October 31, 2002

Today is the day to remember DJ Jam Master Jay.

Last week I asked what made the movie Grease so addictive, or so annoying. People responded. So today I"m going to play a new old favorite of mine.

From AJ Daulerio:
Even though I'm a boy, I'm not ashamed that I love that movie. In fact, in high school (probably like many high schools) a few friends and I performed a Grease medley during our Junior lip-sync contest. I played Rizzo during "Summer Nights" and then I was the T-Bird with the water pistol during "Greased Lightning." It was a shame because I knew the words better than anybody else, but because my ears stuck out so much when I greased my hair back they wouldn't let me play Danny Zuko for "Greased Lightning." They thought I didn't satisfy the physical requirements that befit being leader of the T-Birds. In fact one of them said I look like the guy who would have his head shoved in the toilet by the T-Birds. He just wanted me to choreograph and help him memorize the lyrics. But, they let me in and all went well. We won the contest too. I still watch the movie anytime it's on. I was a huge Sha-Na-Na fan growing up--I went and saw them twice and I still have Bowser's autograph somewhere--and that hand-jive scene always gets me excited. My favorite part is at the end of the hand-jive sequence when Vince Fontaine does this awkward somersault to come back into frame as soon as the song ends. Next time you watch it, pay attention to Vince tumbling in from the left side of the screen. A very underrated comedic moment of that movie. Chang-chang.

From Allen Verbrugge:
My friend Andrea Martin told me that she and her friends used to categorize guys as either "Tell me about it, stud" or "Too bad, Eugene." Her husband, my friend David Martin, was so inspired by Grease that he quit his job and is now hoping to get a job "lugging boxes at Bargain City." I personally aggressively hate musicals with only a few exceptions, but here are some quotes I use regularly:

"Guys, guys---be cool, hunh?"
"We're gonna rip 'em...and tear 'em...we're gonna roll 'em around..."
"When a guy chooses a chick over his pals, something gotta be wrong."

Shakin' a tit for old Rydell, I remain
Allen Verbrugge, etc.

(I can't believe I just wrote that. Sorry, French. Can we keep it clean, please? Let's keep it clean.)

From Phoebe Kate Foster:
I watch it every time it's on also (and I own the movie...which makes watching it on cable a really ridiculous thing to do, but I do it anyway.)

Depending on what generation you're from, you love it for different personal reasons. BUT the great, overriding reality is: it's a bona fide phenomenon because: 1) It speaks to everyone (my 85 year old mother in law loves it, my 15 year old daughter loves it.) 2) It is, for a basically silly movie, remarkably complex and well-written. The characters are not
one-dimensional. They "resonate," because you can fully believe they have an entire life of their own that the movie alludes to, but isn't showing. 3) It is perfectly edited, perfectly scripted, perfectly sound-tracked, perfectly directed and perfectly produced. I can find no flaws in the technical end anywhere. 4) It accurately reproduces the feeling of an era...and not just the "feeling" of the era, but the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and anxieties of that era as well. And it does it in a calculatedly "cute" way that manages not to be disgusting, cloying or annoying...a small miracle in itself.

And 5), it is one of the ultimate feel-good movies. Like you said. Lots of energy, humor, irony, fun, spoof, good music, dancing, costumes, cleverness. It retains much of the exuberance of the original stage production (which I saw way back when.)

Grease isn't a word, it's a *feeling.*

From Elizabeth Ellen:
Where to begin when singing the praises of one of the silliest yet greatest musicals of all time, or at least, of the late seventies. How 'bout with the songs themselves - the "Summer Lovin'", the "Ooh Ooh Ooh, honey," the "Born to Hand-jive, Baby," the "Shoo-Bop Sha Whada Whadda Yippidy Doom Da Boom?" Come on, with lyrics like that, how can you go wrong? Particularly when you're eleven years old, the typical awkward adolescent, alone in your room with little to do but sing and dance.

