I first saw this film the summer after I graduated from high school and have always had a soft spot for it. Even at the tender age of 18, this movie made me aware of how production design informs plot and character. Now that Retro 80s is officially upon us, let's take a closer look at this movie for a few of its colors schemes.
This pink living room is so over-the-top it/s almost uninhabitable. Everything about this room screams, "Look at me, I need attention," as does Moore's character - an aspirational party girl trying too hard to compensate for her father's lack of affection.
That said I'm totally into it.
I'll probably never have a room as pink as this, but I love how everything comes together, the neon Billy Idol wall piece, the cement pylon table legs, the unexpected brown sofa laden with opulent pillows and that sickly Pepto-Bismol wall color. If this room or that wall color are overdone, it's with flare and insight into character. As an aside, now that I look at it--that living room must be 150 feet across!
Moore's bedroom is interesting too. I like the combination of wall color with drapes: a deep coral/brown red and light blue. The blue sheers are very soft and diaphanous in this shot, all of Moore's furniture has just been repossessed and the winds of change are blowing through.
This room is gut-colored compared to the living room, and reveals a somewhat less superficial side of her persona.
Lastly, and I know this isn't a color issue per se, but I've lusted after that Nike wall mural and all those glass blocks in Ally Sheedy's loft for years.
There's something about the photo that suggests the moment after a storm breaks where you know everything is going to be OK. But aside of that, it's a billboard, and attaches Sheedy and Judd Nelson to the crass, cravenly ambitious consumer class that defined "yuppie" in the 80s.
I see this set and suddenly I want to be young and upwardly mobile too.
Can we take this information literally and make a few color recommendations? Possible matches: Benjamin Moore Baby Girl 2004-50; Rhubarb 2007-30.
- Mark Chamberlain, interior and decorative painter
(ReEdited from 2007-06-26 - MGR)
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I love love love this film. Booga booga booga, ha ha ha.
I left behind a Pepto Pink living room in Boston in '88.
Here's who I blame:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Mptv/1368/5354_0074.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.imdb.com/rg/photos-name/summary//gallery/mptv/1368/Mptv/1368/5354_0074.jpg.html%3Fpath%3Dgallery%26path_key%3D0086759&h=420&w=282&sz=27&hl=en&start=21&um=1&tbnid=DhqD93tblx9iqM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=84&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmiami%2Bvice%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
Hmm. Can I skip the 80's revival and just go straight back to 90's minimalism? Or do I have to wait my turn in the 20 year cycle?
some other amazing color therapy is in Miami Vice, now airing on the Sleuth Channel. there's some great pastels and 80's design. check it out!
I love the color schemes in Lucas.
Not at all '80s, but I love Celine's apartment in "Before Sunset."
Have to think if there were any '80s films I loved. Maybe Veronica's room in "Heathers."
Ah, Demi's fabulous decorator RON! I think Ally and Judd's loft was only about the third movie loft I coveted, the first being Jennifer Beals' in Flashdance and the second Glenn Close's in Fatal Attraction!
I long for the days when Rob Lowe played fake saxophone...
Becky
Heh, I have a friend who described Demi's apartment as "just looking like the definition of credit card debt".
YES:
Memphis
New Wave playfulness
Vans (the shoes)
Square Pegs
Haircut 100
Pee-Wee Herman
Animal Print Patterns
16 Candles
The English Beat
Keith Haring
Spy Magazine
NO:
Yuppies
Dynasty
Hair Bands
Peach-colored anything
Top Gun
Greed
Reagan
Shoulder Pads
Miami Vice
Cocaine
Phil Collins
Patrick Nagel
Neon or any reference to it
I was in the early grades of elementary school at the time this came out. I am eternally grateful I spent those years wearing a dull school uniform instead of neon spandex.
Please please please, no '80s revivals!
I loved Teri's bedroom in " Just One of the Guys"
That whole vibe was on fire. I'm glad I was growing up then. The retro trend is so ridiculous now 'cause the college girls wearing it don't even understand. It lacks the full context of the 1980s environment. The politics, social issues, AND the accompanying pop culture that created the style.
There was only one time to watch Madonna strike out and blunder through all those taboos. It wasn't the '90s and it ain't now.
It's sad to see super young women walking around in the stuff I wore to grade/high school. Just sad.
The '80s - Fascist Design for a Fascist Era.
ah, the 80's....
the Nagles, the androgyny, the shoulderpads, the coke, the Miami Vice look....
still, what they lacked in style they made up in music!
Bring back black gummy bracelets,eyeliner for guys and, DYNASTY!!!
FRANKIE SAYS RELAX
You know all that modern neo Roccoco/Baroque crap and those stickers for walls etc. etc. etc. that we keep seeing? Well, they are going to look just as ridiculous, if not worse, than all that 80's shite. In fact, I think it is already over. You know when midwestern convention centers have picked up on it, it's already on life support.
What a fun post. Thanks for the blast of nostalgia.
I was in junior high when this movie came out, and I was sure that when I was a "grown up" like the characters in this movie, I would have an apartment just like Jules. And at some point I would be dramatically shivering in a T shirt while the cool Georgetown air blew in. And then Rob Lowe would give some speech about St Elmo's fire that made no sense and then he would make a hair spray torch and it would be soooo awesome.
I miss 80s movies!
Ahhh...the 80's. When everyone looked like they were from New Jersey...
Maybe it's because I live in NYC, and so am obsessed by real estate, but I remember sitting through that whole movie thinking - how can they afford those apartments right out of school??
But then I often think that when I'm watching a movie or TV show and see characters with fabulous (huge) apartments when their characters shouldn't be able to afford them with the jobs they have (ie; Monica & Rachel, Carrie Bradshaw, basically every character with a Manhattan apartment).
