The Latest Generation

Redux - Lost Boys and Golden Girls


Listen Later

While this was originally posted in the fall of 2019, for the third year in a row I'm reduxing it.

It is, again, an appropriate meditaion for this quiet time of year, as the football games are starting to pass us by even if their music is still in the air. The warmth of the summer is still around, sometimes, but mostly it's cooling down, and it's a time for comfort food and old memories and people not seen in a long time.

And, certainly, thoughts of mortality , of the time gone and the time left.

"Never let a night like tonight go to waste."

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Considering whether Gen X views of life, death, and immortality were shaped by two mid-80s films: Highlander (1986) and The Lost Boys (1987)

Yes yes yes, I said Steward Copeland at about 9:12 and realized just moments ago that I completely meant Douglas Coupland, who wrote Generation X: Tales For an Accelerated Culture in 1991

https://www.coupland.com/books/generation-x-tales-for-an-accelerated-culture

And my point there is that in 1987 the Lost Boys was certainly depicting Gen X characters with Gen X actors, but nobody called them Gen X at the time.

Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire

Its sequel, The Vampire Lestat, was 1985

The Mystery of Dracula's Castle - a scooby doo mystery in all but name, with inspiration from Christopher Lee's Dracula over and over.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068985/

The Hunger

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085701/

The Lost Boys - straight to the tagline

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/taglines

Highlander

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091203/

Cocoon

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088933/

Siskel and Ebert - Lost Boys starts at 9:44 -

https://siskelebert.org/?p=2948

Highlander is the first one here, about 1:30 - they both disliked it rather a lot

https://siskelebert.org/?p=1496

First chapter of The Golden Bough - Frazer calls the King a "murderer" rather than a "killer" so I'll randomly note that A) in the 1536 battler in Highlander, the Macleods are fighting the Frasers and B) "Matador" is literally "killer" in Spanish

The Spirit of Christmas, which spawned South Park, references Highlander's repeated line "There Can Be Only One"

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122264/

When talking about Reactives and the Awakening, probably worth looking at this previous entry on my blog

https://crisis.generationalize.com/2014/01/reactiveness.html

Unrelated but it's a photo series called Lost Boys - millennials back at home after college or high school or whatever they decided they could do.

https://www.businessinsider.com/liz-calvi-lost-boys-photo-project-2014-9#calvi-started-with-her-good-group-of-guy-friends-but-eventually-branched-out-to-look-for-more-subjects-in-town-nolan-pictured-here-is-currently-studying-graphics-in-college-and-he-lives-with-his-parents-for-the-summer-2

Here's the archive she set up

https://seulementdanslereve.tumblr.com/archive

And her home page

https://www.lizcalvi.com/commissions

"Vampire of the Mists" (1991) was a few years later, so probably influenced by Anne Rice and The Lost Boys and everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_of_the_Mists

Wikipedia sayeth that Peter Pan first appeared in a novel in 1902, while the play first appeared in 1904. He's very much of the Nomad archetype.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan

Completely unrelated, except insofar as Aiken Drum (the character) is much like Peter Pan and has other Nomad / Reactive archetype indicators

https://manycolored.fandom.com/wiki/Many-Colored_Wiki

Pogonip club house

http://deepbluemoon.com/misc/pogonip/

Other locations - the interiors were on a set at Warner Brothers

https://www.visitcalifornia.com/attraction/lost-boys-santa-cruz-tour

Gregory Widen, screenwriter for Highlander. Born in 1958, he's a late Boomer. He also wrote Backdraft.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0927074/

Russel Mulcahy - his director credits here include the music videos - which included Video Killed the Radio Star by Buggles, which unfortunately I can't find, so here are some others.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0611683

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uxc9eFcZyM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyv905Q2omU

Max has mission style outdoor lamps - not too common at the time. (Although it was becoming popular again)

https://casetext.com/case/l-jg-stickley-inc-v-canal-dover-furn

Grandpas house is here (interiors were a set at Warner Bros.) - a very 1900s house

http://www.mobileranger.com/santacruz/pogonip-the-cowell-family-polo-and-a-poltergeist/

CSUN Queen show, 1989 - there will be another episode one day about why this matters….but I didn't even have a chance to get into, here, how I and Angela and 150 of our closest friends did a field show with two songs from Highlander, plus Bohemian Rhapsody

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjkHl0paHbM

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The Latest GenerationBy Patrick Bowman

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