Peggy Sue Got Married: A Post Adolesence Film Review

Yes, THAT one. Peggy Sue Got Married, the 1986 film starring Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage, played a very pivotal role in my childhood. It belongs to that canon of HBO repeats that subbed as a babysitter for my sister and I during our 80s childhood in suburban Louisiana. For the curious, other titles in that category include, but are not limited to: Quarterback Princess, Weird Science, Weekend at Bernies, Arthur, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, Heathers, Dirty Dancing...you know, all movies that are highly inappropriate for children but readily available through Home Box Office several times a day for several consecutive days? Those.

However, Peggy Sue Got Married ended up being a veritable cave for the mining of jokes that never die between my sister and I. For giggles, I recently rented a copy of the DVD just to experience this film as an adult which, if you haven't done this in awhile with a movie you used to love you should definitely consider. Below are some random impressions/questions I have about the film that have arisen from this re-viewing as an old ass woman. I realize the term post adolescence refers to a specific time in one's life, however it does literally apply here since I am way, way post adolescence.

For those who have not seen this here's a brief synopsis I stole from wikipedia:

Peggy Sue Got Married is a 1986 American comedy-drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Kathleen Turner as a woman on the verge of a divorce, who finds herself transported back to the days of her senior year in high school. The film was written by husband and wife team Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner.

First, this movie was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This is not something I even knew until just this very second when I was researching it and I would never in a zillion years would have guessed that he was the one who directed it. To be fair, I am not that intimately familiar with Coppola's films aside from the Godfather films and The Outsiders. Though now it totally makes sense that Sofia Coppola has a small but memorable role in this as Peggy Sue's little sister. It is a bit crazy to me that the little girl who is mooning over Fabian in the film is the same woman who went on to direct Lost in Translation. In fact, this might be a good time to point out that there are SO MANY familiar faces in this film that were pretty much unknown at the time: Helen Hunt, Jim Carrey, Joan Allen, etc. Seeing this film now, after these actors in particular have become so famous and so associated in my mind with other projects added a bizarrely kitschy aspect to the movie, probably one that wasn't there before.

Anyway, one of the first things I notice immediately is the silver foil looking dress that Peggy Sue wears to her high school graduation. I say silver foil only because it is constructed from silver foil:

I remember when I was a 10 year old watching this thinking that it was the most beautiful dress ever and that I wanted one just like it for when I eventually went to prom. Ok, a) I did not go to prom, thank the lord and b) it is one of the most hideous dresses I have ever seen. The reunion is presented as her 25th. Why on earth would a 43 year old woman still have this dress, much less wear it to her reunion? We are clearly meant to like/sympathize with Peggy Sue but watching this as an adult makes me think Peggy Sue is loopy and weird. In fact, she annoyed me the entire movie when, again as a 10 year old, I admired and sympathized with her.

Anyway, at her reunion, she meets up with her old high school friends, two of whom are still a happily married couple. Half of this couple is Joan Allen and she looks and dresses like she is 80 years old. In fact, in the picture above, you can see her behind and to the left of Peggy Sue. I know it was the 80s but even 43 year old women in the 80s didn't dress like grandmas, no matter how long they had been married for and as an adult, I found that a bit silly. Her other two friends (one of whom is Jim Carrey), previously a couple in high school but for reasons unexplained broke up before they reached adulthood quickly reconnect at the reunion. These two clearly belonged together. We know this because about 10 minutes into the reunion, they are seen in a bathroom snorting cocaine. I cannot reach that far back into my memory to understand how my 10 year old brain processed what was happening in that scene apart from wondering why they needed to use a credit card for the white powder.

The reunion is a bittersweet even for our heroine because, as is established in the opening scene, she is going through a painful divorce from her husband of 25 years, played by Nicholas Cage. Again, it makes a bit of sense that he's in this, considering his relation to Coppola because watching this as an adult, I don't understand why he was cast in this. He spends the majority of the film doing what I can only assume was his best Casey Kasem impersonation. However, at the same time, I am thrilled that he is in this movie for the simple reason that my sister and I have been trading his lines, in his inflection, for the better part of 27 years. Sometimes we'll be hanging out and one of us will spontaneously go "you mean my whaaang?" and then erupt into laughter. Some of that might be residual "we weren't supposed to watch that as young kids b/c of the inappropriate sexual humor" giggling but I love it nonetheless. He also sings Doo Wop in this movie which I often get a kick out of. So yes, anyway, Nicholas Cage shows up to the reunion, to the chagrin of Peggy Sue and her Reynolds Wrap dress. Oh and also, her daughter is with her. Why? I have no idea.

