Former MrSkin.com head writerMike "McBeardo" McPaddenis back with his latest book, the exhaustively researched and exceedingly entertaining book "TEEN MOVIE HELL: A Crucible of Coming of Age Comedies from Animal House to Zapped!"The book is on shelves both physical and digital today, so what better time to dig in to the story behind the book's author and get some of his best insights into the genre of teen sex comedies you won't find in the pages of the book!
Skin Central: I know you cover this in the book’s introduction but for the sake of starting somewhere, when did you transition from a passive fan of the genre to an ardent devourer of all that the teen movie genre had to offer?
Mike McPadden: There was never a time of passivity. I hated the limitations of being a kid and longed to be part of the adult world from the moment they dropped me off at kindergarten.
In 1976, when I was eight, I came across a New York Daily News article on the burgeoning cult of The Rocky Horror Picture Showand I became obsessed. I already loved monster movies, rock music, and Mad magazine more than anything, and a surprise discovery of Playboy magazine the previous year felt like getting struck by lightning. Rocky Horror, then, seemed to combine all those elements into a no-parents-in-sight teenage bacchanal.
MMP: Two years later, I was able to con my mother into letting me see Rocky Horror because a misprint in the newspaper listed it as being rated PG. My super-cool hippie aunt and uncle took me into Manhattan for a midnight screening shortly after I turned ten in 1978.
That was also the same summer Animal Houseopened and it was pretty much all I could think about. That one, Moms McP would not let me see. But National Lampoon put out a special edition issue that sort of novelized the movie and it was the biggest, riskiest thing I ever shoplifted. I memorized that thing from cover to cover.
So all this added up to a fixation on raucous, anarchic deviant teenage sexuality during my preteen years. In his 2010 book, Role Models, John Waters writes about hearing a Johnny Mathis record playing while eavesdropping on his older neighbor’s high school makeout party and he declares, “It’s not that I wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to be an exaggeration of a teenager!”
MMP: That nails the point I had been at for quite a while by the time Private Lessonsopened in 1981 and lit the fuse, let alone when Porky’sexploded the following spring like a teen sex powder keg. At that point, at last, I was actually 13. “Ready” does not come close to describing my condition when the world finally flooded with movies dedicated to the central fixation of my existence.
SC: It speaks volumes, I feel, that nearly all of the contributors to your book were female—save the inimitable Eddie Deezen. (What a score for this book, seriously, stroke of genius) There’s obviously a good number of female voices throughout the critical industry, but why was it important to you to consult so many females to get their opinions on a genre that more or less exploited them for decades?
MMP: I grew up in the 1970s, which was a time of cultural lawlessness in terms of deviant sexuality overtaking the mainstream, particularly in regard to young people. This was the era, to cite a relatively mild example, of teenage Brooke Shields declaring that nothing came between her and her Calvins a dozen times a day on TV.
As a young adult in the ’90s, I was an underground publisher deeply steeped in the counterculture of the time. That mindset was all about nihilism, decadence, and “sick” humor reveling in taboo topics—so much so that, by the decade’s end, that sensibility bubbled up to primetime in the form of South Park and Family Guy.
Suffice it to say, times have changed.
MMP: A version of Teen Movie Hell called I Lost It in the Locker Room came very close to being published in 1999. At the eleventh hour, the publisher closed the division that was going to do it. That loss killed me back then but, 20 years later, all I can say is: “Whew!”
Right now, I’m 50 years old, I’m married, and I’ve been sober for quite some time. Such was not the case 20 years ago. My original teen sex comedy book was an orgy of boob and penis fixations, inventively insensitive jokes, and grotesquely extravagant odes to (female) objectification and (male) (specifically, my own) masturbation. It was a riot—for 1999.
By 2017, as I was wrapping up work on TMH, the world had certainly evolved. And I had, too. Then, just after I submitted the manuscript to my publisher, Bazillion Points, the Harvey Weinstein scandal hit, followed by the #metoo movement. Oh, my.
It struck me hard that I—a middle-aged, married white man—was in the process of entering the cultural arena with a hefty homage to movies that could be argued as not just celebrating unwanted voyeurism, revenge porn, and sexual humiliation (among myriad other transgressions), but even acting as “how-to” guides for young male reprobates.
