Simple Kid

All right, we haven't spoken in a while. For this, you should be thankful. I mean, there were plenty of things that I could've spent my time telling you about, going over with you--but I didn't feel like telling them, and you didn't feel like hearing them. This last summer alone is a strange and curious mystery to me, and I don't want to bother taking time to solve it. Point is, you should be thanking me; because instead of writing here, I took some time to figure some things out. And not just things for me. That would be selfish, and self-centered, and self-absorbed, and that's just not how I operate. No--I've been figuring out things for us.

Very important things. You know, I may use words like "zeitgeist" and "epoch" on occasion, but in actuality I have little idea what they mean. And I shouldn't bother with them, for they entail far more philosophy than I care to get involved with. I'm about practicalities, simplicity, and while these words may be far too complicated for my purposes, I've taken the time examining their brittle foundations--within which seems to lie the concept of a Generation.

A Generation is something I may know a little something about, and what it seems to be of course is a flexible group of people that are held together by something beyond time, right? It is because of this, that you can be of a generation, and still belong, or not belong in it.

What I have realized--and remember, like I said, this applies to all of us--is that I am just part...of the wrong generation.

There was I time, to which I should have belonged, but do not. And what's horrifying is that I was so close; in the grand scheme of things, I missed it by just a hair, and it frustrates me to no end. But at the same time, I can take some small pleasure in basking in the glow of the ambient light reflected from the afterburn of this magical and majestic era.

The era I to which I refer--the generation to which I am so deeply bound--is of course Ronald Regan's Presidential Administration, from 1981-1989.

It's true: I was born at the outset of this era, and lived my first years in the fold of its welcoming embrace. But I should've been of age then, my god, I should've been a teenager, or a young adult, in order to live it to the fullest.

What allowed me to understand all this, of course, was movies. We, here in Los Angeles, as a film producing culture, know that we can learn everything about ourselves and our own history through the movies of the time period. And sure, had you been paying the kind of wonderful close attention that I've been paying, this would all be as plain to you as it is to me. So let me show you:

The 1970s was a period of grave disillusionment. The Vietnam War. The Nixon Administration. The fallout of the failed dream of the 1960s. My god, that must've been a trying time. Those who came blissfully of age in the love generation were starting to see their dream crumble before their eyes. The world got uglier and uglier. The colors yellow, brown and orange became curiously appealing and started showing up everywhere, inducing widespread subtle nausea. And the degradation of our world could be evidenced, above all else, in the increasing prevalance of the face of one man: Al Pacino.

We should weep at the face of Al Pacino. The man starts to show up in one memorable 1970s movie after another: The Godfather. Serpico. Dog Day Afternoon. Bobby Deerfield. His deep-set masturbatory eyes glazed with fear. The pits in his cheeks and lines in his face dark with anguish. His high, whiny voice mimicking the shrill trumpet of the coming apocalypse. Al Pacino's face is the chaos and despair of the 1970s. Al Pacino face is the failure of a dream; the broken angel tumbling down toward the Earth.

Pacino makes ...And Justice For All and Cruising during the Carter administration. The impetus for Scarface occurs during the Carter administration. The world is weak. The world is frightening. The former hippies, the aged flower-people, are hitting rock bottom. Pacino and Sexual Deviance prance arm in arm across our movie screens.

And who will save us?

Ronald Reagan.

You know, right around 1980, as America braced itself for a presidential election, hostages are living at the US Embassy in Iran. Will Jimmy "Peace Prize" Carter save them? Ha. This is America. The West. We are the thing, that Westerns are about. When the villagers are held hostage by the banditos, who do you send to save them?

The Peanut Farmer?
No. You send the Cowboy.

Thank the fucking Lord that Ronald Reagan won that election. His overwhelming strength and almost punishing masculinity proved no match for those Iranians, and even managed to travel through time and reach twenty-five years into the future to give me my own strength and courage. Our people came home from Iran safe, yes. And just around this time, all those children who had grown up traipsing along with Arlo Guthrie and the Grateful Dead; all those who had lived with the anguish of their folly through the sad Pacino 1970s, were about to wake up and realize that their fathers, against whom they had so furiously rebelled, were right. That the strong family and duty-related values of the 1950s weren't so off-base after all. That it was their job to create a new world similar to the one they had shirked so long ago, under the friendly gaze of the Cowboy, in this new decade of promise and possibility, the 1980s.

Pacino ceases to work. After his thriving, vivacious career reigns over the 1970s, he makes only two more movies after Scarface in the 1980s, and they are Revolution and Sea of Love. Yeah. As the now wizened former love generation embraces work, family, and money, Pacino has no choice to crawl back under the rock from whence he came...and in his wake, his replacement arose, and stood gloriously, victorious over the fleeting degradation. The anti-Pacino, the emblem of all that has once again rightfully become good and true, the symbol of the prodigal generation, returned home to the promised land:

Ralph Macchio.