In need of a date to her reunion, she brings her daughter. I told you she was weird.

So a bunch of old people stuff happens, including the "smart guy" of the class approaching Peggy Sue. He's another of her classmates that is only in his 40s, if we are doing the chronology correctly but looks like he's 70. I can only think that in the 80s, people just looked older. I mean as a kid I watched the Golden Girls, thinking they were soooo old. Meanwhile, they were in their 60s. Yeah, ok. My mom is 60. This is what she looks like:

I digress.

So she gets reelected prom queen (again, this doesn't, nor should it happen at high school reunions because grow the fuck up already, you are 43) and for some reason she faints. It isn't made clear why she faints. Nor is it made clear why fainting has transported her back in time 25 years to when she was a senior in high school. 10 year old me: that's so cool and believable. (Side note: the dress she wears is the same, only now instead of foil, it is grey.) In fact the entire film seems to be full of people dressed in pastel yellow and grey. There is a veneer of pastel over the entire film. I'm going to have to again chalk this up to it being the 80s. 10 year old me: that's so cool and believable.

This film was also apparently the precursor to that quintessential 90s phenomenon of casting much older actors to play teenagers. In this case, all the same actors from the reunion are meant to be 18 year olds. So the ones that easily passed for 60 and 70 year olds are meant to be high schoolers. Sure.

So Peggy is understandably weirded out and the audience is taken on a whirlwind tour of a small town where the cars, clothes, hairstyles, music, attitudes and scream 1960. 10 year old me: I wish I had lived in the 60s. How could I have known then the world that Mad Men would show me? How? Hold me.

So yeah anyway, there are a lot of jokes that heavily appeal to baby boomers, the obvious target audience of this film (something about red dye #5 and the Edsel). Peggy gets to see her parents who we presume are dead in the present time because you know, 40 year olds are so fucking old that all of their parents have been dead for a century already! Peggy seems to accept her circumstance pretty quickly and we are left not really understanding if she has actually time traveled or if she is dreaming.

Along the way she sees her now ex husband for what he was back then: a dreamer who wanted to make a serious career out of singing Doo Wop. Her friends all seem to be airheads. She runs into the resident beatnik who I shall have to take a break here to discuss. Michael Fitzsimmons, resident beatnik.

Even at 10 years old, I knew he was my kind of guy. The first time we see him, he's arguing the prominence of Hemingway as a "classic" author, preferring the "fire" of Jack Kerouac. He says the following:

 A writer's life is his work. Jack Kerouac doesn't have to kill a bull to have something to write about. I mean, man, he's out there burning, feeling, grooving on life.

 This character is why I first heard the name Jack Kerouac or found out what a beatnik was. He's wearing a black turtleneck amidst the pastel crowd. I remember thinking: and you are? I have this film and this character to thank for the following line, another one my sister and I have bandied about from time to time:

"I'm going to check out of this bourgeois motel, push myself from the dinner table and say, "No more Jell-o for me, mom!" 

Naturally Peggy sleeps with him; I mean, she's 43 and this was the only remotely interesting guy in her high school. I would have, too. This character is also the one that introduced me to Yeats. He quotes Yeats in order to seduce Peggy.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face; 

 

The context he says it in was cheesy but again, 10 year old me: what was THAT?? So hell yeah, Michael 

Fitzsimmons.

 

 

 

 If anyone is still reading this far, I shall reward you by ending it. So Peggy goes through "emotions" and decides to leave Nicholas Cage with surprising ease, considering her two children wouldn't have been born if she didn't stay. She visits her grandparents and her grandfather takes her to a Freemasons meeting where they are for some reason, according to 10 year old me, going to sacrifice her to their god. But suddenly lightning strikes and she wakes up in a hospital bed in the 80s and a whole bunch of things seem to indicate that she did in, in fact, time travel even though she was asleep at the hospital (?) Also, she and her husband are going to try to work things out, even though she really did want to erase their history when she had the opportunity. If she actually did have the opportunity and it wasn't all just a dream. Yeah, not really clear about that. 10 year old me: that's so cool and believable.

Anyway, the moral of this film, my rewatching it and any and all residual takeaways is this: you can't change the past (no matter how much better it would have been to bang the beatnik), 10 year olds should not watch films that have drug use and sexual innuendo, no matter how pretty the pastels are and I secretly love the crap out of Peggy Sue Got Married.

