From a 50-Something Perspective, The Big Chill Has Grown Tepid

Late last night, while my younger daughter slept and my older daughter commandeered the computer, I turned on the television to span some time and bring on the sleepies. To my amusement, I found The Big Chill, that endearing ensemble piece from 1983 that presented the existential angst of a group of narcissistic 30-something boomers to a kick-ass classic rock soundtrack. I couldn’t resist, yet there was something very strange, very different about this particular viewing; though I’ve seen the movie many times in the past, as a now-50-something adult I am appalled that I ever thought these characters were cool.

When the movie was first released, I was a 20-something, in fact I was 20 on the dot. Born in 1963, I am considered a late-boomer, not the core part of the generation born in the immediate post-World War II era. I was in college at the time but when I first saw the movie I began looking forward to my 10-year reunion, when I would presumably have a past I could romanticize and ruminate on. Kind of like how Animal House came out when I was still in high school and it made me impatient to go to college, where food fights would be an everyday occurrence.

Though only six when Woodstock happened, I grew up idealizing the hippies and envied them their causes. How amazing to be able to protest war and segregation while having endless sex and drugs – and, again, all that great music. There were no hippies left when I became a teenager in 1976; the only thing my friends and I could reasonably protest was disco music. But my heart, I felt (and still do), was in the right place: war is bad, human rights are good, love is better than hate, tolerance trumps ignorance. And so I felt aligned with my elder boomers and initially was inspired by the pasts that the characters in The Big Chill had lived, and felt sympathy for the rude awakening they felt when a friend’s suicide brought them back together and in the reflective light of their peers saw how far from their ideals they had fallen.

Music and memories

As I missed the hippie years, by definition I also missed the yuppie years, which is where the Big Chill characters are in the movie. With their expensive cars, clothes, lifestyles, hairstyles, and habits, they don’t much resemble the people they remember themselves to be. In fact, beyond their endless self-pitying prattling, the only apparent connective tissue to the past is the music itself. The movie’s soundtrack was fairly revolutionary for the time, an album of rock and soul tunes from the ‘60s that became a hit in the New Wave ‘80s. Suddenly people were hearing it through the grapevine again, remembering what good lovin’ was like, feeling like a natural woman, not being too proud to beg, and turning a whiter shade of pale as they realized they (still) can’t always get what they want.

The music proved stronger than the characters, more faithful to its roots and ideals, and it sounded as fresh again in 1983 as it still does today. By contrast, the characters, recognizable then, seem downright reprehensible now. And, I guess, though I didn’t think so at the time, they were probably pretty unbearable then, too. The musicians of the ‘80s had no sympathy for the previous generation. Joe Jackson, on his 1986 album, Big World, sang:

And all the record stores

Are filled with pretty boys and their material girls

And even students vote for actors

Then they tell you it’s a safer world

And all the hippies work for IBM or take control

Of faster ways to sell you food that isn’t really whole

Of course, music and musicians aren’t immune to the changing times. I guess when Bob Dylan does Super Bowl commercials all bets are off. What doesn’t change, for me anyway, is that music is not just entertainment, it’s conscience, too. Many of the artists I like best have a worldview that I share and I look to them for inspiration. Others I appreciate simply for their artistry. Yet songs are also memory-markers, and the tunes featured on the soundtrack have a remarkable ability to take you back to places and people in your life that you haven’t seen in a while. But taking you back and getting stuck there are two different things, and the Big Chill characters seem to be trying to have it both ways.

The unusual suspects

If you need a reminder of who the characters are and what the source of their angst is, here’s a quick rundown:

Harold Cooper (Kevin Kline), a “revolutionary” who owns a successful running shoe company and is about to become very much richer once a big competitor acquires it, actually seems very comfortable with his wealth, enjoys his big, plantation-like property, and seems to be what his friend Meg calls the “perfect man” – except that his wife Sarah had an affair with Alex, the friend who killed himself on their big, plantation-like property.

Sarah Cooper (Glenn Close) is a mess through much of the movie, very morose about Alex’s death, even seen crying naked in the shower, though after dinner she shakes her ass for the camera as these people with housekeepers and maids have an inordinate amount of fun cleaning up. Sarah actually puts the existential angst into focus in the movie by wondering if their “commitment” (presumably to ending the war, removing Nixon, teaching ghetto kids, and caring for the environment) was just “fashion.” I physically gagged when she said that, as if they had all taken a vow of poverty and chastity back in the day.

Sam Weber (Tom Berenger) is a prime-time TV actor, the dashing J.T. Lancer. He seems a decent enough fellow but he’s upset about something throughout the movie and we never know quite what it is. Sure he’s sad about Alex and he seems to understand he’s a hollow caricature much like the character he plays on TV, but he has no issues with shtupping his married friend Karen, whose sole purpose in the movie, it seems, is to be shtupped by Sam.

