{"id":14395,"date":"2020-07-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-03T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=14395"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:19:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:19:02","slug":"the-inspired-tackiness-of-st-elmos-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-inspired-tackiness-of-st-elmos-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inspired Tackiness of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Demi Moore\u2019s apartment in St. Elmo\u2019s Fire<\/em> is a truly fabulous sight to behold. Her living room walls are painted a shocking pink that offsets a self-consciously tasteful brown couch and armchair and geometric coffee table. The seating is piled high with pink, blue, and cream colored pillows. Dramatic plants sit on the coffee table and by the door. The pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance <\/em>is a giant mural of Billy Idol, complete with neon-lit embellishments. The tableau is about as far from minimalism as you can get. The interior design of this apartment\u2014extremely ’80s and proudly defying notions of good taste\u2014is a microcosm of this silly but oddly compelling film. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer\/director Joel Schumacher, who recently passed away at the age of 80 and has long been known for a body of over-the-top (and often poorly received) work like The Lost Boys<\/em>, Batman & Robin<\/em>, and Flatliners<\/em>, openly embraced tackiness onscreen. St. Elmo\u2019s Fire<\/em>, starring an ensemble cast of quintessential Brat Pack actors and bubbling with soap opera drama, may well be one of the most ’80s films ever made. Both its outlook and its aesthetic are quintessentially Reagan-era. In a contemporary review<\/a> for New York <\/em>magazine, critic David Denby called the movie \u201cless a movie than a pretentious teen product\u2014Guess? Jeans on celluloid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The film, which recently celebrated its 35th<\/sup> anniversary (yes, the film itself is now over a decade older than its protagonists), follows a group of post-collegiate friends as they navigate their careers and love lives. The plot is fairly thin, and the characters are by and large unlikeable. Through the lens of a hot take: what Girls <\/em>is to millennials, St. Elmo\u2019s Fire <\/em>is to Gen X yuppies. The cast of characters is white, upper middle class, and prone to self-absorption. The film is often spoken of alongside The Breakfast Club<\/em> for its shared cast members and 1985 release date, and both films rely on clich\u00e9 characters embodied by charismatic actors (the who\u2019s-who-of-the-decade cast includes Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, and Rob Lowe). There are bad boys and good girls, professionals and fuck-ups. Everyone smokes cigarettes constantly. There\u2019s something oddly comforting about the film\u2014it is both dramatic and inconsequential. Characters may sleep around and betray one another but watching the film in 2020, with a level of (quite possibly misplaced) nostalgia, such behavior seems entertainingly decadent. The characters may all be young, but they perform adulthood with a boldness that feels alien to the post-aughts world of cutesy ideas of \u201cadulting\u201d and \u201cself-care\u201d mixed with catastrophic unemployment and increasing precarity on a global and local level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the big-haired, glamorous Jules, Moore carries herself with an air of practiced sophistication. She is baby-faced and smoky-voiced. It\u2019s obvious that she put a lot of effort into decorating her unforgettable apartment, and there\u2019s an element of teen girl-ish devotion in her choice to fill a wall with a larger than life Billy Idol portrait. While she may act like a world weary siren, there\u2019s a layer of vulnerability just below the surface. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d be this tired at 22,\u201d she sighs, in a line potent enough to yield a whole article<\/a>. By the film\u2019s end, she attempts suicide by locking herself in her bedroom with the window wide open, hoping to freeze herself to death. She lives, of course. As Schumacher put it in a 2017 interview<\/a> with Entertainment Weekly<\/em>, \u201cThat part was satirical and tongue-in-cheek. She\u2019s so fucking dramatic all the time… Do you know how long it takes to freeze yourself in a Georgetown apartment? She\u2019s not in the Antarctic.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The writer\/director clearly had a sense of humor about things. His puckishness particularly shines through in a scene in which Leslie (Ally Sheedy) and Alec (Judd Nelson), a couple breaking up in the wake of an affair, fight over their shared record collection as Leslie prepares to move out. \u201cYou can have all the Billy Joels\u2026 except The Stranger<\/em>,\u201d Alec huffs. \u201cI\u2019m taking Thriller <\/em>and Mahler\u2019s ninth,\u201d replies Leslie. The heated exchange goes on (\u201cNo Springsteen is leaving this house!\u201d) as tensions build over something both materialist and deeply consequential. The argument is petty, yes, but it\u2019s also poignant. These records are part of how these characters define themselves. They think they know it all, but adolescent impulses can still poke through, and in 2020 the thick layer of ’80s ephemera that coats every scene makes this tale of post-college coming-of-age feel something like escapism. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“St. Elmo’s Fire” is available to buy or rent via the usual platforms<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Demi Moore\u2019s apartment in St. Elmo\u2019s Fire is a truly fabulous sight to behold. Her living room walls are painted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":14398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1381],"tags":[1422,162],"class_list":["post-14395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-movies","tag-looking-back","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22789,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14395\/revisions\/22789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}