I own 600 sf and consider myself lucky, but sometimes these huge apartments make me drool.
Carrie Bradshaw had a rent-controlled apartment. Hadn't she been living there since the late '80s?
One of those apartments in About Last Night was filmed inside and outside my highschool classmate's apartment.
Ahh, the 80s.
How about Beetlejuice? To this day, I would still kind of love to do every surface of an entire room in granitone fleck paint.
"It's sad to see super young women walking around in the stuff I wore to grade/high school. Just sad."
I agree - if you lived through this once you have no desire to do it again!
(I always preferred Pretty in Pink anyway...)
"Carrie Bradshaw had a rent-controlled apartment. Hadn't she been living there since the late '80s?"
That was the story, but I moved to NYC in the early 80s and there were no rent controlled apartments to be found. The only people who had them had gotten here at least 10 years earlier.
Never believed it. I know that you have to suspend belief for drama, and it's a tiny point, but still...
GothamTomato, I too always have the antennae out for characters living in apartments that should be wayyy out of their reach. At the same time, I think about how much fun it would be to, as the production designer, use a space to express who a character is. I hate St. Elmo's Fire, but those apartments did have a lot to say!
Love the movie...put it looks like someone threw up all over that room after downing some pepto
I love Phil Collins! Dislike 80's decor.
Ditto on the flashdance and fatal attraction lofts. I have chime in with some other movie set favorites.
Bill Murray's left bank Paris loft in the razor's edge. Loved the canoe on the dining room table.
Jake's loft in Someone like you
Decker's flat in Blade Runner (doesn't everyone love this?)
The back porch and painting room in Bennie and Joon
Beethoven’s last decaying apt in Immortal Beloved.
Wing's of a Dove, the party location with the deep blue walls and dark woods. So Sumptuous
Karin's living room in Out of Africa. Cole's living room too.
The artists’ villa in Stealing Beauty, esp. the studio and Liz Tyler's room.
Fallen Angels (Showtime 1993). The sets from the first year will always have a soft spot in my heart. Oh the long nights tea-dyeing sheers and distressing surfaces.
I'm afraid Retro 80's is here...
...I was recently on the inaugural cruise of the new Eurodam and the wine bar looks like it could have been a set in the film "Wall Street" - from the grid-patterned frosted glass table tops set into beechwood frames to the uncomfortable Erector-set chairs.
Retro 80s is better than retro 70s. I remember macrame plant holders and burnt orange carpet and still don't get why anyone likes those earth tones.
Speaking of Pretty in Pink, Iona's apartment was cool. Not really the place so much as the fact that the entrance was a back alley in Chinatown.
And Sixteen Candles - a lucite or glass coffeetable always makes me want to get under it and scratch at the surface, shrieking a muffled "JAKE!"
I didn't like most of the 80's stuff the first time around. And I was in a small town where the big hair was worn a long, long time after it should have been gone. So it wasn't until the mid 90's that I actually started dressing like a girl.
I am digging the billboard though. And the sheers. The colors in Moore's bedroom are nice but not together.
Gothamtomato - yeah, it happens all the time that people on TV have much more fabulous stuff than they could have had in real life. It's all about product placement.
Lady J - it was the same thing with 70's revival. Ethnic clothing was favored by the 'real' hippies because it was unique, handmade, antiestablishment. In the early 00s it came back in and was mass-produced. For that matter, blue jeans were originally worn as a statement of democracy; they were the working man's clothes. Now you can fork out $100s for a designer pair. Everything gets taken out of context eventually... ah well... I suppose there are only so many things you can do to a sofa, so we're stuck with recycling it all.
I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of 80s decor and colors. It always seemed cheap and tacky to me...like Demi's apartment in St. E's Fire. That pink in the living room is awful and looks like it was decorated by a 13 year old girl! I do like the red in the bedroom though. But I have to admit...80s fashions were way worse than 80s decor...and seem to be making a comeback...ick!
I must admit that I really did appreciate this post, but like others I am not really ready for the 80's revival of interior design. I have been forced to make concessions in my clothing and I love the movies and music but I am not just ready for all of those bold colors in my little apartment.
I loved the wardrobe and room of that movie about the girl who finds out she's a witch and transforms herself popular?? Damn my memory. Cable shows it every now and again.
Also, recently an answer to a crossword question was "Day-Glo" and my 39 year old coworker had never heard of it and wasn't sure it was right (I'm almost 32). I was like, TRUST ME, you owned day-glo items, whether it was called that in this area or not.
Hahah the movie was called "Teen Witch," of all things.
And apparently her younger sister is the star of Gossip Girl. God I love the internet.
I have some vague memories from the 80's, but mostly I rebelled against the neon pink and fostered the rustic look. My dad visited me in Berkeley, told me I wasn't an authentic Central American peasant/full-time climber, and said we're heading to Brooks Brothers. I saw plenty of movies in those days...people, it's fiction, it's evocative and representative and figurative, but movie sets are NOT real life.
Ah...look at how young Billy Idol looks. If you've seen him lately...not lookin' that young.
Unfortunately, the characterization and sentiments expressed within this movie were even more frivolous and self-indulgent than Demi's apartment. Was it supposed to be "deep?" Because the whole thing was an exercise in adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy. Breakfast Club had the resonance of James or Chekhov by comparison.
(Yeah, I am commenting 5 years after this post...)
The stark ruby red wall of Demi's bedroom with the sheer curtain fluttering in the wind really stuck in my head. Amazing set design.
"Less Than Zero" had some crazy cool MTV Miami Vice 80s style as well. Remember the wall of TVs, the poolside scenes, the Winter Wonderland party...