The 1980s were a tragic decade for people who used to be cool. The ’80s put Eric Clapton in shoulder pads, Miles Davis in sequins, and, in Stick, a vanity project from 1985, Burt Reynolds in a pink jacket. It wasn’t just that pop culture stalwarts such as these men merely looked bad in the ’80s — everything the previous decades’ stars seemed to do was an epitaph to former glory, wrapped up in a decade where the prevailing styles in everything from fashion to music to film was pastel mediocrity. (A fun topic for barroom conversation is trying to picture how those who didn’t survive the ’60s and ’70s would have handled the ’80s. Imagine Jimi Hendrix with Jheri curls or Jim Morrison recording a solo album aided by a drum machine and a salad bowl full of cocaine. Not pretty.)
That’s not to say the ’80s were devoid of great art. The examples are too numerous to mention. But I am saying that in comparison to other decades, the ’80s exist, in my memory at least, as a neon nightmare.
Enter Stick, a Burt Reynolds’ acting and directing vehicle with a screenplay by Elmore Leonard, adapting his own book. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Stick”