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Each Generation’s High School Movie


Neonmoon

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4 minutes ago, HouTex said:

Ok, good one.  But I don’t consider Grease as a HS movie in the same vein as the late 80’s-90’s HS movies by Hughes.  Other than boy meets girl it doesn’t really get into the issues facing teens in HS in the late 70’s.  Basically, it’s a feel good musical.  

I was being a touch sarcastic. 

It would be like putting High School Musical on the list for millennials   

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4 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Kids are quite sober and celibate compared to basically all previous generations.

Sex requires real life contact and communication.  Drinking without socializing is pointless and boring.  Modern kids are relatively terrified of real life socializing.

This.

Yet another example of how it's different now.  Compared to X and god knows the Boomers, there is significantly less fucking, drinking, smoking, looking for fucking, etc.  While we were out cruising town looking for some dirty leg, they're at home face timing.  To your point, they're terrified of taking any risks in real life.  

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Kinda on topic of this tangent and the overall thread - the premise of Booksmart is that the two uptight type A clarinet playing girls realize that the kids who partied and had social lives *also * got in to Yale and MIT, and that perhaps they fucked up. So they have one night to get all their partying in before graduation.

It has Jonah Hill’s sister and is kinda Superbad-ish in a lot of ways. If you haven’t seen it, it is one of the more enjoyable films of that sort (or any kind of comedy) in the past 5 or however many years.

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2 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

This.

Yet another example of how it's different now.  Compared to X and god knows the Boomers, there is significantly less fucking, drinking, smoking, looking for fucking, etc.  While we were out cruising town looking for some dirty leg, they're at home face timing.  To your point, they're terrified of taking any risks in real life.  

Forest Lane fo life, my Knigga.

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18 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Kids are quite sober and celibate compared to basically all previous generations.

Sex requires real life contact and communication.  Drinking without socializing is pointless and boring.  Modern kids are relatively terrified of real life socializing.

I've got a H/S senior and a freshman.  They're good kids, but I can assure you that high school kids still party, hook up, have girlfriends or boyfriends, etc.  Yes, they spend plenty of time on their phones and play video games, but some commonality remains.

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14 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

This.

Yet another example of how it's different now.  Compared to X and god knows the Boomers, there is significantly less fucking, drinking, smoking, looking for fucking, etc.  While we were out cruising town looking for some dirty leg, they're at home face timing.  To your point, they're terrified of taking any risks in real life.  

Not all of them.  Probably not to the same degree, and probably a little smarter about it as we were.  But per my post above, my anecdotal experience and knowledge of what kids my kids' age are up to does not coincide with that statement.

 

I will say, they are way more honest about it than we ever were, which is a challenge in its own right.

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23 hours ago, HouTex said:

I had the same HS experience except that weed (as well as beer) was everywhere.  Most of my HS friends smoked pot every day.

As for HS movies in the late 70’s I mentioned Breaking Away but it’s more of a post-HS movie about finding yourself.  I don’t really recall any HS focused movies during the late 70’s.  It was 20 years old, but Rebel Without a Cause was on network TV from time to time and it was somewhat still relevant to me.  

Was going to say Foxes but it came out in 1980.image.png.5ef0f6102a6c9acd6fa63bfe511c25db.png

 

Lords of Flatbush came out in 74 but it really belongs to the 50's.image.png.7042abb6f99cece7fe30d851e7d41ccb.png

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4 hours ago, dcbc said:

I've got a H/S senior and a freshman.  They're good kids, but I can assure you that high school kids still party, hook up, have girlfriends or boyfriends, etc.  Yes, they spend plenty of time on their phones and play video games, but some commonality remains.

This is the case of my Gen Z sons as well. They are recently out of high school as of last Spring and their social life wasn't all that different than what I experienced.

The only thing that was  different was their social circle extended further geographically than mine. While I had some friends at another high school their circle extended to multiple schools and towns. They had friends in Boerne, Canyon Lake, New Braunfels and San Antonio. I guess social media allowed them to have a wider social group.

