This film is one year older than I am, so admittedly I only discovered it a good several years or more ago. And after the initial shock value of flipping the classic high school drama on its head by the exponential increase of the ridiculous, bizarre, and downright dark, I was fascinated by the visual motifs & symbols throughout the film. They made an off-broadway musical of late, and I was kinda upset with all the changes. I feel like they took away the teeth of the film and then changed the message by making the focus more on romance between Veronica & JD and specifically school bullying. It felt like they took the absurd of the plot & tried to imbue it with the spirit of its successor Mean Girls (fun fact: director of "Mean Girls" Mark Waters is the younger brother of Daniel Waters, writer of "Heathers"). Anyway, my frustration with the musical made me think further on the film. For example, when I realized they had conflated bully victim Martha "Dumptruck" Dunnstock with childhood best friend Betty Finn, it struck me that Veronica Sawyer's best friend was Betty Finn. Betty & Veronica. Also Sawyer & Finn (like Huckle"Betty" Finn). I'm now annoyed that I failed to catch that earlier. So I'm once more fascinated with the film all over again. I was hoping others might like to discuss it. It can be any aspect of the film—themes, motifs, cast, script—or just what you subjectively like or dislike of the film. I don't mind if anyone wants to bring up the musical production, but primarily in comparison or contrast to the film. (And its of course okay if you disagree with me about the musical). Hopefully someone or other actually knows & wants to discuss the film ( ＞人＜; )
I've not seen it, but just last night my girlfriend was explaining at length how this was a travesty that should be rectified. So... right now I got nothing. Soon I might have something.
I'm with your girlfriend on this. Imminent rectification is necessary~ (It's okay if you go WTF within the first five minutes—just settle in and let it happen. It only exponentially increases as you go~)
I've also seen it, Winona Ryder and and Christian Slater isn't it? Unfortunately it was a long time ago and I don't remember much about it.
Yes, those two star in it. The first time I watched it I think I was thrown by not expecting the direction, and getting so dark so fast. I was just kinda going ". . . what did I just watch?" It makes me think of Joss Whedon describing what his film "Cabin in the Woods" is: 'We didn’t know if anybody was gonna make it, we just were like, “Oh my God.” Like War of the Gargantuas, they’re destroying Tokyo and we’re just having such a good time with it. And to me it feels like the entire movie—you know how The Tree of Life all had to be shot in magic hour and it took forever? This feels like it was all written at four in the morning. The aesthetic of the piece is like, “Those guys are not okay. They’re very tired, that’s some weird shit.” ' Those were kinda my sentiments & overall reaction to Heathers the first time I saw it. Second time, I noticed obvious imagery—character colours, implied omitted sex scene with croquet stick & balls positioned like a penis & balls, Veronica's relationship with fire & lighters & burning. I also noticed all the fun red flags that people gloss over but actually are there because its things people see as cool in certain lights but in fact are actually incredibly weird or screwed up or wrong. Third time I noticed backlighting correlating to character colours and so on and so forth. Its the sort of crack film that gets better on each viewing, and has more underlying messages than the absurdism suggests.
I'll first say that 'High School' movies aren't my bag, so I wasn't going to like Heathers much no matter what. Being as objective as I can, and trying to recall a movie I watched a very long time ago... the main characters in Heathers are even worse, more self-absorbed than the pricks doing the bullying. Heathers reminded me that I didn't hate high school so much as considered it a waste of my time. For my money, I'll take Fast Times at Ridgemont High over Heathers any old day. At least it had some whimsical charm about it.
