REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM (13)
By:
May 11, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of “offbeat” movies from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
BETTER OFF DEAD | SAVAGE STEVE HOLLAND | 1985
The only specificity that remained with me from Better Off Dead, between my first viewing in 1985 and my second one this afternoon, is the mantra of grievance, I want my two dollars. In the movie, the line is uttered repetitively by a kid with a paper route attempting to collect payment for paper delivery. In my own life, I chant it silently whenever I’m in a contract negotiation.
Revisited, I’m glad to see that this line is one of the primary refrains that threads the colossally strange assemblage of this movie together, even branching momentarily into a dream ballet of innumerable paper boys on innumerable bikes chasing our hero through a dark park.
I guess I also remember the tank of feeling the whole thing ran on: the unmet need to be given what one is owed, the banging-head-against-wall of serial failure, the pile-on of quotidian humiliations that stoke dread, until finally giving way to (of course) final triumph and a kiss, deliverance not to the Blaine-and-Steph-grade quarters of misplaced yearning but to the real girl, who also happens to be pretty cute — as is John Cusack, still a little gawky in his teenage body, obviously.
What surprises me watching it now is how the entire movie is a running composition of perfectly choreographed gags executed with meticulous melancholic absurdity and not an ounce of added fat. Viz: anteater costumes, suicide gags, mom’s experimental cooking that turns everything blue, the strangest dreamy math teacher scene of all time, the throwing-out of a perfectly good white boy, a drag racing duo (one of whom speaks like Howard Cosell), an antihero named Stalin. Every kiss-the-girl movie of my youth has slapstick gags, but most of them alternate with another vein of romcom storytelling. Better off Dead elevates the gag to the poetic line and discards all other modes of storytelling.
REPO YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Annie Nocenti on AFTER HOURS | Lynn Peril on BRAZIL | Mandy Keifetz on BODY DOUBLE | Carlo Rotella on ROBOCOP | Marc Weidenbaum on GROUNDHOG DAY | Erik Davis on REPO MAN | Mimi Lipson on STRANGER THAN PARADISE | Josh Glenn on HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING | Susan Roe on HOUSEKEEPING | Gordon Dahlquist on SOMETHING WILD | Heather Quinlan on EATING RAOUL | Anthony Miller on MIRACLE MILE | Karinne Keithley Syers on BETTER OFF DEAD | Adam McGovern on WALKER | Ramona Lyons on MILLER’S CROSSING | Vanessa Berry on WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? | Elina Shatkin on NIGHT OF THE COMET | Susannah Breslin on MAN BITES DOG | Tom Nealon on DELICATESSEN | Lisa Jane Persky on RUMBLE FISH | Dean Haspiel on WEIRD SCIENCE | Heather Kapplow on HEATHERS | Micah Nathan on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA | Deborah Wassertzug on ELECTRIC DREAMS | Mark Kingwell on WITHNAIL AND I.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!