This disturbed me. Then one think-piece after another cropped up online decrying “’80s teen comedies” in general, and two examples, in particular: Sixteen Candlesand Revenge of the Nerds.
I thought to myself, “Fuck—those are the Disney movies of the genre!”
MMP: At the same time, I was going through the sort of intense self-examination that I’ve heard other men talk about in the wake of #metoo—asking myself what I had done wrong, what I needed to make right, and rethinking many of my perceptions of the world at large and my work in particular.
Eventually, I got so stressed out over all this, I actually vomited. Stress-puke had never happened to me before! From there, I called my publisher and asked him to pull the book. He said, no, but he’d put it in deep freeze until such time that I felt like we could come back to it. That was a stroke of genius. On Thanksgiving morning of 2017, some kind of almighty something spoke loud and clear in my head: “Schmuck! You know all these brilliant film writers who happen to be women! Ask them to contribute to the book!”
So that’s what I did, and it’s a Murderer’s Row of contributors. Kier-La Janisse’s epic film-theory memoir House of Psychotic Womenis a work of genius. Katie Rife of the AV Club is one of maybe three mainstream critics whose reviews I go out of the way to read—and I always read hers first. Kat Ellinger, Samm Deighan, and Heather Drain are doing phenomenal, unprecedented work both as essayists and with their Venn diagram of various podcasts. Lisa Carver is an old friend from the ’zine days and she never fails to astound me with her brilliance. The list goes on and I am profoundly grateful to each contributor.
The end result is a far, far better book than I could have come up with on my own.
SC: Are there any films you cover in the book which you feel were aided in public awareness byMrSkin.com? We know that Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith wouldn’t have even a quarter of the fan base she had now were it not for your own personal work to get her name and work out there more during your time here. Are there any that stand out as coming into their own afterMrSkin.comprofiled them in some way?
MMP: I’m flattered with your faith in my abilities, but Rainbeaux loomed as a beloved cult figure long before Mr. Skin hired me in 2003. Quentin Tarantino famously paid homage to her in 1998 at his QT Festival in Austin. If I in anyway helped spread the Gospel of Rainbeaux, though, I am honored.
MMP: In terms of Mr. Skin affecting the awareness of the teen sex comedy genre and its actresses, I think site’s cultural impact has been monumental. The site is a treasure trove, a wonderland, and a one-stop shop of information and enthusiasm, and that has changed the public’s knowledge of films immensely through its unique focus.
Mr. Skin himself and I are both fanatical devotees of teen sex comedies, to the point that our shared love figured profoundly in his hiring me. So during my tenure at the site, it’s only natural that we carried the campus TA torch and continually lit the world ablaze with it.
SC: If you had to shortlist five to ten titles covered in your book for a deluxe, 4K, special edition treatment on Blu-ray—ones that have yet to receive such TLC—which titles are you picking?
MMP: This is easy. I’d pick the ten most outrageous titles and create a proper TEEN MOVIE HELL Collection: The Perfect 10. In chronological order:
Little Darlings (1980)
“The contest is on! Whoever loses her virginity first—wins!” When people ask me if the movies in Teen Movie Hell could be made today, I tell them: The short answer is, “No.” The longer answer is, “Fuck, no!” Little Darlings is the most obvious example. Kristy McNichol and Tatum O’Neal co-star as teenage summer campers in race to get laid.
King Frat (1979)
An utterly berserk Animal House knockoff centered on not one, but two Big Fart Contests held at a local theater. The movie opens with the heroes driving around campus in a hearse, mooning the dean and giving him a fatal heart attack, then pumping marijuana smoke into the vents at the church where his funeral is being held to get all the mourners high. After that, it really goes nutzoid.
Joysticks (1983)
The theme song, “Totally Awesome Video Games” by Legion, says it all. Local teenage loons fight to save the neighborhood arcade from closure by fascist dad Joe Don Baker. Icons include big, fat party animal McDorfus (Jim Greenleaf), Valley Girl Patsy (Corinne Bohrer), mewling nerd Jefferson (Scott McGinnis) and his majesty, King Vidiot (Jon Gries).
Screwballs (1983)
I’ve always maintained that the Oscar-winning The Usual Suspects copped its core plot conceit from Screwballs; i.e.—“You don’t put five guys like that in a room together.” In this case, it’s five teen sex comedy archetypes (nerd, jock, fat guy, etc.) and, once they’re sequestered in detention, they concoct a scheme to see stuck-up prom queen Purity Busch in the raw.