Karen Bowens (JoBeth Williams) arrives at the funeral with her husband Dick, who, when all is said and done, emerges as the most reasonable and sympathetic character in the movie, though he is positioned as a square who leaves early so his wife, who tossed her diaphragm on top of a copy of Us magazine featuring Sam on the cover, can presumably finally experience a vaginal orgasm. She has little of her own past to share so I deduce that she spent her college years trying primarily to get laid.

Michael Gold (Jeff Goldblum) plays Jeff Goldblum, in that every character Jeff Goldblum plays is inherently Jeff Goldblum in different clothes and called by different names. But he has a Christopher Walken quality to him in that he seems to know he’s weird and even when he’s not playing a scene for laughs he gets them and so it’s always fun when he’s around. Michael is a writer for People magazine who wants to open a club. As he himself points out in the film, he had no morals or ideals to lose; if anything, he’s the very personification of what everyone else fears is happening to them.

Meg Jones (Mary Kay Place) is a chain-smoking former public defender now practicing real estate law. As if that isn’t boring enough, she wants to have a child on her own. And she wants one of her friends to impregnate her. We never know if she was successful (after Meg struck out with the other, more available men in the film, Sarah donated Harold, presumably helping to clear her conscience of her own adulterous affair with Alex), but if she was, I pity her child.

Finally, Nick Carlton (William Hurt) is the token Vietnam vet who came home from the war less than whole (it’s never explained in detail but it seems he may have had his dick shot off). What he was doing in the war in the first place, considering his peer group, is not explained either. He is now a drug dealer who generously samples from his own supply. He is both the least and most cynical character, not buying into the Lost Ideals narrative and yet seems to have lost the most faith. He does, however, have my favorite line; in an argument with a maudlin Sam (just before he goes outside to bang Karen standing up), Nick shoots a hole in the entire nostalgic bubble the group has erected around itself:

“Wrong, a long time ago we knew each for a short period of time; you don't know anything about me. It was easy back then. No one had a cushier berth than we did. It’s not surprising our friendship could survive that. It’s only there in the real world that it gets tough.”

I happen to find that a very true and powerful piece of dialogue.

A chilling effect

The rest of the writing, though, is pretty annoying, especially, as I say, in the ears of a 50-something. After all, these guys are so young to be so regretful. Some of these actors are favorites of mine but they were just starting out in 1983. Tom Berenger today looks like he really has had some hard years under his (somewhat larger) belt. Even the typically fresh-faced Kevin Kline is showing his age. Seeing these actors ruminate on the old days, when their own days were still preciously few, is almost laughable. Sure, among them there’s a divorce, a war injury, a dead friend. Those are serious things but for the most part, everyone is rich, successful, and attractive; and, just to point a finer point on it, everyone is very, very white. Did none of these revolutionaries have a commitment to having black friends?

There are perhaps as many as three separate references to teaching in Harlem (or “the ghetto”), as if there’s no higher calling for a white liberal than to bring the power of white privilege to bear for poor black kids. As if the problem of wealth distribution in this country was something they cared to do something about – other than becoming part of it, that is. Perhaps indicative of how their past commitment was as artificial as their current weepiness over it, we learn that Michael and Meg had sex during the March on Washington. It’s like how Marvin Gaye could do both “What’s Going On” and “Let’s Get It On,” except that Marvin was black and unencumbered by irony.

Of course, I necessarily am bringing my own experiences and biases to bear. I had a close group of friends growing up; there were additions and deletions in high school, and additions and deletions in college. Post-divorce, there were other additions and deletions. Today, my best friends are my oldest friends. Two are gone, both to illness, both way before their time. Both funerals afforded my friends and I opportunities to take stock of our lives and our bonds. But I don’t know that any of us subjected ourselves to the narcissistic caterwauling that the Big Chill characters went through.

Looking ahead, not backwards

The fact is, after all these years, we really haven’t changed that much. What made us laugh then makes us laugh now. What upset us then upsets us know. We’ve gotten older, gone through changes, we are certainly wiser. I’ll speak for myself that I have innumerable regrets of opportunities lost or nor taken through the years, but we also live in the real world and we don’t have time to wonder for whom the bells are tolling. I think we’re all trying to be the best friends, parents, and people we can be, period. And when we get together – and we do, as frequently as possible – it’s all about enjoying each other’s company, not wondering what the hell happened to us.

