Once upon a time, there was a movie, ‘Caddy Shack’. Starring Michael O’Keefe, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, Rodney Dangerfield and others, it was released in America in 1980. Not high brow, it had some memorable lines and scenes, and was fun. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 75%, which seems right to me.
It’s noteworthy that Rotten Tomatoes didn’t start until eighteen years after ‘Caddy Shack’. I always wonder how the mood of an era supports a movie’s reception. The same goes for books, music, politics, and other aspects of pop cultures. Like, did you know American cars of the late 1950s and early 1960s sported huge fins, huge, tremendously useless, fins, as a styling gimmick. The fins were popular, reminding people of jets and flight. Can you imagine, though, those fins on cars now? My rambling’s point is, what would we have rated ‘Caddy Shack’ if we’d had Rotten Tomatoes back in the day? Wonder if that’s been studied?
My favorite part of the movie was about the gopher that Bill Murray is attempting to kill as one of the sub plots. The gopher survives, and begins dancing to a song by Kenny Loggins. Kenny Loggins was good at that kind of music movie, performing ‘Footloose’ (the original) and ‘Danger Zone’ for the movie, ‘Top Gun’. The ‘Caddy Shack’ song is ‘I’m All Right’. The song gets you moving – or gets me moving. I don’t think Mom and Dad liked it, frowning and saying, “That’s not real music.” Today’s young listeners might be as amused by the song as I am by ‘A Bicycle Built for Two’.
So, talking with the baristas today, I asked these youngsters (ha – love utilizing that expression) if they knew the song or the movie. Both believed they’d heard of both but had never actually seen the movie and couldn’t place my rendition of the song. Not surprising, as both came out twelve years before the oldest barista present was born.
That’s amazing about our technology, that it exists and helps us create a present and past, by extension, influencing our future, and that these youngsters, if they want, can experience some of our collective past quite easily by watching that movie, just as I did when growing up and watching movies on TV.
There are differences. Today’s movies (and television shows) have made a move toward more realism. Two, it’s easier to select what we want to watch. Whatever was presented on one of three channels back in my youth was what we watched, which was beneficial. I saw movies and genres that I would have never otherwise watched. Some of them were terrible, and some of them were made again, like ‘The Fly’.
Which, to complete this circle, had me wondering, are they planning on a ‘Caddy Shack’ remake? Well, of course. Numerous people have been associated with such a product and in blogs, some refer to it as ‘inevitable’. Which seems true. I mean, have you seen ‘Star Trek’?
Which one?
Michael Seidel, writer 