This movie never ceases to make me nostalgic.
It was my first rated R movie, watched with the cousins before I even entered double digits.
It was my first River Phoenix movie, introducing me to a man, a community, and a mindset that would save my life.
It makes me remember feeling like I could be a writer, as a profession, as a life. A belief that I still sometimes get flashes of.
It also makes me remember a time when future wasn't so scary.
“Everything was there and around us. We knew exactly who we were, and exactly where we were going. It was grand.”
Everything had a simple answer then, even the hard questions: friendship, abusive parents, dead kids, class warfare, the death of a sibling, our destinies. They all came down to absolute truths: loyalty, beauty, truth.
I wish life were like the movies. I wish Stephen King, Rob Reiner, and Steven Spielberg would team up and create the story of my life, casting a still-alive River Phoenix and a pre-ironic Wil Wheaton and a pre-douchebag+cocaine Corey Feldman and a fat Jerry O'Connell. Things would make much more sense that way.
For now, I know that Vern would eat cherry Pez for the rest of his life, that Chris didn't steal the milk money, that Gordie should be a writer, that Teddy's dad stormed the beaches at Normandy, that Superman would beat up Mighty Mouse, that everyone's weird, and that kids lose everything unless there's someone there to look out for them.
"Great. Spit at the fat kid. Real good."
It's an awesome movie. If you haven't seen it already, you need to. ASAP.