The Importance of Rewatchability



For a year span in the 80’s, the date of June 8th was pretty impressive for movie releases. In 1983, Trading Places came out. Then a year later, Ghostbusters and Gremlins were released. That’s three classics for June 8th. Trading Places was a very smart, very funny movie about nature vs. nurture and how much opportunity has to do with success. And it also starred Jamie Lee Curtis, and more specifically her bare breasts, which when viewing the movie as a horny adolescent boy, was pretty monumental stuff. Eddie and Dan brought their A-Games and audiences were rewarded. Aykroyd wasn’t done--the next year he was in Ghostbusters, which if you don’t think is a classic movie then you probably poke puppies with sticks. Speaking of puppies, mogwais kind of looked like strange, cute puppies and Gizmo the mogwai was the star of another classic that came out on the same day as Ghostbusters--Gremlins. That’s three must-see movies on June 8th in a year. You've got humor, socio-economic experiments, life-lessons, Jamie Lee’s breasts, ghosts, Bill Murray, floating Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, ectoplasm, a badass theme song, Rick Moranis, monsters, water being a dick, and Phoebe Cates. That’s a crapload of awesome. I’m not saying the timeframe should be as revered in Hollywood as 1939 (Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye, Mr. Chips), but I am saying if you see Trading Places, Ghostbusters, or Gremlins on TV you are stopping and watching. And rewatchability has slowly become my most important aspect of movies. I mean Necessary Roughness is no Citizen Kane, but I love watching Scott Bakula fire that pigskin. It’s like finding a significant other you enjoy being around more as time goes by. Ghostbusters is like your wife or husband after fifteen years together--if you still laugh at him or her instead of plotting ways to tunnel out of your house in the middle of the night and go live the rest of your life as a fisherman in Brazil. If you happen to be in the latter category, at least you have movies like Trading Places, Ghostbusters, and Gremlins to cheer you up a bit.

This day has been Marked.

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