Saturdays at St. Elmo's

I’ve been somewhat of a late bloomer when it comes to classic films. Maybe I was in the wrong group of friends to participate in 1980s movie revivals as a teen, but movies like Pretty in Pink or The Breakfast Club or Girls Just Want To Have Fun were things I only heard about through more modern cultural references. I figured they weren’t the most important of true classic films that were going to have an effect on the formative adolescent years I was living. They were dated, and the rough-and-tumble world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll that was the 1980s seemed frightening and crass to a suburban girl who liked to play by her pastor dad’s rules.

But then, by some chance of fate, I caught a glimpse of 40-something Andrew McCarthy on an episode of White Collar and was immediately intrigued by his quickness and easy charm. A few Google searches later, I had his first book in my Amazon shopping cart and a list of movies longer than could fit on my Post-it note, starting with Pretty and Pink.

This weekend, I finally got the chance to watch St. Elmo’s Fire, a film I’ve been daydreaming about seeing but never was able to find until it became readily available online (oh great Netflix, how I love thee and thy ability to enable introverts like me). It was Saturday morning bliss with a cup of steaming espresso and pantsless lounging. There has never been a greater setting to appreciate a good movie—of this I am sure.

St. Elmo’s Fire is the kind of film that leaves you wanting more. It leaves you wanting to know what lies outside of the two hours on screen, and the past and future of every character. There’s so much poetry in their hazy world of cigarettes and saxophone and starry-eyed lovemaking between people who never thought they would get the chance to tell each other how they felt. It took my breath away when Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) was able to let his years of feelings from his heart and his mind come to the surface over two glasses of brandy. I thought my heart would explode when Wendy (Mare Winningham) gives Billy (Rob Lowe) the most achingly sweet gift before he leaves for new life in New York. The lights and the noises and the constant companionship in St. Elmo’s Bar make you wish you were a part of it all with a group of friends just like that.

“They’re in their freshman year of life,” as it says somewhere in the film’s third-draft script. Watching it unfold broke my heart and filled it ten times over. As a twenty-two year old who never had the chance to live anything like that, their foray into life in the world of adulthood was a captivating escape from mine.