Ah, but see, the JD and Veronica being "worse" than the popular bullies I believe is kinda the whole point. In a lot of ways, I don't think Heathers is meant to be a typical high school movie—it's supposed to appear that way on first glance in the first five minutes but in actuality deconstruct all the tropes & cliches and turn them on their heads. Like Breakfast Club's pretty little thing Claire, popular & perfect, but secretly hating her friends and that she is mean & contributes to the bullying, but won't stop because it would mean losing her rank in their little animal kingdom. But hey, delinquent Bender can berate her for her weakness & aggressively assert she can be a better human being, and magically in the end the good girl & bad boy can end up together and provide something missing in the other person and ultimately help make the school a slightly better place come Monday (maybe). Veronica & JD thrive off that nonsense, the whole "good girls love bad boys" and "bad boys with a heart of gold." JD is even a call back to ultimate heartthrob James Dean, the Rebel Without a Cause. But hey, newsflash, aparently he's a rebel with a cause and the cause is serial slaughter〜 But Veronica starts out as the typical high school girl, popular & beautiful, sick of her friends and the whole charade, enchanted by the dark brooding stranger in a trenchcoat WHO FREAKING BROUGHT GUNS TO SCHOOL AND FIRED THEM AT STUDENTS. But hey, that's alright, because they were loaded with blanks & the "victims" were crass & vulgar bullies. So of course it's a harmless prank that taught those bullies a lesson~ And so the film sets up the readiness to dismiss obvious red flags. And then it slips in more red flags—like JD climbing in through her window having never been to or been invited to her home before (and probably having only spoken to each other on two occasions for a grand total of 10 minutes). But hey, the cute boy smiles and tongue-in-cheek addresses his home intrusion ("Dreadful etiquette; I apologize") and like Veronica we should just swoon—or maybe some of the audience is doing a head scratch going "Isn't that a little creepy?" And maybe those will then notice that he's lowkey stalking her. That everywhere she turns up, somehow he's there watching or nearby. Like the fun double date with "yellow" Heather and those two football bullies—and either Kurt or Ram is trying to drunkenly date rape her, but Veronica pushes him off and starts to climb a steep hill to see her hero JD bathed in the glow of a smokey blue light, reaching out his hand to help her up & ride her safely away into the sunrise: but wait! He had just been standing up there, watching her being attacked, not saying a word, not doing a thing. And he oughtn't have known she was there at all. Throughout the film, JD had actually been giving lots of visual & verbal cues that he in fact is a psychopath. While seeming romanticized at the onset, the eventual revelation & realization is supposed to dismantle all the romantic notions other films & media have built up around rebels & badboys and their fairly innapropriate behaviour—always only having been okay because a hot guy is doing them. And it's my personal believe that he was grooming Veronica. Veronica was a born follower. Part of an elitist group with no real right to superiority other than the groups active attacks on everyone outside it. She transitions to JD, albeit a bit uncomfortable & skeptically, becoming an elitist duo with no real right to superiority other than their active attacks on everyone outside themselves. She goes from one abusive relationship, that does harm to others, right into a more extreme one, actively doing violence to others: murdering them, and redefining their victim's narratives & legacies to fit their purposes. And while she often internally through diary & sometimes externally in dialogue voices her discontent, it's mostly bemoaning her lot with no real force of conviction leading to action. All bitching & griping with no substance. The only sign we get that she can and will eventually stand up for herself and act in her own right was at the college "Remington" party—where head megabitch "red" Heather succumbs to societal pressure & expectations in reluctantly giving head to a college boy to maintain popularity status & the status quo, despite afterwards being disgusted with herself for having done it. But Veronica does not fall in line, and refuses to have sex with her collage boy. To which Heather becomes vehement—after enduring it herself—and lashes out, threatening the ultimate high school punishment—ostracization. While Veronica in the heat of the confrontation holds her ground, upon reflection instantly reverts to the follower suck-up persona that dominates her life. The film ultimately concludes with her growth into an independent thinker but also a leader (snatching Heather's red scrunchy from "green" Heather, declaring "there's a new sheriff in town). She stands up to and actively fights her certified psycho ex boyfriend/manipulator and then more quietly to societal pressures & structures, opting to spend Prom night with the film's & school's joke and ultimate victim Martha "Dumptruck" watching movies. I believe Heather's is attacking the popular "high school" genre from within the genres. But people are more than welcome to disagree with me, or even simply just dislike the film for any reason whatever. (It's been a year since I last watched the film, so sorry if I messed up a name or muddled a scene. I also could only remember two of the Heather's surnames—Chandler & Duke—so opted for their colour representation to identify which).
As satire and social commentary it just missed the mark for me. Perhaps it was just too surreal at times. I like satire, but only when I feel connected to it in a visceral way. The whole idea of "fitting in" has always seemed foreign to me so I'm not so sympathetic to Veronica archetypes. One piece of satire I rather liked, Fight Club, both the book and movie. I enjoyed it because it spoke to me; the feminization/domestication of males, the loss of physical prowess, etc. Those things interest me, the romantic libertine, self-loathing, burning bridges.
You've definitely made me want to watch this again, but this time with a critical eye. This film came out when I was in high school, and I was more than a bit of an outcast at the time, so I was square in the target market bullseye and spent most of my time (the first few times through) cheering on the slaughter of the popular kids. One other thing that might make you view it differently than I did is the fact that, at the time, Christian Slater and Winona Ryder were two of the hottest stars of their generation. I'm old (ish) now, so I'm not terribly plugged into who's hot these days, but imagine if Veronica was played by Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Watson. I'll try and find a copy so that I can contribute meaningfully to this, because it really is a movie that spoke to me. In the meantime, you might want to check out "Pump Up the Volume", a similar late 80s, early 90s outcast film that also stars Christian Slater.