If I could meet my 30-something self or my teenage self, I could certainly impart advice. Study more. Grow a pair and ask her out. Save some money. Do an internship. Limit your salt intake, flavor ain’t worth kidney stones. But every mistake I made in my past made me who I am today and to question them is to cast doubt on my own value and stature. I’m not rich, I’m not married anymore, I’m not living in a big house, not driving a car from this century – all the things I hoped would happen for me when I reached my 50s. But, and this is a point the movie neatly leaves out, I’m not done yet.

When the Big Chill characters were in college, they believed you couldn’t trust anyone over 30. And that’s the age they are in the movie. So they don’t trust themselves and therefore have no compass for their futures. They just look in the mirror and see their own pretty faces, with a ghost image of their hippie selves hovering nearby. We can hope that when they left Harold and Sarah’s home at the end of the movie that they went back to their lives wiser and more committed – not to some artificial standard of self-righteous, feel-good service, but simply to living a life you can stand.

That’s what I can do. My life isn’t perfect, it may not even be great, but there are great parts to it, and most important, I can stand it. I won’t be like Alex. I won’t be like any of the characters. I don’t even like having sex standing up. I’m just going to keep on doing what I like to do, doing what I need to do, and being who I am, because that’s what I know, that’s what I’m good at. Whether or not I’m a success is not something I worry about; my two kids will decide that simply by how they live their lives. So it’s not in my hands. I guess that’s the one thing I would tell the Big Chill characters if they were with me right now: let it go. If it works for Frozen, it should work for The Big Chill, too.

Current Projects I: One-act play

One thing I'd like to do with this blog is to discuss projects I'm working on and projects that are in the planning stages. As you may know or have deduced, I am a writer. "Oh, what have you written?" is the common question asked me at parties. I assume the person making the query wants to know if I conceived last month's Cosmo quiz or have published one of those disposable summer paperbacks that are typically left to gather sand on beach towels. But the bubble bursts and the conversation concludes when I answer that I'm a copywriter. Even worse, I don't write bra or laundry detergent commercials. No, I write websites, brochures, white papers, and other marketing-oriented editorial consumables, primarily for technology companies and schools. So unless you recently bought a workforce management solution or applied to MIT in order to major in mechanical engineering, you probably haven't read my work beyond this blog.

In the movie Nothing in Common, Tom Hanks' character is an ad executive who tells a group of wide-eyed student visitors to his firm that he does not secretly desire to write the Great American Novel, that he likes writing ads. In this, as in many ways I presume, Tom Hanks and I have nothing in common. Not that I want to write the GAN (it's probably already been written, and it might be Beloved), and not that I don't like what I do, but writing I do for me is much more satisfying and meaningful than writing I do for someone else, no matter how invested I may be in my clients and their projects.

So, yes, in my spare time (often evenings from 9pm - 1am), I transform myself a la Clark Kent from Copywriting Man to Regular Kind of Writing Man. The first project that I completed, in 2005, was a one-act play drawn from the real-life experience I had of spreading my friend's ashes over a golf course on which we had partied when we were teenagers. He died a few weeks before 9/11 at age 38, and the experience was a powerful and healing one for me on many levels. It's called Four Friends (a nod to the Gentle Giant album Three Friends; Gentle Giant is one of my all-time very favorite groups - yet, oddly, neither heroes nor crushes of mine), and here is the Synopsis and Characters:

Synopsis:
Four friends who were the best of buddies when they were younger are reunited as 40-something-aged men. Three arrive to the reunion – held on a bridge overlooking Sawmill Brook – on foot; one is carried in a jar. The purpose of the reunion is to dump in the brook the ashes of the friend in the jar, whose last request it was that the quartet get back together one last time at the site of their youthful adventures. As the uneasy reunion unfolds, the friends learn new things about each other, which help explain why they had gone their separate ways. With the help of the dead man’s girlfriend (who joins them with her own questions about her loved one’s past), they begin to come to terms with the fragile and long-frayed bonds of friendship that still connect them.

Characters:
TY, writer, the friend who tried to keep in touch
PHIL, unemployed therapist, in recovery, the friend who was hardest to track down
FRANK, distant and arrogant, the friend who is the most financially successful
CHARLES, dead and cremated, currently occupying a jar, the struggling artist who struggled least with his past
DAWN, Charles’ girlfriend, who helped to fulfill Charles’ life – and death

I know what you're thinking: It sounds like The Big Chill. That was a big challenge for me, to not make it too maudlin and clichéd. But the facts are the facts: one of my buddies did die, and the rest of us had more or less gone our separate ways. Obviously, I'm Ty, and I did try over the years to get us all to come together but it never happened until that day on the golf course. The other characters are semi-invented and semi-composites of the core friends and other friends who were part of the scene in those days.

I would very much like to stage Four Friends, but I haven't had time to refine the dialogue. It's still a little too obvious in parts, and I haven't been able to fully plumb Ty's conflicts - no doubt a subconscious bit of self-defense. But it's a meaningful work to me because it actually happened and I think it would be very moving to see it performed.

