Here’s a special treat for you – a guest post by the lovely Heather Green. Born and raised in North Carolina, Heather  has worked as a fashion and beauty consultant as well as freelancing for various wedding, fashion, and health publications. She currently acts as the resident blogger for Online Nursing Degrees where she’s been researching military nursing programs as well as nurse practitioner degrees.

Real Genius: What College Should Be Like

Back when I thought Val Kilmer was the most beautiful man on the planet, he starred in an ‘80s comedy that never quite found its audience.  I can’t imagine why, since it’s probably my favorite ‘80s comedy ever and shaped my idea of what college would be like.  Imagine my disappointment when not even a single professor’s house overflowed with popcorn on the eve of graduation.  (My classmates and I realized that in such quantities, even popcorn was expensive.)

Synopsis

Mitch (Gabriel Jarret) is awkward, insecure, nervous around girls, and wants nothing more than to fit in.  He’s basically you’re average fifteen-year-old boy, except most fifteen-year-olds aren’t attending their first year of what is more or less a college for geniuses. 

He becomes a roommate to the university’s legend, Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), who’s abandoned hush puppy shoes and all-nighters for bunny slippers and dorm-wide ice capades.  Together, they’re instructed by Professor Jerry Hathaway (quintessential ‘80s villain William Atherton) to build a high-powered laser.  Little do they know that the laser is much more than Chris’s graduating project and their actions may have much more dire, even military consequences.

Why It’s Genius

Val shines brightly with his witty one-liners, the scuffing of his bunny-slippered-feet, and his many examples of unabashed physical comedy.  What gives the film its unforgettable charm, however, is the actors’ on-screen chemistry.  Mitch looks up to Chris but is exasperated by his party-hearty abandon.  Jordan is crazy—like, jump into the boy’s bathroom to discuss clothing sizes when Mitch is trying to pee crazy—but it’s only right that the awkward Mitch falls for the equally awkward but adorable genius.  This motley crew of geniuses puts their over-developed brains to work to overcome Professor Hathaway’s diabolical plan and put the brown-nosing Kent in his place—in a house overflowing with popcorn, proving that there is justice in the world.

Lastly, Real Genius boasts what is likely the best ending in film history.  Who doesn’t want to listen to Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” while kids dive into a mountain of popcorn?

If you haven’t seen it, give it a shot.  In my family, it’s one of those movies we watch over and over again, so renting is out of the question!

Welcome to a special edition of Fab Friday! William J. Torgerson is author of Love on the Big Screen, an 80s music and movie themed novel that tells the story of Zuke, whose understanding of love has been shaped by late-eighties romantic comedies. 

He teaches at the Institute For Writing Studies at St. John’s University in New York, and his script adaptation of the novel was chosen as the Grand Prize Winner of the Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition.  As a middle school student, William once went to see Weird Science four nights in a row with his buddy Tank. You can find him on Facebook here.

Three 80s Movie Myths That Might Put You in the Love Danger Zone

1.      Love at First Sight is the Only Way Love Happens:  In Cameron Crowe’s 1989 Say Anything, Lloyd Dobler imagines an almost date with Diane Court after they coincidently sit near each other at the mall.  In Dead Poets Society, Knox Overstreet visits the Danburrys and when Chris comes to the door, it’s over.  He’s in love.  There are other ways to meet people than pick them out of a crowd.  What if Cory and Lloyd would have went on a date? 

I met my wife on a blind date.  I didn’t know I wanted to marry her yet.  We went on a second date.  True, there was an awesome eighties band called The Breakfast Club, but it’s my guess love might be better—it might have a shot at lasting longer—when you take your time with it.  Let love grow more like the spring grass than cut the air like a lightning bolt.

2.     Plan the Grand (or even small) Romantic Gesture:  Probably the most famous of these is Cusack playing Dobler and holding the boom box over his head blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” up at Diane Court’s window.  Dobler less famously also brushes broken glass out of Diane’s way on their first date.  Knox Overstreet trespasses on the school grounds where Chris Danburry goes and he reads her his love poem.  Eighty percent (why not, it’s an eighties blog) of the women I’ve ever met say they’d die to have a man do these things for them.  This is not at all true, at least not at first. 

I used to be the guy who showed up with roses on the first date, who wrote flowery poems of devotion, and arranged for second-date diners at candlelit restaurants.  The message these gestures sent to every woman I was just meeting was that I was desperate.  It’s a tricky line to walk, the one where you let a person know you’re interested, but you don’t pursue too hard.  Don’t forget that people often want what they can’t have. 

3.     Once You Kiss….  Okay, I can’t really finish that sentence.  In the eighties (and I don’t think much has changed) when the couple kisses, the movie is over.  For writers and filmmakers, the kiss at the end of the movie is a great way to get a positive review.  People walk out of the theater with the warm fuzzies and recommend the film to everyone they know. 

Jake leans across Samantha’s birthday cake, they kiss, and the credits roll.  Ringwald kisses her way into another string of credits smooching Judd Nelson as John Bender in the Breakfast Club. There’s another kiss in Weird Science (you get the idea) and then for me, one of the big ones is in the Princess Bride where concerning Princess Buttercup and Westley—aka, The Dread Pirate Roberts—the grandfather takes us to the end reading to then cute little Fred Savage: “Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.” 

If my life between 1985 when I was fifteen and 2005 when I was thirty-five has showed me anything, it’s that there is a whole heck of a lot that happens after one finally kisses the person one thinks he or she loves, and many of us were left to navigate that by ourselves by these films.  Of course that’s okay because they are only the movies and if movies are anything, they are—or can be—a pleasurable two-hour escape from reality.  We just have to remember that when we’re in love in real life, or perhaps, what we need (cringe!) is a sequel to each of these flicks.