Saturday 21 November 2009

Class (1983)



















Tagline: The good news is, Jonathan's having his first affair. The bad news is, she's his roommate's mother!
Cusack plays: Roscoe Maibaum - student at Vernon Academy
Family Connections: Bit parts for sister Joan and father Dick.

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So its the debut. Mr Cusack's first appearance comes as he nearly gets squashed by new student Andrew McCarthy's trunk on the stairs. His opening line? "Great, douchebag. Another year, another idiot".

This film was also Brat-packer Andrew McCarthy's first listed film appearance, and one of Rob Lowe's first few. Its quite enjoyable standard teen flick fare, as Andrew's Jonathan's accidentally gets it on with Prep School roommate Rob Lowe's mum. Cusack pops up throughout as another student at the school, usually smoking, and in one scene wearing a weirdish nightshirt. All his moments can be viewed in this clip (with the nightshirt at the 5.25 mark). The bit where he eats his cigarette is pretty endearing.




And heres the trailer:

What? and Why?

John Cusack is probably my favourite actor - but yet there a good number of his films that I haven't got around to watching yet. So the challenge is to watch all of his movies, using the listings from imdb, begining way back in 1983. This is the year he made his first film appearance, and the year I was busy being a foetus/baby.

At the off I will say that it was a toss up between this and watching my way through the seven series of the West Wing again. But I've gone for the Cusack Challenge.

I'm not setting myself a time limit, and I have no idea if I'll track them all down (some kind of obscure ones in there) but to watch at least 80% of them would be great (that's a comfortable A in academic terms!) So its a fairly undemanding challenge, with flexible 'rules'. I'm totally selling it, I can tell.

There will be plenty I've seen many times before (Hello! High Fidelity) and some I really wasn't planning on watching again (ah Must Love Dogs, there you are). Also a good few I've never seen before. So, lets begin....