Hardbodies (1984)
Initially made for the Playboy Channel, Hardbodies proved so hilarious that it got a proper pick up from Columbia Pictures and a full-force theatrical release. Three middle-aged bozos show up on a SoCal beach looking to score and agree to take lessons from surf stud Scotty (Grant Cramer). Future MTV hair-metal heroines Vixen perform “Computer Madness.” Courtney Gaines, fresh from his breakout as Malachi in Children of the Corn, steals the entire film as Rag, a wildman who can—and does—flip people off in 40 different languages.
Oddballs (1984)
An Airplane!-style kitchen-sink send-up of summer camp movies starring vintage Vegas comic Foster Brooks doing his patented too-drunk-to-slunk routine to perfection as a miscreant who wins Camp Bottomout in a poker game. There’s a camper from space, a camper who may be Superman, and nonstop barrages of sight (and sound) gags that land square on your laugh reflex without mercy.
Preppies (1984)
Preppies spins the classic teen comedy set-up of “the slobs against the snobs” into “the snobs against the really severe snobs.” Three prostitutes are hired to ensure a young, alligator-shirted horndog will violate the morals clause of his inheritance conditions over a wild weekend on a fancy Hamptons estate. Katt Shea, who would go on to a stunning career as a genre filmmaker (Stripped to Kill, Poison Ivy) turns in the genre’s funniest female performance as Margot, a sort of proto-Paris-Hilton gone psycho. Directed by the great Chuck Vincent, a one-of-a-kind talent who jumped between hardcore porn (both gay and straight) and softcore comedies, including the teen sex favorites Summer Camp (1979) and Hollywood Hot Tubs (1984).
Surf II: The End of the Trilogy (1984)
Tremendously clever, from its title onward (there is, of course, no Surf 1). Über-nerd Eddie Deezen plots to take over the local beach, and eventually the world, by turning local party babes and surf dudes into zombies with his mind-controlling Buzz Cola. The cast includes Eric Stoltz, Corinne Bohrer, Tom Villard, Lyle Waggoner, Terry Kiser, Ron Palillo (Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter), Cleavon Little (the sheriff in Blazing Saddles), and Carol Wayne (Johnny Carson’s Tea Time Movie Girl).
The Party Animal (1985)
A mock-documentary chronicling the rise-and-fall (while still rising) saga of Pondo Sinatra, a small-town podunk who enters the movie by literally falling off the back of a turnip truck onto a college campus. From there’s it’s a pilgrim’s progress as Pondo attempts to transform into a worldly stud with results that include the African-American fraternity wedging an afro-pick in his forehead, a pair of kinky punk rockers piercing nearly every inch of his anatomy, and a post-Mexican-meal attempt to light a cigarette garnering explosive results.
Hamburger:The Motion Picture (1986)
The outlandish ambition and attention to absurdist detail is what really impresses about Hamburger: The Motion Picture—after, of course, the behemoth guffaws induced by the ludicrous antics of the fast food students on-screen at Busterburger University. Dick Butkus shines as the bulldog BBU instructor charged with weeding out weak participants in the school’s patty-flipping, fry-salting programs. The rest of the cast is devastatingly committed and each frame of the film is as loaded with brazen gags as a panel in Mad magazine.
SC:Every genre has its sub-genre, i.e. the Ski sex comedies or college campus sex comedies, but are there any that you’re surprised became sub-genre in the first place? And are there any you’re surprised didn’t spawn a trend?
MMP: At the dawn of the ’80s, Hollywood made a handful of films that attempted to address rudderless latchkey kids with “me generation” parents and the uniquely new troubles these kids were facing as they hit adolescence. It was like all teenagers emerging from the 1970s had PTSD. The movies on this topic weren’t comedies, per se, but they certainly ran parallel to the teen comedies, at least for a while.
Over the Edge (1979), based on a real-life early-’70s teen uprising in a prefabricated suburban community, is the best known and most critically acclaimed example, and it is great.
MMP:Foxes and Times Square, both from 1980, take unflinching looks at adolescent females forced to live on adult terms by the culture around them. Each one is terrific and each has since developed its own devoted following.