I'm watching this again right now, so my memory is as fresh as the buffering allows, but yours was pretty spot-on for something you haven't seen in a year. Minor quibble: Ram was drunkenly grinding on top of the Heather, but Kurt was only trying to seduce Veronica (after splattering her with cow shit). Veronica just climbed over the fence and turned him down, but yeah, JD was just standing there up the hill for god knows how long, watching. Something I never noticed before was the way the actress adjusts her expression in this scene. When she's in her high school, she's supremely confident. Even though she's only a junior, she's very definitely the woman in charge. When she's in the frat house (or whatever) back room with the guy she's about to give head to, she's very definitely 16 or 17, her whole demeanor changes and all of her certainty is gone. Once in the bathroom, she gets it back and spits (water) all over the little girl in the mirror. Maybe. When she's serving red Heather what she believes is the milk and orange juice vomit cocktail, I'm not sure if Veronica is actually being ingratiating, or just trying to seem so in order to get Heather to drink it and throw up. She's got a bit of a smirk that could go either way.
Busy with work and housework, taking it in chunks, but I noticed "Oh the humanity" used twice, and "The whole world is watching" when the social worker organizes the little love-in in the cafeteria. The joy in her voice at the opportunity to bring everyone into her orbit is mirrored just moments later when JD says "Chaos is great! Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs." She's on the same wavelength as he is?
Tell me JD's delivery of that line (and similar ones throughout) does not sound like Heath Ledger's iteration of the Joker in Dark Knight~ (I always hear the scene where Joker is spouting nonsense to Dent: "I'm just a dog chasing cars; I wouldn't even know what to do wih it if I caught it. I just do things. The mob has plans. The cops have plans—Gordon's got plans. They're all schemers, you know? Schemers trying to control their little worlds—and I'm just showing them how pathetic their attempts to control things really are." <—paraphrased, but as close as I can remember) Always my pet-theory that Ledger's Joker is just a full adult JD, complete with Slater's particular drawling, odd-placement-of-emphasis speech pattern Also, totally understand that they were heart-throbs—I adore Winona (past and present) and I can sometimes see what people find attractive in Christian Slater (not my cup of tea, but I am very particular about my flavours of tea) and knew he was a stud during that time. I'm usually a fairly decent hand at remember stories in whatever medium, and particularly of those that struck me or I just really like. Thanks for the correction on the double-date scene~ Regarding the reverting to a suck-up, it was a lot of the things: Her diary entry that said something along the lines of (very loosely paraphrased) "tomorrow I'll have to kiss up her to aerobicized ass, but is it so wrong that tonight I just wish Heather was dead;" Her going over to Heather's to placate her & redeem herself (and I argue that her adolescent prank beverage came about in fact by the influence of JD's presence & his very open opinions on Heather, Veronica's relations with her, etc) Her continued relations to the other Heathers & acquiescence to "yellow" Heather (McNamara or something, isn't it? It's something Scottish that I always selectively mishear as a Japanese sounding surname) on double dating with Ram & Kurt, even having no interest in either jerk, already having something of a budding intimacy just starting with JD, and the whole idea of her "friendship" with the remaining Heathers Et cetera But I am fascinated to hear any varying views & interpretations of the film—or differences of opinion from the first time you saw it to your current opinions. Also: anyone else savvy to the colour coding? Obviously there's the big Lead Heather C. is RED, Heather D. is GREEN, Heather M. is YELLOW, Veronica is BLUE, and JD is black (primarily based on outfit colours, but also can be the lighting & so forth) But also, Veronica wears black & white clothes—and I think she starts shifting between the colour schemes after meeting JD. But maybe it was even before (i really do need to get a refresher on the film). But it seems significant that she gets her own individual colour, but in some ways is borrowing JD's. Also am interested in Veronica's relationship with fire & burning—like at the Remington party, actually setting the trash can (accidentally) ablaze (giving Heather C. her red lighting in that back alley while chewing out Veronica), using the car's cigarette lighter to burn her hand, and so on~ I feel like this film had way too much time on their hands, like "okay, we need this to be sexy, dark, absurd, and chock full of recurring symbols, motifs, and themes. Oh, and probably vulgar but insanely quotable phrases: GO!"
I was wondering about that trash can fire. Certain events of last year (not going to the debate room) have been described as "dumpster fires", wonder if "trashcan fire" was an 80s equivalent. Google doesn't have anything, but... And I know it's been a flavor of the last few years, but there are times, this time, when I wonder how real everything is supposed to be. The initial croquet scene, definitely not, but Heather completely ignores that fire when they come out of the building. as does Veronica. Colors colors colors. I'm partially colorblind, so I tend to ignore them unless they're right up in my face with their symbolism. Sorry. I think that might have just been the 80s. Check out the film's contemporaries: The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Beetlejuice, Better Off Dead.... Anyway, back to work, will try and finish it tomorrow. By the way, I love that you found this film, trying to think of what the equivalent would be for someone my age. "Hercules in New York", maybe?
