Where Did Everybody Go?

This isn’t a rant about how movies or TV used to be better (they weren’t). Rather, I wish to reflect here on how pop culture is conspiring to hit me in the face with nostalgia, making my knees buckle with the realization that my heroes, icons, and cultural touchstones are slipping away into history. Growing up, the world and my place in it were defined by popular culture. I have largely communicated in film quotes, show tunes, and Family Guy lines. Say “whip.” Now say “Cool Whip.” I am still drawn to people who can keep up.

Recently, one of the last living legends of a certain Broadway era left us – the great Chita Rivera. Consider the fact that she was in the original Broadway production of West Side Story and was the original Velma Kelly in Chicago—not the one still running now (that’s a revival, and the longest-running revival of all time), but the one before that, the one that lost all the Tonys to A Chorus Line. The past is so present all the time, thanks to the arts; it pulls everything together in our collective consciousness to create the illusion that the past, present, and future are all happening at the same time. More than that, it marks our timelines too. I don’t need proof; I can feel it—the simulation is speeding up.

I will also always remember that she died the same week as Apollo Creed, Carl Weathers.

Whether we like it or not, one of the greatest contributions to the Western canon may well be the Rocky franchise. (What a time to be alive!) However, the ending of Creed 2 sought to shatter my soul. I don’t think I’m ruining the plot here if you haven’t seen it; it’s a Rocky movie, how do you think it ends? Rocky has trained Apollo’s grandson, Donnie (Apollo died years ago at the hands of the recently redeemed Ivan Drago. “If he dies, he dies.”). The end is a wrap-up of Rocky’s desires and dreams as he steps out of the limelight once and for all in a way that leaves audiences in a puddle. And at the end of the fight, Donnie offers his hand to Rocky to pull him up into the ring to join the celebration, and Rocky waves him off. “It’s your time now,” Rocky says and slowly sits back down, perhaps to never set foot in a ring again. The film ends with the young, fit Donnie helping Rocky walk up the iconic museum steps. When they reach the top, Rocky says, “If you look hard enough, you can see your whole life from up here.” “How’s it look?” Donnie wants to know. “Not bad at all,” Rocky says. Are you kidding me? Rocky! Am I supposed to sit down and get out of the way? When Rocky got up off the mat a second faster than Apollo to win the title and overcome a life of adversity and poverty, it was a seismic moment in the underdog story of a generation. I get chills every time I see it, and so do you. If Rocky’s quitting, should the rest of us even keep going?

“Chewie, we’re home.”

I think this all started for me with that sneak peek preview of the new Star Wars films back in 2016. I grew up mainlining Star Wars in every form that it came in. I am that generation. If I could have ground my Star Wars figures into a fine powder and snorted them, I would have. It was an amazing preview, maybe because it looked like the original three; but at the end, Harrison Ford once again as Han Solo in what anyone would recognize as the Millennium Falcon standing next to Chewbacca. And don’t tell me these guys didn’t know exactly what they were doing when they gave him that to say: “Chewie, we’re home…” The first thing we have heard Han Solo say in thirty years was “We’re home.” That was a tough time for me personally—career disappointments, divorce, coming to terms with being a part-time dad to my then three-year-old. I was sitting alone in my tiny new apartment trying to think of how to make this a home to my son, and the word home had come to mean something profound to me. I wanted to go home too. I just didn’t know where mine was at the moment. But Han and Chewie had found their way home, and one day I would too. And I have.

Not enough people are talking about the last Indiana Jones Movie.

Shit, Harrison Ford did it to me again. So, spoilers ahead or whatever. I know Harrison Ford is so old Biden could kick his ass (probably not), but dammit, they did the last one right. The filmmakers address how he is, as they like to say, too old for this shit. It is a fun and strangely lovely tribute to the franchise, the character, and the actor. At the very end, they have traveled to the past (don’t ask), and Indy takes a bullet and may die. Rather than wish to be saved, Indy asks Phoebe Waller Bridges to leave him. Leave him to die. Indy asks to be left alone to die in the past, the place he has spent his life studying. And take my childhood with him, thank you very much. Luckily, I had chosen to go to a matinee by myself because, reader, I sobbed into my hands for the rest of the movie, and I wasn’t sure why. But now it’s all clicking. This character was as much a part of my life as people I have known. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, and even the actor who played R2-D2 are all dead. Prince, Bowie, Tina Turner, Sinead O’Connor, Pee Wee, and now, Apollo Creed and Chita.

Then came the Friends reunion. This was even before Matthew Perry died. When that show was at the height of its powers, those guys were the center of the universe and the world was theirs for the taking (after their agents took their 15%, but still). Watching the Friends reunion, I was deeply saddened by what I felt was their awareness of something that was long gone that they would never get back. I miss my friends too. I miss my own version of those carefree years when you’re young in Manhattan, going out every night, trying to date, chasing your dreams, everything shimmering with possibility. You do not realize how young and good looking you are until you see a picture of yourself from ten years ago. What I saw as I watched them walk around the Friends set—often in strange silence—was the reality of how much time had passed—time you don’t even feel go by every day until those days add up to years. I knew them then—and we all have some idea of what they have been through since. The same things we’ve all been through. But like those good-looking millionaires on the screen, we all have those memories and our families to be thankful for, not to mention the fact that we are still among the luckiest people on this dying planet. Seinfeld would never do this to me, I thought.