Raiders of the Truffle Shuffle

"Goonies never say die."

Seriously, this is the poster?

Date shown: August 19, 2010
Host: Richard
Meal: Meatloaf

Enough time has passed in my life that the movies that came out when I was a tween can now be considered classics. Exhibit A: "The Goonies."

In a lot of ways, "The Goonies" cannibalizes from its makers' filmographies. To wit:

• Screenplay by Chris Columbus, who never met a crotch injury he didn't like (seriously, I'm shocked that his two Harry Potter films didn't feature scenes where Snape takes it in the jewels). You can totally see the DNA of "Home Alone" in this story, what with the cartoon-level violence and gags and contraptions and comical, squeaky-voiced dick abuse. 
• Producer and Story by Steven Spielberg, who has essentially recreated "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for tweens. Some of the set pieces are on-the-nose similar. Mike (a cute little dewey-eyed Sean Astin) sets off a booby trap of large falling rocks that send the goonies scurrying, just like Raiders' opening scene. Also from that scene, he stole the booby trap triggered by removing something gold - instead of a statue, moving One-Eyed Willie's doubloons causes the pirate ship to set sail.
• Producer Kathleen Kennedy, who worked with Spielberg on "E.T." - and like that movie, we have a young boy (Chunk) who makes friends with an odd-looking, funny-talking creature (Sloth) and they bond over food (Baby Ruth) and pop culture ("Hey You Guuuuyyys!").
• Director Richard Donner is probably best known for directing "Superman" - and, of course, Sloth rips open his shirt to reveal a Superman T-shirt underneath when he's saving the kids.

I can't remember how old I was when I first saw this - or where, really. It know it wasn't in the theater, though. For some reason, all those experiences from childhood have strong specific memories for me (probably because we didn't go to the theater all that often). So I must have caught it on cable sometime before high school. This became one of the movies my brother and sister and I quote from, randomly and out of context - "give me a big wet lickery kiss" - it's a throwaway moment from The Feldman, but it stuck with us.

On classics

What makes a classic? It could be a high quality product, or a fundamental one. It could be traditional or definitive or enduring. Here are what I consider the elements of a classic movie, particularly for our purposes with this movie group:

• Age - the older movie (particularly the really good ones) influence current culture, so it's important to see the original and trace the roots
• Talent of the cast - again, the great old filmmakers and stars spawned the newer generation and became part of the culture
• Overall impact - on both the culture at large and on our group members as individuals
• Memories - especially for the movies we saw when we were kids
• Quality - many films (though not all) are truly works of art, and it does us good to see them

This is why I can call "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" a classic, even though it won't show up on anybody's Top 100 list. It had a huge impact on my family - on our common references, on our memories; it's a great sample of the work of a very young Sean Connery, and it's a representative slice of Disney's live-action film-making, which absolutely fills my childhood memory banks. (Seriously, if I could get my hands on a copy of "For the Love of Willadean," you guys would know the kind of movies I grew up seeing.) (Nobody is going to get that reference but my sister, which is true of so many of my references.)

I think this is why we call this Classic Movie Night instead of Great Movie Night. Look at our list - they are not all Great Movies. But we watched them (or, often, re-watched them) because each movie had a lasting effect on at least one of us. For Randy it was "Moonrunners." For me, "Darby." For Steve, "Red Dawn." For Carlo, "Little Big Man." And we wanted to share that slice of our memories with the group.

Sure, we could devote ourselves to the Important Films like "Lawrence of Arabia" or "No Country for Old Men." But they don't have the Truffle Shuffle.

Giggity moments

So, there were some naughty bits in this flick - things that zoomed right past me as a kid:

• That bit at the beginning with the naked guy statue and the broken penis - they reglued it into an erection.
• Mouth tries to hide some jewels in his mouth when they're caught by the Fertellis, and we watch a long pearl necklace being pulled out (thanks for bringing that to our attention, Rich).
• And we had no end of jokes about One-Eyed Willie.

Trivia

Chunk today

• Chunk is now an entertainment lawyer. He went to UC-Berkeley and did the Truffle Shuffle on the sidelines of football games. Like Jerry O'Connell from "Stand By Me" (We need to watch "Stand By Me"!), he is no longer a Chunk.
• This was Josh Brolin's first film. He has been in a few others.
• There's a moment when the kids all break into a run, and we could all tell that they jiggled the camera. Kind of shocked that they didn't reshoot that.
• That pirate ship was a real ship they built for the movie, and they didn't let the kids see it until it was time to shoot the scene where they discover it. They filmed their honest, no-acting first reaction, but they couldn't use the footage because they all said "holy shit" over and over.
• That ship was scrapped after filming - the producers asked if anybody wanted to keep it, but they got no takers.
• Sean Astin kept the map, but years later his mom thought it was just an old piece of paper, and she threw it away. Moms.
• The guy who played Sloth was a former Oakland Raider.
• The Other Corey (Haim, RIP) auditioned for Mouth, which went to The Feldman.

That Guy moments

We've got two pretty good That Guys:

Joe Pantoliano

Joe Pantoliano, who plays the Fertelli brother with glasses. I recognized him from "The Fugitive," in which he's one of the marshalls. I'm sure other people know him from "The Matrix" and "The Sopranos."

Robert Davi

Robert Davi, who plays the opera-singing, pockmarked-faced brother. He was in "Die Hard," "License to Kill" and the TV show "The Profiler." When I saw him in this movie, I knew I recognized him from someplace - but I'm pretty sure that "Goonies" was the place I originally saw him, so all my other sightings should date back to this movie.

The meal

Rich made a veggie-infused meatloaf and the spiciest green beans in the history of ever. Seriously, I licked my finger when some of the seasoning got on there, and I nearly exploded from the inside. Chanda brought some yummy, cinamonny homemade applesauce that made us all think of autumn. And Kandy brought her fruit pizza, of which we all had two helpings, it was that good.

And now, for fun, an illustrated schematic of Data's inventions: