It feels unfair that I never give Ally Sheedy credit for being a part of many of the movies I loved as a kid. Perhaps it’s because she was seldom the centerpiece in a cast, or perhaps because I wouldn’t start appreciating her look for another ten years… whatever the case, I seldom think about her, and when I do, it’s solely related to The Breakfast Club.
But when I look at her filmography, there’s a lot I’ve forgotten.
It wasn’t a Good Movie, but Wargames probably had a bigger impact on my life than any other film. I walked out of the theater convinced that I needed to understand how computers worked, ASAP. And even after I learned that one could not, in fact, trigger a Global Thermonuclear War from one’s bedroom, and that simply using a damned modem all the time would cost your parents hundreds of dollars in phone bills, I still wanted to understand. The topic consumed my life for the next twenty years.
Again, Oxford Blues was not a Good Movie. It was a pretty standard Rob Lowe Vehicle of that era, although casting Julian Sands was a rather bold choice. Anyway, it’s hard for a movie about rowing to be memorable, and OB isn’t. What it had going for it was HBO and The Movie Channel, who ran the thing almost as relentlessly as they did Eddie & The Cruisers.
(Virtually none of you know this, but Eddie & The Cruisers was a delightfully cheesy piece of rock ‘n roll melodrama. Someone wrote exactly one killer song for a movie about a band with one killer song[1], they hired a young Tom Sizemore and young-ish Joey Pants to make Michael Pare look good as their lead, slipped it into theaters… and it bombed. But once it hit HBO and was shoved in front of our faces four times a day, the song became a Billboard success and the movie earned an unnecessary, disappointing sequel. And that’s what activist fandom gets you, kids: The Snyder Cut and Eddie & The Cruisers 2. Oh, and a third season of Roswell. Yay?)
Let’s face it, there was only one actress that a high school boy could see in St. Elmo’s Fire, and it wasn’t Ally. Also, and this is just between us… Andrew McCarthy always bugged me. Fuck him. #TeamDucky
I’m noticing a pattern here… both Ally Sheedy and I liked a lot of shitty movies in the ’80s. But I won’t even pretend that I simply “liked” this crap… I loved it. To this day, within five seconds of hearing the name “Stephanie” or a reference to “number 5”, that grating robot voice bursts to life in my brain.
Hm. Looking back at this list, I suspect that I tend to overlook Ally because her career is basically the jewel that is The Breakfast Club, sandwiched by a lot of cinematic mediocrity that I mostly enjoyed Because It Was There And I Was Bored.
Oh well. I love you anyway, Ally.
[1] That killer song: