40 for 40: 1985
A new series where I pick a single movie for every year I've been alive.
Good morning.
I’m turning 40 later this year.
For some of you, that might seem surprising considering so many of the “insights” I share here feel like fairly adolescent realizations. But I assure you it's true.
With my fortieth birthday coming up, I’ve naturally been thinking about what single movie from every year I’ve been alive I would pick if I could only pick one movie from each year. This is a totally normal thing to be thinking about for any person.
So I’m going to do a series on this. Every week, I’ll send out a missive about a single year (or maybe multiple years combined depending on the crop) and why I’d pick a movie from that year if I could only watch one for the rest of my life.
If this is the kind of thing that makes you say 👋, then so be it.
You probably didn’t sign up for this, but it sounds fun to me and I’m going to do it. The media analysis will be back later this week and in many weeks to come.
We’ll start with the year I was born—1985.
First, I have to state the obvious: 1985 is an absolutely stacked movie year. For those of you in my age range, here you have some foundational texts in your pop culture education. Movies that you watched countless times at sleepovers, after school, hungover in your dorm room or college apartment or house, and to kill time on the weekends in the waning days of cable in your 20s and 30s.
This is the long list of potential picks I came up with for 1985. I mean, just look at this
Back to the Future
The Breakfast Club
Lost in America
Fletch
Goonies
St. Elmo’s Fire
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird
Better off Dead
Teen Wolf
After Hours
Rocky IV
Now, you may be asking, “What? A Sesame Street movie?” Yeah, well I’m a child of the 1980s—that flick was a big deal for me as a kid. Plus, it has a stellar Joe Flaherty performance (RIP).
But how to choose just one movie from this list?
Rocky IV is barely even a thought and I’ve spent so much time watching Apollo Creed die at the hands of Ivan Drago, that weird robot scene, Rocky’s iconic training montage in Russia, and of course Rocky ending the Cold War by winning a boxing match.
I’m not a Goonies guy, so that doesn’t really rank with me.
Fletch rules and has informed so much of my sense of humor, but you can’t watch that movie too many times. At least in my opinion.
I didn’t know you could make movies like Better off Dead and its absurd comic sensibility, full of non sequiturs, also speaks deeply to my sense of humor.
You have The Breakfast Club AND St. Elmo’s Fire in the same year. I mean, St. Elmo’s Fire is the deranged person’s Breakfast Club! How do you choose? I love how over the top and emotional both of those flicks are. I could watch either one at least once a week for the rest of my life.
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is maybe one of the movies my dad and I have quoted the most to each other over the years. One of the pieces of pop culture that we bonded over from the time I was a little kid.
And Lost in America and After Hours are both movies that have spoken to the twentysomething and thirtysomething version of me so deeply, made me laugh, and impressed me with their plotting and story structure as works of art.
At the end of the day, this is all about Michael J. Fox, though. I’ve seen both Teen Wolf and Back to the Future…honestly, I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve seen those movies.
Teen Wolf’s Coach Finstock has some of the funniest lines in any movie ever. And Bill Simmons added a whole different level to people, like me, who both loved basketball and Teen Wolf by diving into the actual stats from the games in the movie. (I can’t find the old column that he did this in, but I think they reference it on this Rewatchables podcast.)
I know Teen Wolf by heart. Even so, I don’t know it as well as Back to the Future.
There are movies, that when you think about pop culture and your understanding of it, that seem to have always been there. Back to the Future wasn’t released in theaters. It always existed. There was never a time when Back to the Future did not exist. When a movie reaches that level, you can’t deny it.
This movie is like air to me. I could watch all or part of this movie every day of my life. It has to be the choice. There’s really no other option.
The Pick: Back to the Future
OK, that was fun. For me at least.
Looking at the years coming up, there are going to be more interesting choices. But you have to start somewhere.