to sound the same and be boring! Whiff!!! If that’s the case, I’m sorry, the joke went right over my exceedingly handsome head. And speaking of handsome skulls, ol’ Jason Voorhees’ skull was fucking wild in that Crystal Lake series. They did that boi wrong, but it didn’t fucking matter since 87% of the show was about his mom and not Jason. Nobody wants a backstory on Jason and definitely not a backstory on his mom. I just want to see Jason kill! That’s literally it. Jason killing. I just want an endless TV show of Jason killing. In a summer camp, every fucking episode. Just over and over and over. No reason given. Just Jason murdering people, but no animals. People only. Lots of nudity, lots of people goofing off while Jason kills their friends.

Oh yeah, SLACKER. It’s okay. I can see historians, filmmakers and oldheads from ATX enjoying it, but younger movie watchers would probably turn it off within 5 minutes. It would be interesting to see a follow-up made nowadays. Then again I could just stand on Red River and listen to boring people talk and imagine I'm in Slacker 2.

Fans of SLACKER might find this interesting.