The Internet and its sneaky website imps

It appears that I have fallen prey to some sneaky website imp who led me, on a work computer no less(!), to a pornographic site (not that there's anything wrong with that). I just had to write an email to my bosses, explaining that I am not actually a pervert. This isn't the first time it has happened to me but it IS the first time it has happened to me on a work computer and I'm a bit mortified. Remember the early aughts when people actually did used to look at porn all day in their offices? Remember, like 3 years ago, when they used to be able to do it at the library? The internet is a digital wolf pack hidden under the puffy, fluffy wool of sheepish domain names. I feel vulnerable. Hold me.

This issue gives me pause lately because I am showing my 84 year old grandfather how to use the internet. We have weekly lessons during my lunch hours and I'm not sure if you have ever had the nightmare pleasure of explaining the internet to someone as green as a freshly mowed lawn, then you know that when you think about it in the abstract, it seems like a simple thing: explain the internet. However, when you sit down to do it, it is incredibly difficult. Like, long periods of confounded silence level difficult. Nothing about using a computer or the internet makes logical sense and nothing about it is intuitive, unless you are a quick study and/or you were born digital. Do they still even use that phrase? Any and all public librarians who work with adults will understand the problems associated with this. You cannot just say "double click here" without a barrage of questions. Why do I double click here but single click there? There is NO REASON. And that is just for the basic functions. At what point do I tell my grandpappy that it is possible to innocently web search and STILL end up being slapped in the face by naked ladies. We still have not mastered how to make the @ symbol appear!

Though I have had to show various library patrons how to use a computer or navigate particular websites, it has always been for scattered, short periods of time. There are, after all, limits to what someone can be shown at a reference desk (don't tell my bosses I said that). And so I never really thought too much about it before spending so much one on one time with a complete novice but in actuality, learning how to use a computer sort of encourages a person to be submissive. The computer freezes, you have to shut it down and restart. Why? Just do it. That's the answer for almost every basic computer function. (Obviously, I'm talking about in terms of the layperson. I'm sure IT professionals and computer engineers understand the ins and outs.)

Ahem.

But in general, the easiest way to explain to someone that their lives will be better served by a computer is to simply say "I don't know why, just do it." I don't know if this fact is indicative of the inevitable sentience of computers (and the subsequent downfall of humanity) or if it is just what we all must do in order to cope with our increasing dependence on computers for nearly all aspects of daily living (many young people can no longer read the face of a watch in order to tell time, think about THAT).

A lot of the time my grandfather forgets what I tell him anyway and we have to go through it all again. I suspect most of the confusion lies with two things: 1) my abysmal Spanish and 2) my inability to explain reasons why. If anyone has any tips on how I should broach that, I'd be happy to hear them. Otherwise, SUBMIT TO YOUR OVERLORD THE COMPYOOTOR is the old standby.

Filler?

I am not entirely certain what I did to the right half of my body. I know only that it hurts like a, how do you say, MOFO. I had grand designs of attending my weekly Friday night yoga class however considering I can barely move without a huge ache going up and down from head I don't think I'll be making that. Instead I have decided to do this:

Please ignore the clutter and the gin and tonic to the right. I am only drinking it because it loosens up the right half of my body. That's also the reason I'm eating cheese.

Today I had lunch with this man, aka my grandfather:

That is what he generally looks like as he is trying to decipher what I'm trying to say in my ABYSMAL Spanish. I curse every day that I was not forced to speak Spanish as a child. It would save the present day me from sounding like someone special and not in a good way.

Anyway, I don't really have a whole hell of a lot to say here. I want to do some other writing and also, I already have a buzz going, making my future as a writer all but assured.

Finish your website

Here's a blog post that serves two purposes.

Purpose one: To gush over the talents of my sister who used to photograph things all the time: people, places, things that caught her eye on the way to work. Anything was up for photographs. In fact, last year she started a tumblr wherein she posted one picture for everyday. Here is one of my favorites:

 I don't know where this is from or how she came across it but it is beautiful in its deformity. It could be from decades ago or yesterday. It could be real or imagined. It makes me want to write a poem. So many of her photos are like this.

Like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Purpose two: To publicly shame my sister for starting (and being relatively consistent with updating) a year long project to post photographs everyday and for STOPPING ON NOVEMBER 12. Like, really? You are going to do allll of that work and not finish a scant six weeks of work? I have harassed her about finishing this weekly, if not daily but to no avail. Mayhaps this public shaming will light a fire under her ass? I don't know. She did give me permission to do so I have chosen yet another day of blog every day May to do it.