In my day, when friends moved they were pretty much out of the picture. My kids maintained close friendships even after moving a long distance.

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3 hours ago, 66BUFF said:

Was going to say Foxes but it came out in 1980.image.png.5ef0f6102a6c9acd6fa63bfe511c25db.png

 

Lords of Flatbush came out in 74 but it really belongs to the 50's.image.png.7042abb6f99cece7fe30d851e7d41ccb.png

Cooley High was in the 70's but it probably only truly resonated with a few of the posters on the board.  That said, it was the seminal High School movie of the that decade.

image.png.07fb2cca6e1284e071390711e2c7bada.png

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Fast Times was like a documentary of my high-school experience, even if it predated those years by a few. Especially the bad shit and the Ron Johnson types getting with high school girls. Still give the edge to Breakfast Club as iconic though, and the song "Don't You Forget About Me" gives it something extra.

Underrated one -- Heaven Help Us (Andrew McCarthy, Mary Stuart Masterson).  Gen X but the era depicted would be boomer. Kevin Dillon is so fucking funny in it.

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46 minutes ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

Still give the edge to Breakfast Club as iconic though, and the song "Don't You Forget About Me" gives it something extra.

I gotta go with Crocodile Tears . . . and those bagpipes.

 

Croc-Tears-Poster.jpg

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On 1/18/2024 at 6:41 PM, Aqua Buddha said:

This.

Yet another example of how it's different now.  Compared to X and god knows the Boomers, there is significantly less fucking, drinking, smoking, looking for fucking, etc.  While we were out cruising town looking for some dirty leg, they're at home face timing.  To your point, they're terrified of taking any risks in real life.  

My younger cousin is a junior in HS. Can confirm this post is wildly inaccurate. They’re always on their phone yet also always hanging out and getting into trouble. The scores of juvenile arrests, homicides, suicides, and overdoses not seen since the early 90s out front should’ve told ya. Not an awesome time to be a kid right now imo. 

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First, really good thread and discussion.  Along the same lines, I wonder what music/song would define the decade, not the generation. 

Second, I'm early Gen X.  I can easily identify with the characters of the Breakfast Club and Fast Times.  IMO, you can't go wrong either way.  

Third, I'll always make time to watch The Last Picture Show, great casting and story.

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Great thread, just found and catching up. Key classification point is whether the movie depicted the current era while the generation in question was the audience (Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Fast Times), or whether it came out in a later era and reflected the high school experience of an earlier generation (American Graffiti, Grease, Dazed and Confused). In both situations it speaks to the viewer’s experience, but one is speaking to teens at the time and the latter is playing on nostalgia for older viewers’ younger days.

For a GenXer like me, I’d go with Fast Times or Sixteen Candles as personal favorites that I saw while in high school but Breakfast Club is absolutely representative and meaningful for a large set of teens back then. It had some funny lines, but was ultimately too angsty for me to be a favorite. 

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I was just thinking about this movie earlier today: The Dirties - an excellent little indie movie (I think made for about $50K) that I saw at Fantastic Fest in Austin back in 2013.

Its main theme is bullying of two movie-obsessed kids and ends up with a school shooting and yet it’s also very funny and has one of the best end credit scenes:

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8 hours ago, Duane Moore said:

Great thread, just found and catching up. Key classification point is whether the movie depicted the current era while the generation in question was the audience (Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Fast Times), or whether it came out in a later era and reflected the high school experience of an earlier generation (American Graffiti, Grease, Dazed and Confused). In both situations it speaks to the viewer’s experience, but one is speaking to teens at the time and the latter is playing on nostalgia for older viewers’ younger days.

well stated. Dazed has been mentioned in this thread as GenX's movie, and it is...but as far as being one of the 'high school' movies for that generation, it misses with me. i was in college when it was released and first grade when it's set. 

John Hughes hit the money spot again and again.

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19 minutes ago, South Austin said:

The put that clip on the Godzillatron during a gam a long time ago and it was the only time I recall seeing that. Maybe they got a cease and desist from the studio.

Well, that, and the Texas mascot isn't a bull.

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