The Outsiders is released in 1983, followed by The Karate Kid in 1984. Through Macchio's journey, the former love generation sees the error of its ways. First, he thinks he knows everything: he trades authority for disorder, and tradition for novelty and youth. But in The Karate Kid, that novelty that had comforted him like a big warm blanket turns against him, and wants to kick the shit out of him. He is saved only by a return to traditional values of the 1950s: an acceptance of hard work and discipline. A deep respect of his family and his elders. And a greater understanding and acknowledgement of the World War II Pacific conflict. As a reward for this homecoming, he is rewarded with a trophy, a girl, and a beautiful 1950s American-made automobile, for which the Japanese are shown to have great respect and admiration.

While Pacino's movies are "urban" and "gritty," showing the downfall of our city centers in the 1970s, The Karate Kid depicts the lovely San Fernando Valley, where the newly enlightened adults of a bountiful new era are continuing the work of the urban planners of the 1950s, creating communities that allowed Real American Families to thrive, sheltered from the evil falshoods that dashed the hopes and dreams of the Urban Residents down into the cities' gutters.

Pacino does not work during these years. I can only assume he was off doing "theater" somewhere. Property values increase. Yellow, orange and brown are replaced by the far more pleasing fuscia and teal. T-shirts begin to have collars again.

Mr. Macchio did amazing work, ushering in a period of beauty and light, but it doesn't end with him. No, the Lord saw fit to grant us another mascot of enlightenment and improvement: Michael J. Fox.

In 1985, Mr. Fox picked up the good work that Mr. Macchio left off in 1984 with the startling Back to the Future. He takes the pilgrimage that we began with Ronald Reagan's election to the Presidency a step further when he is not only able to see how the 1960s turned his father into a wishy-washy, empty shell of a human being, but then travels BACK IN TIME to the 1955 to set his pussy of a father straight, and give him a set of balls so he can ride out the 1960s like a decent American and live on to future prosperity under President Reagan. Also, he brings his own hands-on experience of 1955 back to the 1980s with him and learns that he shouldn't be afraid of success and prosperity, like he was at the beginning of the film. He learns that these are wonderful things. When Michael J. Fox returns from the 1950s, he owns a large truck in which he is able to have vigorous and robust American sex with his girlfriend, and his father stands lofty with a publishing deal and a sweater tied around his neck. All is made well in America.

I cried at the end.

And these prophets had more work to do; they continued to track the progress of our nation throughout the 1980s with two more episodes in each other their sagas. After the first Karate Kid, Macchio takes on more of the work of the great WWII generation, who knew how to sustain a decent county, by going to Japan to re-kick the Japanese's ass for attempting to compete with us in the automotive and electronic industries. As Reagan's presidency drew to a close, Macchio, in The Karate Kid III, is lead astray by more new-age fakey-fakes, which the 1990s was sure to bring, but is inevitably redeemed by the deeply-rooted ethic of discipline and respect bequethed to him by the WWII generation, on which he had turned his back. Back to the Future II saw Michael J. Fox travel into the future to spread the 1950s values now so dear to him--to make sure that a repeat of the dreaded 1960s didn't come back and poison his children with the same weakness and fear. Back to the Future III let him go back in time a hundred more years to show that the guidance given this country by the Cowboy himself offered not only salvation now, but were even strong enough to allow a man to survive in the Old West, if he had to.

Ralph Macchio and Michael J. Fox showed that they were strong; that they would ride with the Cowboy Ronald Reagan and follow their journeys to the end.

And do any Al Pacino movies have sequels made to them?

Well, yes, The Godfather. But they were made only in the 1970s and in 1990. Francis Ford Coppola was dependent on Pacino for these movies, and knew he had to back off when the Cowboy was President. Pacino's face would have meant nothing to the country. It would have looked foreign and strange.

In the 1980s, sweatsocks had colored bands on them, which symbolized order and plentitude.

In the 1980s, video stores open everywhere, so that all could rent the Karate Kid and Back to the Future and watch them over and over again, to make sure they really get it, because another little decade like the 1960s, and the resulting 1970s, would be a big, big problem.

But it's the 2000s now. Al Pacino works regularly, and has since 1990, when after a decade of inactivity he made three movies in one year. At the beginning of Clinton's administration, Pacino was nominated for two Oscars in the same year. Ralph Macchio ceased to work and Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

And President Reagan retired from public service and disappeared inside his Bel Air mansion, never to emerge again.

And me, I long for that time during which we received waves of strength and guidence that pulsed from the contours of the face of a great, great Man. I was born, yes, but if only I had been more than just a simple kid, if only I had been old enough to really bear witness to the glory of that time. Of that President. Where people knew that you didn't have to care about things if you were in comfort, and that you didn't have to worry if you weren't; help was on the way down to you. If only that DeLorean would today screech out of thin air into the heart of our cities and our towns, with relics from that wonderful epoch, and Ralph and Michael word emerge and pose there, young, healthy, pointing the road back home.