Hey, Lorraine. FINISH YOUR WEBSITE.

Proust Questionnaire

Today was going to be a photo tour of my apartment but I simply did not have the wherewithall (read: could not find my digital camera cord to upload the photos) in order to do this. Instead, I find myself without a thought in my  head to blog about and some empty space to fill. So I took the Proust Questionnaire as presented in every issue of Vanity Fair.

The Proust Questionnaire

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
        A day off from work with no obligations and no plans to make or keep.

2. What is your greatest fear?
        Being forgotten. And slugs.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
        My complete inability to go with the flow without first kicking and screaming.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
        Willful ignorance.

5. Which living person do you most admire?
        There is not just one person. I most admire the selfless individuals who sacrifice their livelihood for the
        greater good.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?
        Probably the sheer amount of money I spend on entertainment. I could likely have secured a down
        payment for a house by now.

7. What is your current state of mind?
        A bit frantic but in a repetitive, organized way. Think hamster in a wheel.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
        Modesty

9. On what occasion do you lie?
        When it will literally have no real consequences for anyone.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
          I ain't a beauty but hey, I'm alright. And that's alright with me.

11. Which living person do you most despise?
          I can't think of anyone in particular.
         
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
         A sense of humor and attention to detail

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
          A sense of humor and attention to detail.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
          "Wait, what?"

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
          TBD

16. When and where were you happiest?
          The years I turned 5 and 30, respectively were pretty great.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?
          I would love to be able to play the banjo.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
          I would be a lot less shy. I have missed out on a lot of opportunities due to nothing but shyness.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
          Is it wrong to say that I always feel my greatest achievements are yet to come?

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
         A beloved, spoiled, well cared for house cat.

21. Where would you most like to live?
          In a big city, surrounded by friends and family.

22. What is your most treasured possession?
          Can my pets qualify as possession? I adore my cats.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
          Being broke and forgotten.

24. What is your favorite occupation?
          Reading, writing and film watching.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?
         Unrelenting pessimism for myself; unbridled optimism for everyone else

26. What do you most value in your friends?
         Loyalty and honesty, especially when it hurts.

27. Who are your favorite writers?
          F. Scott Fitzgerald, Junot Diaz, Tim O'Brien, Sherman Alexie, Frank O'Hara, John Irving, Thomas 
          Hardy, Anne Sexton, Shakespeare

28. Who is your hero of fiction?
           Nick Carraway and Elinor Dashwood

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
           Jane Austen, that cranky old spinster.
          
30. Who are your heroes in real life?
          My mother, my siblings, my grandparents

31. What are your favorite names?
          Gabriel, Paul, Oona, Zelda, Zinnia

32. What is it that you most dislike?
          Slugs. And mayonnaise.

33. What is your greatest regret?
          That time I didn't speak up. Also, that time I did speak up.

34. How would you like to die?
         Quickly, after having said something witty.

35. What is your motto?
          Hope for the best, expect the worst.
          

Ten Years Ago Today

Here is one from the archives.

May 14, 2003

a heart that's filled up like a landfill

Mood:   lazy


i've entered that all too familiar stage where i become melodramatic. you know that stage. the one where your heart is just one big open wound?
this is a quality i happen to find abhorrent in others and even more so in myself, most likely because i tend to be melodramatic all the time in matters of the heart.
in any case, i don't intend to document the melodrama in any public sorta internet kinda way. i record my entrance into this phase only as a means of explanation and reminder to myself. melodrama tends to brim and trickle into other little corners.

in other news, the coolest librarian ever wants to check my references. this is a VERY good sign in favor of me getting the job. one of the best things about it happens to be that i've grown used to my brand of poverty, so there will be no major adjustments. as long as i'm able to pay rent and feed myself, i'll be fine. oh and then the drinking,etc.

it became official today. i have lost 20 pounds exactly. i'm celebrating by eating. one of my only allies in this battle has been SUBWAY sandwiches. feuders has opted out of the chain as a whole but i shall champion it 'till the day i die. subway 4-eva.



I read things from so long ago...not that ten years is really, REALLY that long ago and I often cannot believe that I was ever that person. I wrote the above when I was 26. Jesus. I keep grasping for a memory of this time in my life that would cause me to feel melodramatic and then I remember, I am still always melodramatic in my head. And I still shy away of appearing so in in any public sort of way. I just wish I could remember this particular melodrama.