Aside from the fantastic soundtrack, the real attraction for me was the good girl/bad girl transformation fantasy. Deep down, every self-professed "good girl," myself included, is in actuality just another "bad girl," dying to be set free. We too want to rat our hair, lacquer our nails, plaster on the make-up, step into four inch heels and sewn-on pants, dangle a cigarette from our glossy lips and kick some ass - or at least, break some hearts. Sandy provided us with the opportunity to do so.

And danny wasn't too hard on the eyes neither. The typical "bad boy" we sought to tame.

Sandy is the good girl gone bad; danny the bad boy gone good; they meet somewhere in the middle. A perfect love story. Sigh.

From Kevin Fanning:
I like Grease just okay. I don't hate it, because it's pretty
entertaining, but I don't love it, because it's not THAT entertaining.

Mainly I like the songs. My parents had the 8-track on heavy rotation when I was little, so they're pretty well ingrained in the membrane at this point. But the songs are actually good. When I was in high school I bought a book that taught you how to play all the songs on piano. "Look At Me,
I'm Sandra Dee" is actually super fun to play on the piano. Same goes for "Beauty School Drop-Out."

But when you look at the movie objectively, there's a few aspects of it that are just kind of lame. Kinickie is a dork, and a few of the Pink Ladies I could do without. The car racing scene is irrelevant and unnecessary. And although I love the song, so is the whole Beauty School Dropout dream sequence. Of course the movie is great fun and who really
cares about all this, but these aspects kind of slow the movie down for me, and prevent me from totally loving it and wanting to watch it over and over.

I would also like to add that I wish the song "Reproduction" could be excised from Grease 2 and inserted somewhere into the original. It would fit perfectly in the science class/fake snake scene, for instance. That song is the only halfway decent part of the sequel, but it's so so so so so good.

From Leonard Pierce:
I'm afraid I have to come down against Grease. I have my reasons, and here they are.

1. As someone who lived in the '70s rather than was merely born in the '70s, my youthful memories are that it was all bad. Therefore, anything that reminds me of the '70s is something that needs to be extirpated with all speed.

2. Since I hate nostalgia in general, I hate Grease in particular, since it's a sort of treble-fake nostalgia: watching Grease now creates a bogus nostalgia for the '70s, and the show itself is a sort of bogus '70s nostalgia for the '50s. So I find myself, when watching it in the '00s, being torn up by three generally shitty decades.

3. It's bad enough that I have to suffer through John Travolta's comeback; I hate to be reminded of what he came back from.

That said, I honor your Grease-liking journey, because I am all about journey-honoring.

From Annie Logue:
I am still bitter. The movie came out the summer before sixth grade. My mother did not think that it was appropriate for children. Guess who as the only person in her class who did not see Grease, and who was teased mercilessly for that?

That movie put me through at least as much trauma as my orthopedic shoes.

From Ben Brown:
My thoughts:

Is that a movie? Or something? Sounds bad.

From Liz McArdle:
I can personally attest to the powers of Grease.

Thanks to cable channels that pride themselves in running movies not once, not twice, but continuously throughout the day (TNT, Comedy Central, etc), Grease has a magic way of finding itself on tv more often than most. In college especially, Grease also had a specific predilection for being on my television when I have an exam in a couple of hours, or when Claire has a paper due at 5pm. While I consider us both strong-willed and intelligent young women, we simply could not resist sitting down and watching it through to the end. And its not like you can stop watching before the end because that's the best part. I would, however, ration that I could take a break during the "Beauty School Drop Out" Angel scene because I always found that boring. Maybe what's so powerful about Grease is the fact that we (meaning me, actually) cannot seem to alter our childhood perception. I don't think I've ever even given that scene a chance. When I was young, it was boring, so it still is now. Also, I never even noticed the dirty jokes Claire cites, and I plan to keep it that way. Finally, I would like to mention a post-college incident. It was a Sunday afternoon and I somehow managed to trick myself into going to the gym. Perusing through the channels as I'm elipticalling (invented verb), I come across Grease. It was the best workout ever. Wonder if other people noticed my joy. The next day, I discover I was not alone in my viewing because Claire was home in Chicago doing the same thing. Whoa Nelly! It was like divine intervention.

So, that's why I think Grease is, in fact, the word.