By Scott Buckner
For us menfolk, the 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. network TV time slot is a torturous purgatory filled with little more than TV judges, people cooking things, and talk shows. This window of time was made even more torturous on Wednesday by the airing of the 1973 Robbie Benson/Glynnis O’Connor film Jeremy on ThisTV, one of WCIU’s digital children whose library seems to be comprised largely of movies from the 1970s that nobody in their right mind would have paid good money to see even back then, when theater tickets didn’t even cost five bucks.
On the other hand, if it weren’t for ThisTV, I’d have no idea that distinguished French actor Thierry Lhermitte even existed.
For those of you who weren’t teenagers in 1973 – or for those of you who were and would like to forget the whole experience – Jeremy ranks right up there with Ice Castles as a movie capable of giving you contact diabetes, or at the very least making the fillings in your teeth hurt.
That’s because they starred the incredibly scrawny and incredibly sensitive and emotional young actor Robby Benson, a kid who could make Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” sound like a James Taylor song. But America fell in love with doe-eyed sensitivity during the 1970s, so naturally, boatloads of tweenie girls fell in love with Robby Benson. He made several movies before dropping off the celebrity radar a few years later when everyone decided the kids in Fast Times at Ridgemont High were obviously more interesting and fun. (He – well, his voice, anyway – had a brief resurgence of sorts in Walt Disney’s 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast.)
My problem back then with Robby Benson – and on Wednesday with Jeremy – was that it always took me half the movie to figure out that he wasn’t somewhat mentally retarded, or playing someone who was.
He was just being, um, Robby Benson.
So it was always a good thing that movies like Jeremy and Ode to Billie Joe also starred Glynnis O’Connor, who I recall having a big crush on when I was 13. She was the next best thing to Linda Blair, except without all the really scary demonic possession business going on.
Anyway, nerdy cello student Jeremy Jones (Benson) and beautiful but shy ballet student Susan Rollins (O’Connor) eventually meet at their New York City arts school before the cast of Fame is able to storm the building and throw everyone out the windows, and the two spend an excruciatingly slow 90 minutes falling in love only to have their blossoming relationship snatched away by Susan’s father’s poor sense of timing.
Their relationship really takes off after Jeremy takes Susan to a revival of the W.C. Fields film My Little Chickadee and then for a bite to eat at a little joint that holds the land speed record for pizza service. After the ringing in everyone’s ears from the sonic boom involved in baking and serving a very large pizza in less than 45 seconds wears off, it becomes clear why anyone in Chicago would be charitable in describing a New York pizza as afterbirth on toast.
Besides being reminded that the classic clear Bic pen once also came in a classier yellow plastic version, Jeremy forces me to recall that every teenager in 1973 dressed like hell and our hair looked like shit. We just wandered about with the same disheveled, unkempt look that made us all look like we smoked dope, even if we didn’t.
The main problem with Jeremy – aside from an annoying musical score that forces a flute and a trumpet to co-exist – was that it gave us teenage virgins unrealistic expectations of virgin sex. Although Jeremy putzes around for more than an hour before actually getting around to kissing the girl, the two eventually do get around to doing the nasty.
Unfortunately, they’re accompanied by an abomination known as “The Hourglass Song (Blue Balloon),” sung by Benson and written by the very same guy who would unleash an even bigger abomination known as “You Light Up My Life” some time later.
Movies like this instilled in us the idea that virgin sex involves a lot of gazing deeply into each others’ eyes and gently tracing the curves of each others’ lips with our fingertips. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that this notion was about as accurate as our great-grandparents’ fear that a new invention known as electricity would leak out of the wall sockets and electrocute everyone.
Of course, nothing lasts forever and the whole thing crashes and burns a few hours later when Susan’s father announces he’s moving everyone back to Detroit in two days, setting up a possible sequel in which Susan develops a substance abuse problem fueled by a seething resentment toward her father for ruining her first love and leaving her nothing in his will except lifetime season tickets to the Lions.
Now, that’s a movie I’d pay to see. Even if it included a return performance by Mr. Benson.
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Posted on September 18, 2009