Regarding the "coolest librarian ever"...I have absolutely no idea who this was and I suspect it was for a job that I didn't end up getting. I was on the verge of finishing my Masters degree so I know I was shopping around for a job and I recall having many, many, many interviews back then (unlike now when I cannot even PAY someone to interview me) but clearly this person couldn't have been that cool since I don't recall who it is. I still make room in my budget for "drinking, etc." as some things will never change.

I remember dieting like a crazy person during this time and despite the fact that I fancy that, when it comes to weight loss, I am the female Luther Vandross with all the accompanying ups and downs of body weight, it was around this time that I got to my absolute skinniest adult weight. And the part about Subway is true. I was eating it all the time, multiple times a day sometimes. I was a graduate student and I think I just substituted pizza and burgers for Subway. I needed to save my money for the aforementioned drinking, etc. Also, I am reminded that this was a time before I even understood how good actual, real food could be so I was satisfied with Subway most of the time. There was a hilarious guy that worked at the one near my apartment in Astoria that fumbled through incredibly awkward pick up lines on every single woman that walked in the restaurant. Over that year I saw him strike out with the old, the young, the brown, the white, the tall, the fat...you name it. One of his attempts towards my sister has become a 10 year long joke that we will repeat back and forth to each other sporadically. So at least that came out of it.

Also, the "feuders" that is mentioned is the online name of a friend I met through my previous online journal who I knew for awhile and hung out with a few times in real life. At some point he never called me back and I have no clue what happened to him. There are quite a few people from that period in my life for which this is the exact same story line. Happily there are also quite a few people I met during that era who I still keep in touch with and that fact always amazes me.

Looking back a decade makes me feel like boats against the current level nostalgia. In this case, my nostalgia is fuzzy but damn, I was really 26, once. That's bizarre.

Keep on rolling under the stars

 Despite my surrendering the last two days to actually living my life, I can't help but feel guilty for not blogging and I feel compelled to apologize (to myself) for missing it. But in my ongoing quest to become an adult (I'll get there any day now), I'm training myself to both apologize and to accept apologies. So, onward...


 “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll

I've been thinking quite a bit about travel lately since I will be doing some this summer for work and am going away in mid September for a long vacation and I enjoy planning the travel almost as much as I love arriving at my destination and then back home again when it's time. 

And it just so happened that I also just read this wonderful article in the New York Times Style Magazine written by a travel writer on the benefits of traveling alone. I have never really traveled to far away places alone, though I'm not opposed to it, seeing as I do quite a bit of things alone when I am in my familiar surroundings. But this author made the case for me in a big way. In fact he writes about travel in general in such a beautiful and relatable way. Here are some things that truly resonated with me:

"Show me the world, says the group traveler. And show me two weeks when I don't have to think. Fair enough. But not for me: I want to think new things on holiday and the best way to do that is to go it alone, allowing yourself a space--a beautiful space, with any luck--that is circumscribed neither by your need to perform nor your need to blame."

"I wasn't on these travels for visions or transformation, but simply to feel the force of the world, for a day, for a night, as it operates outside the chatter of commerce or media or mass psychology. I love these things, but not on holiday, when one might hope for a place where you can resist the temptation to be drowned out. "
 
Although I did not travel alone to Paris alone, the best parts of that trip were the parts where I could wander and think and process everything I was experiencing and seeing. Thankfully I had wonderful traveling companions who also cherished this and they just happened to be people I love dearly. However, I definitely see how this could be amplified if I was going solo. I completely see the appeal. The last time I traveled alone was when I was sent to a conference in Denver. When I did the sightseeing outside of my work duties, I felt precisely what he describes: the force of the world presented itself to me clearly because I was without distraction. My brain, usually on observation overdrive in its natural state, goes into hyper-drive when left to my own devices. I love the idea of letting it wander freely through someplace completely new.

He also says this (which I think applies to all kinds of travel, not just solo):

The wanderlust of the solo traveler doesn't kill homesickness, it partners it, making the vacation all the better for involving one's profound wish to go home to normal life a little changed.

I haven't really been able to ever put into so eloquent words why I love to travel and this is so concise and lovely that I wanted to share it and encourage you to read the article in its entirety.

And as I sit at the tail end of my workaday work day, my mind is overwhelmed in the knowledge that there is nowhere to go but everywhere.