12 July 2014

Lost Boys

Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It's fun to be a vampire.

A friend on Facebook asked why ’80s rock ’n’ roll vampire movie The Lost Boys still works. I said:

The mystery of The Lost Boys is a mystery. But I have a hypothesis.

The heart of the movie is the sequence in which the Boys recruit Michael, and that sequence rings true because it portrays a kind of night that everyone (even guys like me who were total dorks as teenagers) experiences at least once during their adolescence: the night where you're rolling with the bad kids, trying to understand them, trying to decide if this is what cool is, feeling a little bit scared and a little bit liberated ... and then having the sick realization that somewhere along the line things had gone out of control and you have no idea where this is going to end. And you are no longer A Little Bit scared, you are actually scared, and all you can do it ride it out.

And then somehow you find your way out. And the next morning you wonder if you're the same person.

Plus: Vampires are just plain cool. And Santa Cruz was born to be a star.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That's the heart of Blue Velvet as well. Good call on why I love Lost Boys too.

Jonathan Korman said...

Oh yeah. I came this close to mentioning Blue Velvet.