Obviously, I can't reproduce the entire script of the play here, but last year, I wrote a 1,000-word essay describing the actual events, which I had submitted to a short-story website but which apparently never was published there otherwise I would have received a $40 check or some equally pitiful amount. So here it is:

The Last Time I Saw My Friend Marc
By Jason M. Rubin

The last time I saw my friend Marc, he was tumbling down from a bridge onto the ground approximately sixty feet below. I had a good view because I was the one who caused his descent. I didn’t necessarily want to do it, but he insisted. And he wasn’t hurt by the fall, because he was already dead. You see, I was spreading his ashes.

It was a sunny March morning, and we were enjoying an early thaw. By we I mean an assortment of Marc’s friends, his wife, his two young daughters, his brother-in-law, and his mother-in-law. The location was a golf course not far from where we had grown up. We partied there in the evenings during high school as it offered space, freedom, and privacy – none of which we were enjoying in our homes at that time. In his final days, he apparently told his wife that should he not survive the open-heart surgery he was soon to face, his wish was to be cremated and for his ashes to be spread on the golf course.

Marc and his wife were living more than two hours from the golf course, and his wife had never been there. “No girlfriends allowed” was an unspoken rule, although I had made love to one of mine on the cool grass of a fairway one summer night. As punishment for breaking protocol, I went home with more than a dozen mosquito bites on my buttocks. The point, however, is that his wife didn’t feel capable of fulfilling his final wish, and she told him so. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Just call Jason. He’ll know what to do.”

Suffice to say this was nothing he had ever discussed with me. We were very close friends in high school and we stayed close during college years, although he never pursued higher education. Then life intervened and jobs and relationships created geographical and personal distance. We remained in touch but rarely saw each other. In the last two years of his life, we saw each other maybe once, spoke on the phone maybe twice, and sent maybe half a dozen emails to each other. I didn’t even know about his final operation until his wife called me three days later to tell me had gone into cardiac arrest in the OR and never recovered. The delay was because she couldn’t find my phone number and didn’t know where I lived.

Surprised by the honor and obligation thrust upon me, and still grieving not only his loss but also the distance that had forever kept us apart, I set about performing my duties. First, I had to call our other friends and tell them the news and plans. There were two camps of friends: there was a core foursome comprising me, Marc, Andy, and Larry; then there were others who had been in closer contact with Marc, yet not with me.

The core foursome came together in high school as we all discovered two key things we had in common: an obsession with music and an enjoyment of marijuana. We did everything together: concerts, trips to used record stores, midnight movies, excursions to the golf course. There were different things that we had in common with the other camp, including a fondness for Monty Python and the sense that we didn’t belong in any of the many cliques at our high school. We became, then, a clique of our own, and basically all one had to do to join was to make us laugh.

The core group was almost entirely in splinters. If I had been estranged from Marc, the others were completely divorced from him. Larry I was in frequent contact with; Andy I communicated with about as often as Marc. For years, I had wanted to bring the four of us together. I was intrigued by the fact that close friends should drift apart mostly due to time and circumstance. How is it we had so much in common when we were teenagers, yet went into different directions as we got older? When Larry’s mother died, I thought that might be a time for us to reunite. Didn’t happen, nor did it happen when my mother died or when Larry’s father died. It didn’t even happen at Marc’s funeral because both Larry and Andy were out of town. I was determined that we four would be together one more time, even if one of us would be in a jar.

We spread Marc’s ashes on his birthday. His family was nervous about sneaking onto a private golf course. His friends, in spite of the solemnity of the day, could not contain their excitement about being back at the site of past glories. As we walked along to a favorite spot, I found three golf balls that had been lost by errant swings some months before. I gave one to each of Marc’s daughters and kept one for myself.

I delivered a prepared speech about Marc, then invited people to speak if they wished. Finally, we walked to a wooden bridge that crossed a grassy bowl between two hills. We stopped on the center of the bridge and Marc’s wife handed me the jar. Inside the jar was a bag. Inside the bag was Marc. The contents were quite a bit whiter and heavier than I expected; not ash at all, but rather powder and bone fragments. I tested the wind with a wet finger to ensure that no one got an unwelcome embrace from Marc as he descended. Then I said goodbye and turned the bag upside down.

As Marc hit the ground, a gaggle of geese scurried over to see if he was food. After a few pokes, they decided he was not. Then we left the golf course, probably for the last time. As I walked back to my car, I smiled. Marc had done what I could not: bring together old friends in a place they had loved. And now Marc has all the space, freedom, and privacy he could ever want and ever need. Forever.

© 2008 Jason M. Rubin. All Rights Reserved.