{"id":10917,"date":"2020-08-28T12:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T19:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10917"},"modified":"2020-09-14T13:02:18","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T20:02:18","slug":"better-off-savage-steve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/08\/28\/better-off-savage-steve\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Off Savage Steve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehook.com\/article\/movies\/director-steve-holland-cult-classic-better-off-dead-john-cusack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from Inside Hook<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Savage Steve Holland Changed Teen Movies Forever With \u201cBetter Off Dead\u201d<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>A childhood birthday party with a drunk clown changed the course of cinematic history<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BY\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehook.com\/author\/garin-pirnia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">GARIN PIRNIA<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Two Dollars... (Better Off Dead)\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6z9Cg46Nktw?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"E49\">On August 23, 1985, Warner Bros. distributed the dark teen comedy&nbsp;<em>Better Off Dead<\/em>, written and directed by first-time feature director Savage Steve Holland. It starred John Cusack as lovesick Northern California teen Lane Meyer, whose girlfriend, Beth (played by&nbsp;<em>Nightmare on Elm Street<\/em>\u2019s Amanda Wyss), breaks up with him. He\u2019s so heartbroken about her dating the ski jock Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier) that Lane repeatedly attempts \u2014 and fails \u2014 to commit suicide. It was a comedy based on Holland\u2019s own life, and inspired by another dark comedy, 1971\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Harold and Maude<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"E73\">\u201cWhen I was 11 years old, I had this birthday party and nobody came to it except for this drunk clown,\u201d Holland tells InsideHook. At California Institute of the Arts, where he attended college, he says people wondered why he was always so sad. \u201cI pinned it on that birthday party,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was a first-world problem \u2014 I had a shitty birthday party and I was depressed about it. I made it into a movie thinking, \u2018What a sad story.\u2019\u201d A film-fest audience viewed his short film,\u00a0<em>My 11-Year-Old Birthday Party<\/em>, as a comedy. \u201cPeople thought it was so pathetic and sad that they were laughing their heads off. That\u2019s how I started my career. I dug into things that sucked in my life, and the girlfriend thing that happened to me was the biggest suck of all.\u201d Though almost every time Lane attempts suicide he reconsiders, Holland thinks the movie couldn\u2019t be made today. \u201cIt was dark, but I was trying to find a way out that wasn\u2019t so depressing,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd Cusack actually helped a lot. He felt the same way about it. You don\u2019t want Lane to be such a loser. He has to go, \u2018I have something to live for.\u2019 As long as the jokes played off in the end and you laughed at his attempts, I think we were okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehook.com\/article\/movies\/director-steve-holland-cult-classic-better-off-dead-john-cusack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at Inside Hook<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Inside Hook How Savage Steve Holland Changed Teen Movies Forever With \u201cBetter Off Dead\u201d A childhood birthday party with a drunk clown changed the course of cinematic history BY\u00a0GARIN PIRNIA On August 23, 1985, Warner Bros. distributed the dark teen comedy&nbsp;Better Off Dead, written and directed by first-time feature director Savage Steve Holland. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}