A Word On Parties
Every teen-coming-of-age movie made in the last twenty years features, or in some cases even centers around a party. You know what I’m talking about. The party Hollywood would have you think everyone has been to but you.
Before the party begins, our late-bloomer protagonists usually make some kind of oath. In American Pie, as well as many other examples it’s getting laid. Sometimes it’s a combination of goals. Can’t Hardly Wait we have three main objectives: Preston wants to profess his love to Amanda, William wants his revenge on Mike Dexter, and of course, Kenny simply wants to get laid.
You never see any parents, neighbors or authority figures at these parties, despite the fact that when our heroes roll up there’s about a million cars parked in front of a nice house in a presumably conservative suburb. There’s no less than 100 sexy young people in attendance, drinking the free booze that proliferates from the ether, and grinding on each other. There are many dimly lit corners, bedrooms or pool houses for the aforementioned goals to take zany twists and turns. Nobody is sitting around watching idiots play beer pong, or tricking young women into getting completely sloshed through various card games.
Nope! Everyone is having a great time and there’s crazy, wild stuff happening! People swinging from chandeliers, sticking their heads in the fish tank! Yet nobody is taking photographs because this thing happens at every single party that apparently happens every weekend!
The Rules of Attraction approaches the medium from a completely novel perspective: everything is the opposite! People aren’t having a great time, they’re just really high and fucked up! Then they take advantage of each other.
Now I’ve been to my share of parties, and I’ve even thrown some successful ones. They usually end with us running out of booze after it’s too late to buy more and I stumble off wherever and pass out. In the movies of course, they end with a romantic interlude followed by some corny parting shot. They never roll around to the next morning when your parents/landlord are pissed, there’s vomit in the kitchen sink and some smarmy dude on your couch molesting your box of Honeycomb. (Honeycomb’s good, yeah yeah yeah!)
We’ve all had funny or interesting things happen to us at parties. Whoever writes these scripts have obviously never attended a party, but simply taken every tall tale they’ve heard third-hand and compressed them into one 90 minute grope fest.
Don’t get me wrong, I generally love these movies. I just have one bone of contention: they paint a glamorous picture of what high school and college are supposed to be and real life never delivers. It’s the same problem I had with Saved By The Bell. I thought I was going to have five best friends who incestuously dated, start a successful rock band that would be undone by my own hubris but in the end we all learn a valuable lesson about ourselves, get awesome summer jobs where we save something playing some outdoor sport, and skate my way through school simply by being clever and crafty.
Unfortunately, high school consisted of me not hitting puberty until I was seventeen, rendering me a pathetic virgin who played too many videogames and hid in his room until college. Thanks Morris.
