There are a few decades in film history that have been as scrutinized as the 1980s, but to really understand the decade and its movies, it's going to take a couple of someone's who were there for it the first time around.

Drew McQueenie and Scott Weinberg are ready to review every major film of the decade, one month at a time. The look at what worked then, what endoers now, and how it felt to be there when it all went down. Turn back to calendar with us. It's the 80s all over. I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel.

I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel.

I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel. It's the 80s all over.I'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aI'm aスティーズ Music Mary Lou Retten was just one of the US Olympic athletes vaulted to sudden stardom by the summer games as the soundtrack to the excellent print film Purple Rain took the number one spot. President Reagan during routine radio vocal warm-up joked that he had just signed legislation to outlaw Russia forever, we begin bombing in five minutes. Russia was not amused, but Reagan was, indeed, re-nominated by the GOP at the Republican convention

in Houston. The very last Volkswagen rabbit rolled off the assembly line and is still being driven today by that guy who sells the really good asset at the fish shows. And finally, in a story that begins beautifully, but which has a very sad punchline in a few years, Ronald Reagan announced NASA's Teacher and Space program. Let's hold on to the optimism of that announcement, though, as we buckle down to tackle the very

weird lineup of movies, released in August of 1984. Hi everybody, I'm Drew McWaney and welcome

once again to 80's All Over. I am joined as always by my co-host, Scott Weinberg. Scott, what's up,

sir? Hello, I miss the Volkswagen Rabbit. Drew, what's the weirdest car your parents had when we

were kids? My dad loved old cars, so for a little while he went through a series of convertibles but there was a period where we actually owned a Volkswagen thing. Oh yeah, I don't even remember that. My dad had, I'm not lying, look it up kids, an AMC Pacer. Oh wow, our neighbors had Lake Har. Oh god. Yeah. Yeah, I yeah, Yeah. I frequently see cars and movies that I wish we had stopped at. I wish designed and stopped at a certain point. There's a Jaguar from around 1991 where that was it. We were done. Cars were perfect. So. I want to say thank you to the three or four listeners who stayed with us after last week's controversial episode in which Drew disliked the net branding story. I wanna apologize to you six remaining listeners and I wanna thank Drew who put the umbrella up over me not liking Purple Rain. Look, I think for the most part, the conversations back were not unexpected and I get it. Hell, in my own apartment, my position on the film is controversial. My girlfriend remembers that her son, when he was young, that was a movie that she showed him frequently and part of the reason why was because it was gentle. And there wasn't a lot of kids live-action movies that weren't herbie movies that were gentle and that had sort of reading and fantasy at the center of it. That's perfectly valid as a reason to like something. But I guess as we discussed last week,

there are other films that also deal with fantasy

and children and like time bandits that are good. We're gonna have more of those and we're gonna get into movies. I think there's a couple this week that people are gonna get upset about. But over the course of the show, I think you guys will get a real sense of where we land and why. And I'm realizing that I would not call myself a fan of fantasy films,

the traditional definition of fantasy films

the traditional definition of fantasy because I think most of them are terrible.

I'm a fan of the potential of them but I don't think I'm a fan of fantasy films if the majority

of them are movies that I have real giant problems with. Well, sure, you know who never made a fantasy

film. Who would that be? John Casavetes. Let us discuss his penultimate film, Love Streams. I'm almost not crazy enough. I just don't care. Love is dead. Love is a fantasy little girls have. Love is a stream. It's continuous. It doesn't stop. No, it does stop. take on cast of it. He's a stream. It's continuous. It doesn't stop. No, it doesn't stop. What's your take on Castaviti as a whole? I respect him and I think he occupies a very particular place in American independent film. I also think he's a man out of time. I think if he had worked 15, 20 years later, he would have made A more films. He would have made them with a little bit more support. And I think he would have had the room to experiment even further. I think as it is, you know, he he acted in order to basically earn money to pay for movies that no Hollywood studio would touch. And he had that sort of working ensemble of actors, including his wife, Jenna Rollins, and guys would drop in and out. Seymour Castle was one that he used a lot. Peter Falky used a lot. I love that he built this ensemble troupe that would make movies that were very personal and lacerating, and I think Love Streams is a really hard one to jump onto because it's the end. It is a roller coaster in terms of, I hate this. No, no, I don't.

All right, now I don't like, you know, it really moves in fits and starts. And it's like, well, it's over two hours, and it's very quiet and dry. It's basically about a novelist who is just happy, just subsisting as a wealthy novelist. He lives with his married to well sister, played by his wife. he gets a sudden unexpected surprise that he has a young son who's dropped off

at his house for 24 hours and then he promptly takes the kid to Vegas and good things do not happen. It's weird watching this after Marvin and Ty, where I feel like it's more John Cassavetti's trying to deal with the kid and be a good parent and the shape of a film that you recognize. This is they dropped a kid on him and he just continues to be an unrelenting piece of shit. I am terrified every second that kid's in his care in this film. I will say this, when you talk about canon and you talk about the terrible things they made and we've got a whole catalog of them this month, you also have to point out that then they threw money at Casavetesis and let him make this at the end. And like, it's weird the shotgun approach to financing that they had because their names are on the craziest assortment of films. Yeah. And the more you dig into Canon, the more you realize is that they just wanted to produce stuff that would make money and sometimes award films make money. So whether, you know, it's like, oh, we're gonna make a bunch of movies with Chuck Norris

because he makes money.

Oh, and you know what, on a smaller scale,

we'll throw some money at this guy because if we get some Oscar buzz on this movie, we'll make some money. And how much could love streams and cost? Like, those guys pinched every penny to make sure that every bit of production value And sometimes not even that.

You know why they saved money on John Castavetti's love streams?

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