Bright Lights, Big City - 1988 - DVD

Saturday, May 6, 2006

Bright Lights, Big City opened on Friday, April 1, 1988 and I wanted to see it right bad. Problem was, I was 7-going-on-8 years old and Mom made it clear that I was NOT ALLOWED to watch this movie. It was rated R, a far cry from the much coveted PG-13 rated movies that themselves were a half-decade away from my reach. Michael J. Fox, better known as "Alex P. Keaton," was the reason why I had to see this movie. Mom had to be wrong. Wholesome Alex P. betraying his scholarly roots for downtown debauchery? When would she get it?

For the past eighteen years I have thought about this movie. I vowed when I was 7 that I'd find a way to get to it. The years wore on, film school priorities took over, with folks like Godard or Ozu, Hawks, Ford or Capra pushing Bright Lights, Big City out of sight--but not out of mind. The fleeting thought of this movie filled me with intrigue. Michael J. Fox embodied so much of what I remembered the 80s being about. No one can throw a jacket over his shoulder while pirouetting across the room and out the door like 'J. Fox. The jacket was tweed with a shirt and tie underneath, and he wore it with jeans. The ultimate in contemporary cool, corporate meets casual. A wardrobe that goes from the office to the cocaine-filled clubs as if the two places were the same. This is what I have mythologized the 80s to be, a blur of money and drugs gone glam.

Though, at its core this movie does not glamorize this era. Jaime's (Michael J. Fox) wife left him, and he is fired from his job. In the opening sequence he is abandoned on the gritty morning-after streets, with no money to get home. His character is emotionally bankrupt because his mom died a year earlier, and the only companion he has is his cocaine-wielding friend, Tad (Kiefer Sutherland). All of this is presented as subtly as I have just relayed, and its style is defined by over-acting and symbolism more superficial than the Spielberg variety.

The pleasure of this film for me, however, was in its presentation of material objects and the spectacle of the New York skyline. In a scene towards the end of the film Jaime is inside a bathroom staring in the mirror, and right next to him is a tube of the old Aqua Fresh toothpaste. I'm talking about the stand-up cylinder tube with the alternating stripes of paste, green/white/red/white, etc. (I wanted this brand of toothpaste so badly. Mom strikes again: It was only original paste Crest for us!) In another scene there is a can of Pepsi on his pantry shelf--the old white can with the blue and red moon printed flatly on the front. The cranberry juice in his fridge is in a glass Ocean Spray bottle that has that picture of real cranberries in a cup on its label. These are the things I remember about the 80s: Michael J. Fox, and brand-named edibles and medicinals, which I was not allowed to have.

I guess seeing this movie in retrospect made it better. It let me revisit my childhood as an adult, continuing to live vicariously through the character I adored most, as he consumed the all the things I wanted most. One scene in the movie is shot at Bryant Park, on the north end that is paved with flat gray stone. Today I purposely walked along that path to see if it was the same. Almost. The only thing missing was the bench Michael J. Fox sat on. Now there are green metal patio chairs scattered about in its place. I liked the idea of going back to the park because I knew it was one of the few things I could access from the film (i.e. the 80s) that would roughly be the same. I doubt that'll ever happen to me with the toothpaste. Cranberry juice, too. That only comes in plastic bottles now.