Unfortunately, both Foxes and Times Square bombed so badly in theaters that I think it killed what might have been a worthwhile genre, one that could have possibly extended the ’70s Hollywood auteur sensibility into coming-of-age stories throughout the next decade. Alas, no go.
Just as Star Wars killed Hollywood movies for adults, first Porky’s and then John Hughes killed gritty, realistic approaches to puberty in cinema. For the record, I like Porky’s. The other two cancers named there—oh, no.
SC: Maybe you can help us sort this one out, as we discussed it recently on the blog, but why is it that Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the vastly superior film, didn’t have the seismic impact that Porky’s had? Time has obviously been much kinder to the former, but at the time, Porky’s was the biggest thing on the planet.
MMP: Porky’s was shocking. It came out of nowhere, it was way more explicit than anything mainstream audiences had been used to seeing, and, as a collection of dirty-minded sketches, it was hilarious, especially on immediate impact. There was a lot of novelty there. The full-frontal nudity and sexual slapstick worked like a gimmick.
MMP: As a result, each screening of Porky’s electrified audiences and sent them out spreading the word, after which they returned with friends, each time saying, “See! I told you this thing was insane!”
20th Century Fox had picked up Porky’s expecting good results and the movie took off on its own. Fox then kept adding theaters and increasing advertising until they had a blockbuster on their hands.
By contrast, Universal had very little faith in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The movie opened in August on the West Coast and did good business, and then opened in September on the East Coast with very little fanfare, where it sort of fizzled.
Fortunately, Christmas 1982 was the before-and-after line for VCRs in American homes. By springtime 1983, Fast Times caught on with audiences via home video and snowballed from there. By the time it reached cable, it was a monster in the popular consciousness—because it is an excellent, excellent film.
MMP: In hindsight, people still use Porky’s as the go-to title to convey the idea of the teen sex comedy genre, but that’s just shorthand—it’s easier to say Porky’s than it is Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the imagery it invokes is crazy TA, crude pranks, and broad humor. Audiences don’t really have any kind of relationship with Porky’s beyond that now, whereas they have deep connections to Fast Times.
SC: When you were working on "Heavy Metal Movies” did you have a single-minded focus to finish that book before thinking about another project, or was this kicking around in the back of your mind?
MMP: I started working on this book in 1994, two decades before Heavy Metal Moviescame out. Beyond wanting to write the definitive book on its subject matter, my long-game hope was that Heavy Metal Movies would prove successful enough to enable me to write a book about teen sex comedies. That worked out pretty well for me.
SC: Piggybacking off of that, is there any other genre you’d either love to tackle or are seriously thinking about attempting next?
MMP: One mistake I made with Teen Movie Hellwas announcing it about three years ago. That led to a lot of avoidable frustration as every book eventually takes years longer to complete than you initially thought it would.
My friend and Teen Movie Hell contributorKat Ellinger stunned me (and everybody) on Christmas morning 2017, when she posted online: “Surprise! Here it is!” and shared the image of her complete, ready-to-ship new book All the Colours of Sergio Martino. Kat had never mentioned the book online prior to that point. I feel like that’s now the way to do it.
That stated, I am working on “the next one,” as is said. It’s an anthology and it’s nostalgia-based and you have to have grown up in the 1970s to contribute to it—but I hope everyone on earth will buy it and read it, regardless of age and/or coolness.
SC: Is there anything else you’d like your fans to know, or perhaps anyone that’s discovering you for the first time?
MMP: I’ll be travelling this fair nation of our over the next year doing screenings, book signings, and what not. Please keep up with it all at TeenMovieHell.com, and at these fine social media outlets:
Instagram: @teenmoviehell
Facebook:facebook.com/mcbeardo
Twitter: @mikemcbeardo
Email: mikemcpadden@gmail
Cover me! I am now the beamingly proud owner of the brilliantly painted TEEN MOVIE HELL cover image by @andreibouzikov Thank you, Andrei! Thank you @bazillionpoints! Also: MY SHIRT!!! #teenmoviehell#teenmovies#andreibouzikov#80smovies#fasttimesatridgemonthigh#porkyspic.twitter.com/5LLqu6V0h0
— Mike McPadden (@mikemcbeardo) March 15, 2019
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